Ecopsychology — *notes tx planner, ALCHEMY PROJECT, illuminated manuscript, Jung

The best thing about Art and Narrative therapy is that it allows a window into the soul.  When Jung was writing his RED BOOK, he was drawing on a tradition that is very old — The Illuminated Manuscript.  You can look at some pictures of those here at this search by clicking this link.

Here is an example:

Here is a page from Jung’s book, hundreds of years later!

One of the things a therapist looks into when we see depression as a symptom is creativity.  Because if “creativity” is blocked — oftentimes depression results.  It’s like a two way street.  So, we had been talking about the “pre-scripted” games and Piaget and child development of the imaginal.

That time we had discussed — from birth to about age 9 — is the time for this creative kind of thinking to be most active.

Here is the Wikipedia on creativity…

“…Scholarly interest in creativity ranges widely: the relationship between creativity and general intelligence; the mental and neurological processes associated with creative activity; personality type and creative ability; creativity and mental health; creativity in education; and ways of fostering creativity through training and technology…”

In looking at these images of depression in this search, we can see parallels when we look at the searches for the emo heart.

We had looked at videos of the cutting, and looked into some of the images of that here at this search.

I want to borrow a couple of images I saw to talk about depression and manuscript making from an Ecopsychological perspective.

Let’s look at this one, of a “self” trapped on the inside.  This graphic really shows that, and also shows what it is like to not have access to the “outside.”  It’s perfect as an image of what depression is like.

I’m going to borrow another image here!

One thing we can also look at is some of the art that has emerged for signs of sadness or “the empty self,” at this search.

As I look at the images, and use the top two images I linked to, what I see is the “trapped self” and also a self with much internal narrative to let “out.”

So, in previous pieces we had looked at “words” and the “emoticon version” of words. We want to look again into the genogram for this time period:

1995————————————————————————–2011.

Here is a search on words, and some really interesting Word Clouds, that are part of The Alchemy Project I am designing as a tx planner.  Word Clouds are going to allow insight into the inner world in terms of a mirror.

One of the things we would want to establish first is what language are we looking at?

Are the words and emoticons able to describe feeling states or not?

Are there words for feeling states?

Here is a video to watch:

A word that has come up in much of the reserch I have done is “numb.”

Jung saw a continuum between the colors red into blue.  Red is “body” — and Blue is “spirit.”

As I look at the images of this cutting into the “red” area of the body to get at the feeling states, a cure is to begin a creation of a feeling self as embodied.  If there has been overmedication in this generation the feeling states may be totally cut off?

Here is an article on that at this link.

More research links are here, plus an article of import.

One of the things the monks had, that created the illuminated manuscripts was tremendous pigment at their disposal.  Today, we have art supplies and crayolas.  Some of the exercises in the alchemy project can be done on the computer, and some of them are going to require a drawing that can be scanned in.  Crayola crayons are a really good medium for that.  Because of the number of colors!  here is a picture of those:

You could use printer paper to draw on?  Make yourself a special folder to hold all your drawings though?  You want to keep them because they are your art work.

Drawings people make will look totally different and that is okay!

An intervention for the Alchemy Project would be to draw a picture like this!

That is what a crayola drawing will look like.

If you were to draw a picture of a heart, a tree, and the day you were having?

What would that look like?

Take your crayons and draw that out.  You could also do this on your computer using drawing programs that you like as well.

If you want to join THE ALCHEMY PROJECT the link for that is here!

What we are making is a book of hearts out of blogs.  You will have your own?  It’s a place to start letting some things out onto paper for emo kids, instead of cutting themselves.

❤