Search

How much of the “Sylvia Plath” we know is a storied life rather than a real one? Can the two be separated? This is complex given that Plath’s final collection Ariel was published twice by husband then daughter. How do we (re)construct Plath as a real person when the narrative around her death is enveloped by presumptions and stereotypes of suicide? This paper explores poems from both versions of Ariel with the idea that, rather than living for her suicide, Plath explored experiences of living in a space in-between wanting to live and wanting to die. This passionate ambivalence is demonstrated in poems such as Tulips, Edge, and Lady Lazarus. This paper will not presume that the poems within Ariel represent her whole life; rather, they represent the story of her life during the time in which they were written, tangible artefacts of her inspiration from 1961 to 1963.

Commencing within the trajectory of perseverance, this paper sets out to examine the ways in which the phenomenon of waiting has been shrewdly explored by Niyi Osundare in Waiting Laughters [Osundare, N. (1990). Waiting laughters. Lagos: Malthouse]. Waiting is considered in the context of contemporary African literature and the poet’s own Yoruba tradition. It goes on to argue that the poet extends meanings of waiting far beyond their conventional limits, thus making it a complex, multi-levelled construct deployed as an instrument of resistance in the face of deplorable socio-economic and political conditions of contemporary African states. The paper identifies several manifestations of waiting: as patience, as natural progression, as social predicament, as historical inevitability, as humour, as laughter therapy, and as resistance. Each of these notions of waiting is an element of Osundare’s preoccupation with ways of overcoming the inequities, deprivations and injustices of African nations, and t...

This paper presents a poem created whilst conducting an inquiry into one of the endings of stories told of, and by, people living with mental illness: this story ending is grouped by a word (and social movement) widely known as Recovery in mental health care. Recovery, however, is not a word commonly used in the places where this Inquiry occurred. Nor is it a category of story ending often told about Australian Aboriginal people living with a diagnosis of chronic mental illness. This inquiry was, and is, thus focussed on how the current endings of stories that surround Australian Aboriginal peoples in mental health care are being/were told and “heard”. This paper is an attempt to use poetry as a therapeutic and storytelling strategy to highlight the difference between hearing and listening, and how that difference relates to the word Recovery as a paradigm shift and story of social change.

An examination of the occurrence, use, and value of concepts from the Jungian alchemical metaphor to the practice of clinical or casework supervision is the focus of this paper. An overview of the alchemical metaphor as employed in Jungian analytical psychology is presented. In addition to an exploration of researched papers where alchemy is applied to the theory of therapy supervision; the role of the imagination in supervision, which was an initial area of interest for the author, is promoted. This is attempted through exploring the language of alchemy, and the alchemy of language.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of biblio/poetry therapy as an avenue into the spirit that can promote individual integration and global awareness. The philosophical and psychological underpinnings linking the poetic and the spiritual are reviewed. The theme of the paper is developed through the acrostic, S-P-I-R-I-T, referring to spirituality, perception, insight, relevancy, integration, and totality.

This paper focuses on the experiences of a graduate student and a professor who engaged in a thought exercise about found poetry. Through the contemplation of nine found poems that were extracted from the professor’s doctoral research on abortion providers, they consider how found poetry can be read, interpreted, and experienced. The potential role of found poetry for social work research and practice is also discussed.

This paper discusses the relations between tonal and atonal regions of the psychic space as being responsible for the relations between movement and stasis. Drawing on a musical terminology, I describe the constant tension between a harmonious pole of thinking and an idiosyncratic one, both in psychoanalytic meta-reflection as well as in the clinical realm, presenting thereby bibliotherapy, poetry therapy, and the poetic zones of psychoanalysis and psychotherapy as the therapeutic forces which “pull” toward the link to atonal psychic areas, enabling in that way the ongoing integration of the homely and un-homely, the syntax and the anti-syntax of the psychic space.

Because, in modern times, poetry has largely appeared within the pages of a book or journal, its presence can surprise us by turning up “off the page” in totally unexpected places. I have found poetry painted onto paper dolls and sold as “cheap art” (Bread & Puppet); transferred to sculpted stone books displayed in museums (Bentivoglio); mounted on placards in subways and buses (Poetry in Motion); projected onto bridges and buildings (Holzer); and co-mingled both symbolically and playfully with food in kitchens (Mones, Esrig). Tragically, poetry has even been found in the pocket of a corpse, as happened with the Hungarian poet Radnoti, a Jew murdered in the Holocaust, a poet who needed to write even when he was barely alive and even when it was forbidden. This essay invites readers to engage with these examples of “poetry in unexpected places” and to think about their responses to such discoveries.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the subject of failure from various angles. The first angle relates to the lyrical failure, which takes place at any moment in which the mind chooses to envelop something with a familiar context instead of revealing what is new in it, or chooses to know “about” something rather than knowing the thing itself. The second angle considers the link between experiences of failure and the human ability to imagine and to live “parallel universes.” The third angle considers the experience of failure as being connected with the work of mourning. The fourth angle relates to the experience of failure as creating a dialogue with our interior sense of measure. The fifth angle considers the internal dialogue of failure as comprising within itself the unconscious fantasy of a “higher authority,” which sees beyond us and guards our steps. The sixth angle considers the experience of failure as a lyrical gesture, one which exists not in the territory of authentic truth, but in the b...

This paper is an attempt to demonstrate the power and meaning of human lyricism by the only means that can really do so—lyricism itself. Using a fresh reading of T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets (Eliot, 1944), the author demonstrates the lyrical attitude Eliot himself offers us as a way to observe the world. This lyrical attitude, which the author believes is a vital component of the analytic presence, will be presented here as a unique kind of integration between the predictable and explicable—and that which is inexplicable and sometimes even unknowable.

In this paper I explore the works of three American poet-shamans: Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville. By "poet-shamans", I mean any person who traces language to its archaic root in the animal psyche; forms a primal relationship to the shamanic archetype; performs his or her works in an ecstatic state of consciousness; and enters states of visionary and poetic madness. The primary function of the poet-shaman is to heal emotional, sexual, and spiritual disturbances in the poet, nation and the world. I view these three American poet-shamans as forerunners of the contemporary field of poetry therapy in America.

Increasingly the film industry is making available new and old movies in video format that can facilite our work in treatment when patients recall this artform. This paper draws attention to videos of biographies of classical composers, as in the expressive arts therapies we also select the materials to be used with patients. Working with these films in therapy additionally enhances the cultural aspect of life.

In this paper, I review the four existential realities of isolation, meaninglessness, death and freedom and explore how these ultimate concerns of existence were conceptualized by the medieval poet, Dante Alighieri, in his acclaimed trilogy, The Divine Comedy. My central thesis is that through studying the array of metaphors embedded within the text, we can achieve an enriched understanding of the dilemmas of human existence which enables us to refine our understanding of therapeutic practice generally and the therapeutic relationship in particular. I will then offer some ideas as to how Dante's framework could assist an exploration of specific areas of therapist-client interaction and represent a heuristic structure for guiding choice of intervention at different stages in the therapeutic process.

This paper extends previous work on the induced recall of music and the induced recall of poetry to include biographical films. A personal recall of a tango interpreted in the film Il Postino [The Postman] and its use as a therapeutic tool with elderly patients or family members and friends who have an interest in the Hispanic world of arts is addressed.

An involuntary recall of Hamlet was a source of inspiration to Freud during his process of creating psychoanalysis; later, another instance of an unintentional evocation facilitated Reik's understanding of a patient's dream and dynamics. In view of the creation of a new Hamlet film by Branagh which may be evoked by film-buff patients, therapists or supervisors, this paper presents a selection of interpretations in the psychoanalytic literature of Shakespeare's masterpiece.

Storytelling is a widely used and long established technique in therapy. Yet while much has been said of the effects of storytelling on the listener, little has been said about its effects on its tellers. The author looks at brief examples of storytelling from the work of Hesse, a student paper, and one of the author's poems, and raises questions about their autotherapeutic effect.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the use of the Bible as a resource in therapy. The authors provide a Bible Resource Subject Index (e.g., communication, depression, and incest) and offer several techniques on the differential use of the Bible in individual and group therapy. A brief example and discussion of the use of the Bible in social work with groups concludes the report.