...and another reason to attend my upcoming workshop on metaphor at Book Passage.
http://bookpassage.com/event/class-kim-hermanson-metaphor-everyday-life
The same could be said for knowing anything of any depth or complexity ... our universe, each other, or how to navigate through a turbulent situation. The metaphors that we hold are what enable us to construct meaning and find our way. Metaphor is much more than a tool of language--it's how we make sense of the world. It's how we learn.
We'll be exploring metaphor at my upcoming one-day workshop at Book Passage. Our means of exploration with be writing and image. I hope you'll join us.
METAPHOR IN EVERYDAY LIFE workshop
Book Passage, Corte Madera
Sunday November 13th
10 am - 4 pm
To sign up: http://bookpassage.com/event/class-kim-hermanson-metaphor-everyday-life
For a long time, the various parts of me have felt separate: I'm both an academic and a creative. I am passionate about teaching and learning, as well as creativity and the arts. As I've journeyed on my path, I've realized that it's my mission to bridge the academic and creative. Since images lie at the heart of the creative process, images also lie at the heart of learning.
I believe that my academic courses provide a strong foundation for the "legitimacy" of the arts--offering substantial evidence of their centrality in learning and cultural change. Some of these courses include Psychology of Metaphor, Psychology of Creativity, Psychology of Transformative Learning, The Purpose and Power of Image and Imaginal Ways of Knowing. (For course descriptions, go to Events & Classes page.)
I often think of image and imagination as the "language of the heart," and this language needs our support. While images are at the center of any kind of creative transformation, they have a very quiet voice. Images need to be welcomed and given space, else they will not be heard.
Florine Smith quilt 1975
Creative individuals mentally play with images all the time, no matter what field they work in. But research shows that all of us are embedded in the world of mental imagery all the time... and our cognitive systems are based in metaphor. Even individuals who define themselves as "less creative" are at their most creative when they actively engage with images.
In the case of every historic scientific discovery and invention that is researched carefully enough, we find that it was imagery, either in dreams or in a waking state, which produced the breakthrough.
--John Curtis Gowan
Humans have four ways of knowing: thinking, feeling, physical sensing, and imagination, but we tend to favor only one of these modes—thinking. Of these four modes of knowing, imagination (or image-ing) is arguably the most powerful and least understood. To shed some light on this matter, I’m teaching an upcoming workshop at Book Passage on image and metaphor. We will focus on the role of image and metaphor on the creative process, as well as its role in shaping the “lenses” that we use to view the world around us. Here’s the link to sign up:
http://bookpassage.com/event/class-kim-hermanson-metaphor-everyday-life
---------------Metaphor in Everyday Life – Workshop
Book Passage, Corte Madera
Sunday, November 13th, 10 am-4 pm
Every aspect of our daily experience is influenced by metaphor. While writers may try to use metaphor to enrich their writing, the truth is that we are always writing (and looking) through a metaphoric lens. In this experiential workshop we explore metaphor as a potent force that shapes how we see the world. I hope you'll join us!
Awhile back, David Brooks wrote a New York Times column about metaphor in everyday life. (He called it "Poetry for Everyday Life.") Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/12/opinion/12brooks.html?_r=1
My favorite line could be this one: Even the hardest of the sciences depend on a foundation of metaphors. To be aware of metaphors is to be humbled by the complexity of the world, to realize that deep in the undercurrents of thought there are thousands of lenses popping up between us and the world, and that we’re surrounded at all times by what Steven Pinker of Harvard once called “pedestrian poetry."
Hi folks. Update: This is a course I recently taught for Pacifica Graduate Institute. If you are interested in the content of this course, please let me know! You can send me an email by clicking "Receive Event Announcements" on the left side of this page. I'd be glad to share my sources. Thanks for your interest!
I'm in the midst of fine-tuning this course for itunes. If you're interested in the content of the Psychology of Metaphor course, please send me an email by clicking the Receive Event Announcements" link on the left side of this page. Thanks!
Sometimes I get the coolest emails from people. One in particular, from someone named Eileen, has been sitting in my inbox for two months. It's given me so much food for thought that I haven't been able to file it away. The subject line of the email is: "as if...metaphor is the new critical thinking?" That line alone has stayed with me. How thought-provoking. I spent seven years at the University of Chicago studying how adults learn in everyday life. I read everything I could possibly find on the subject and graduated (despite the fine help of a famous advisor) without really having a clue how adults learn in life, wondering why nearly all of the literature on adult learning is so sorely lacking. It wasn't until several years later when I picked up George Lakoff's book Metaphors We Live By that I started getting an understanding of how we learn. As humans, we have bodies and eyesight long before we have words and language. Our learning is shaped by our experience of being in the world (Lakoff calls this "experiential gestalts"). We see and feel the world, and these experiences of being in the world give us metaphors, which shape our future experiences and hence our learning. For example, we might say something like, "She'll rise to the top." This is a metaphor--we are viewing this person through a metaphoric lens which has been informed by our own experience of being a body in the world that can rise.
Yes, metaphor is how we critically think. How refreshing to have a richer understanding of critical thinking. One that's actually useful.
Hi folks. I've been getting so many hits for this post that I've decided to offer it as an itunes course. If you are interested in the material for the Psychology of Creativity course, please let me know by sending me an email. (You can click on "Receive Event Announcements" on the left side of this page.) Thanks for your interest!
I feel moved to post this email from an amazing woman who heard me on the radio last fall. Her metaphoric images are full of spirited life, and I love her image of the culture being in the "neti-neti" stage of childbirth: "We are 'not here nor there' but somewhere in-between. Neti-neti is a time when the mother must relinquish her own boundaries and lose herself, becoming a semi-permeable membrane that will allow the spirit of the child to emerge."
I also love her notion that the human collective imagination is pregnant with "as yet unarticulated" new metaphors. It speaks to the workshop I'll be doing at Esalen next March on creative process and social change, which feels "pregnant" as well!
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hi kim,
i don't usually post comments on blogs ...
but i couldn't resist responding to your work.
i hope that teachers continue to lean toward the sort of enlivening inspiration and support you offer::
i spent much of my parenting energy ensuring that my children received creative educations and now their adult work reflects that beautifully::
as you described your creative "languaging" of the concept of "aesthetic space" i was reminded of a workshop i took back in 1986 with Hugh Redmond at the ATP Conference, a workshop in teaching Transpersonal Psychology::
he suggested that one should not be averse to allowing silences in the classroom:: and suggested that rather than lecturing or attempting to "fill in" all the space available:: (the fifty minute hour?):: that instead we allow for the "place of 'I DON"T KNOW' " in order for something new to possibly emerge:: also reminds me of the Jungian notion that when the tension of the opposites is held, the previously unimagined third can emerge::
SO, happy to hear that you are bringing this work into the mainstream of readers as well as teachers, and beyond the academic world of psychology
to use a metaphor, this cultural time reminds me of the "transition" stage experienced during child birth :: the stage that is "neti-neti", not here, not there :: when the mother must relinguish her own boundaries, lose herself, become a semi-permeable membrane to allow the spirit of the child to emerge :: trusting that she will reassemble after the birthing process (although that may take 18 years or so ) ::
so, it seems that now especially the human collective imagination is pregnant with "as yet un-articulated" metaphors that resonate with what we are already experiencing :: again, I'm not involved in the world anymore, I'm "doing a Sister Wendy" in terms of living a necessarily quiet solitary life but I will share with you my "KEY" Symbols ::
always numinous and luminous dream themes :: Weaving Looms and Harps :: in some dreams they are conflated :: a loom that sings or a warehouse full of looms that weave by day but are transformed into harps for playing music every evening :: beautiful creative images that always fill my heart with gratitude :: in response to these images, i "literalized" them for a time, learning to weave and play a Celtic Lap Harp :: both my loom and harp were handmade of cherry wood (a completely serendipitous similarity) ::
i have passed on the artifacts but the images stay with me ::
last night I began reading Diane Ackerman's book,
An Alchemy of Mind and was delighted to see her chapter titled, "The Enchanted Loom" :: that phrase resonated with the "tone" I receive from my Imaginal Loom/Harps and so I decided to respond to your blog query today but in an email, not a post ::
merely to "resonate" with you ...
Ackerman begins the chapter with this quote from Sir Charles Sherrington's -
Blessings on your Work/Weaving, May your shuttles keep flashing !
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Isn't that a cool letter? Here is the link for my workshop at Esalen on creative process and social change: http://webapp.esalen.org/workshops/9329
Happy Weaving!
Best, Kim
I had a disagreement with an old friend recently about whether the images and metaphors that show up in our subconscious are "real." I believe, just like with dreams, that when images and metaphors show up in our lives, they have something to teach us and I don’t think my friend would argue with that. His concern seems to be with something that I call a “key image.” I've been intrigued by poets and artists who have talked about having a key image that they keep "working" in their writings and art (or more accurately, an image that keeps “working them”). Stanley Kunitz and the Irish poet John O'Donohue are two who have written of this phenomena. In his book Beauty, O’Donohue wrote, “In the end, every artist is haunted by a few central themes. Again and again, they return to the disturbance and endeavor to excavate something new.” These key images typically come from childhood. For example, as a child E.B. White was fascinated by spider webs; he went on to author the bestselling children’s book Charlotte’s Web.
A few archetypal psychologists have looked at key images from a psychological perspective, namely James Hillman (who refers to key images as "acorns") and Bill Plotkin, who calls them “personal soul articulations.” He writes in Nature and the Human Soul that each person’s soul articulation “employs a metaphor from nature to point to an ineffable mystery—the unique way in which each person belongs to the wild world.” And finally, the philosopher and theologian Henry Corbin, an expert on Sufi philosophy, wrote that the Sufis believe that each human has his or her own distinct "image of God." In other words, [God] “can no longer be imposed by a collective faith, for it is the vision that corresponds to his fundamental and innermost being.” (I love that line. If only we could remember it, our religious wars and conflicts would surely go away.) In Native American cultures, visions are given prominence in one's life when young people go on vision quests to uncover them.
From these writings we can infer that perhaps each of us has an inner vision, image, or metaphor and this image may be the key to both our learning and development in life, as well as in a broader way, to social change on the planet. For me, the notion of a key image is more than an intellectual musing, because I’ve been aware for most of my adult life of a key image that lies in my heart. It has to do with growing something in nurturing soil. I have worked with metaphor and imagery for twenty-five years, both professionally and personally, and the image of planting and caring for whatever wants to grow in rich, fertile soil is an image that won’t let me go. And I wouldn’t want it to. It not only feels like part of me, I’m sure that it’s the best part of me.
My friend wrote in an email: "I have a deep-seated objection to the perspective of Jung, Hillman and others like them. It is based on my conviction that they distance and separate us from a part of our own, unique process. Metaphors and myths are and are not nouns. They can be studied as nouns (e.g. Greek vs. Celtic myths), but if we approach them in a more personal way…in terms of how we express ourselves and how that type of expression emerges from and impacts us and others... then we see that they are part of the river of being. As such, they co-mingle with the continuing flow of process…ever-changing as a result of context. On a personal level, they are empty shells until we put them on and give them life—and every time we put one on, even if it is the same metaphor, it looks and feels different. "River of being" and "empty shell" are two images that I have used before but never in this context, and they feel different, fresh, and new as a result.”
Research over the past forty years has shown that our thinking stems from our imagination and imaginal process (see George Lakoff’s work in particular). We're only conscious of five to ten percent of what goes on in our minds; most of our thought process is unconscious. So if we’re not conscious of most of the activity that goes on in our minds, key images may be very difficult to prove. Perhaps the best way is to ask you about your own direct experience. I’d love to hear your thoughts on the matter. Do you have a key image? Do you have something that won’t let you go?
Imagination is indirect, nonlinear, and fuzzy. It’s more about taking you to a “new place” and providing a fresh perspective than providing a numerically clear solution or quick fix. Further, when we open up our imaginations, we challenge traditional norms. Our creative process comes up with ideas that are often at odds with standard procedures. It’s scary to open up to these foreign, quirky voices; it’s much easier to cover up and ignore them. Creativity is definitely messy.
But how many of us spend our days trying to find solutions to complex problems? Try as we may, new insights and fresh ideas are not going to come with reason or mental will power. Whether it be finding economical ways to market a workshop or developing a sustainable school system or managing our personal relationships in a way that brings satisfaction and happiness, we need to become friendly with our imaginations. Both Albert Einstein and Carl Jung said in different ways that no fundamental problem can ever be solved at the level at which it was created. To come up with enlightened solutions, we need a larger context, a larger set of possibilities, and expanded ways of thinking. We need access to something that’s bigger than us and bigger than our current state of knowledge. We need the imagination.
Don’t you find that to be true? When you find yourself stuck on some problem or issue, taking a trip or simply immersing in a new environment often brings up synchronistic solutions. The trouble is, we can’t mentally “will” ourselves to go to this new place. Our minds know how to analyze, compartmentalize and dissect; they know how to churn things around in circles. They do not know how to enter the imaginal.
That said, here are some ideas to help you become more friendly with the imaginal realm:
1) Remember your dreams, but don’t analyze them. Turning the images in your dreams into an “interpretation” takes the life out of the them, or as the psychologist James Hillman would say, “it leaves the soul unanimated.” When you analyze your dreams, you put them into a box where they can’t breathe. Instead, think of your dream images as “friends” that have shown up to keep you company. Let your dreams images accompany you during the day, working their magic on you.
2) Write a fairy tale. Allow yourself to be five years old and bring in dragons, castles, kings, princesses, or any other fairy tale character that seems appropriate. Start by writing the sentence, “Once upon a time, long, long ago in a land far away….” When you allow yourself to move beyond the “adult behavior” box, surprising insights arise. There’s a wisdom that lies beyond your trained mind. Give yourself the space to discover it.
3) Find your key image. The late poet Stanley Kunitz said that poets have one or two favorite images that captivated them as children that they keep working over and over again in their writing. For example, as a child E.B. White was fascinated by spider webs. He later went on to author the bestselling children’s book, Charlotte’s Web. I believe we all have such key images, and even if we’re not poets, our images keep “working us” over the course of our life. Some of my students’ key images have been fertile soil, ocean waves, and street festivals. Just muse for a moment—is there an image, or cluster of images, from childhood that is always close to your heart? We ultimately become the images we hold—-the images that have chosen us.
4) Play with visual imagery. Find a funky magazine (or other printed material like catalogues or old picture books) and scan through for whatever images appeal, provoke, or disturb you. Cut them out. Don’t try to make sense of what you’re doing, just continue ripping until you feel finished. One important route to the imaginal is through play and ripping pictures from magazines is “grown up” enough to give us room to do that. After you’re done, randomly pick up a couple of your images and see what connections can be made between them. See if you can combine the disparate elements into a new pattern or come up with a wild hypothesis (the wilder the better).
5) Notice the presence of metaphor. We normally think of metaphor as purely a linguistic device, but in truth, metaphor is the lens through which we see the world around us. A range of scholars, from Marshall McLuhan to the linguist George Lakoff to the German philosopher Martin Foss, have all argued that we live within an unconscious metaphoric process. Notice the metaphors that you use to describe the situations and people in your life, and notice when new metaphors show up. New metaphors provide fresh ways of looking.
Every perception that we have of the world around us is colored by the images through which we perceive. In daily life we are all poets and artists, and consciously or unconsciously, we are all working with the images we hold. As Rollo May once said, “…imagination and art are not frosting at all, but the foundation of human experience.” It’s time to make friends with the imaginal.
** The image at the top of this post is a quilt by Annie Mae Young, 1970.
