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Das Floß der Medusa (originally by Théodore Géricault, 1819; photographed and edited by Maja Tabea Jerrentrup & Oliver Ez, 2019)
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The present study deals with the understanding of the human psyche thought art perception and allegory formation. Besides our physiological, nerve, and endocrinological system, it is mainly culture which constitutes the human psyche. Art is one of the central elements of further expression in every culture. Yet, there is very little scientific disc...
Citations
... It describes the phenomenon of the individual forming indirect statements in which one object, also including the constructs person or process, can be used as a sign for another particular, for example, an abstract concept. This ability can be used by a human being based on its individual collection of experiences, in irreversible time, and can be described as an act of associating a certain framed situation X with a similar experienced or remembered moment Y (Guenther, 2021) -based on the relation between imagination and reality, during the meaning generation - (Zittoun, 2016). In other words, the perception of the human being is the key process allowing the human being to interact in his surroundings. ...
The human being can always be observed in a domain of infinite axes of time and space. In contrast, the scientific fields, initialized by the human ability of perception, tend to be lost in the Gegenwarts ability; thus, they generate meaning in a restricted fragmental form. It is therefore essential to emphasize that the dense dialogue between the physical experienced realm we call “reality” and the meaning-generating process based on imagination is not restricted to the current time frame (now). Rather, we experience our world within the time frame of the present – a comforting construct promising stability, but our interpretations are identical to echoes, being noises from the past, underlining the crucial awareness that phenomenological knowledge is bonded to the active approaching of theoretical generalization and actual observable phenomena.
... The establishment of contrapuntal voices become used as the voice procedure to redefine psychological processes in data (Kiegelmann, 2000). As one of the most current reflections of the Voice Centered Listening we can investigate the work of Linus Günther (2021). A paper on the method that allowed to crystallize I-positions 1 (Hermans, 2001) in form of an I-poem and created the ground for him to elaborate and reveal an individual's ideology. ...
... An ideology directed toward a more holistic perception of art. This process allows us to visualize the functions of a catalyst -art-, by the expression of an individual's self-defined reality -viewer-toward what they see in the artwork (Günther, 2021). 1 The I-position is a term that generalize the dynamic multi-constructed unites of meaning, a connection that represents a role that we as human beings are believing to embody, or we desire to embody currently. It is a unite that is constructed by an accumulation of believes and understanding of the self and the environment -self-environment dialogue-and changes by the confrontation with other I-positions. ...
From a cultural and psychological perspective, everyday life’s meaning generation is a treasure box of highly important and complex mechanisms. The potential use of the cultural thinking stream, inhabiting the individual’s perception of their reality, is increasingly connected and connects to a multitude of psychological and scientific streams. By generating a new model, the concepts of irreversible time will be connected with you- (from self and other constructed concepts) and I-positioning generations, allowing us to dive deeper into the complexity of the Gegenwarts-experienced phenomena. Unfortunately, the direct application of such a theoretical elaboration to the individual phenomena is rare, wherefore the redefined model will be discussed using a wide range of daily occurrences. In this paper, the question of “how multi-dimensional visualizations are used to define the concept of now and how they impact the self in form of self-dialogues between inner voices?” is generated. The potential for therapeutical measures and theoretical implications will be derived from the findings and subsequently presented. Meanwhile, the theoretical baseline will be used to link the concepts of how beings perceive their reality and how art and science can function as interactive tools for a more I-centered expression of inner distress.
... In the following article, I will briefly introduce the method of Allegory Analysis (AA) (Guenther, 2020(Guenther, , 2021 and then outline it in its application to the case study of. The goal of this article is to introduce AA and illustrate it using the particularly illustrative case of Theresa. ...
... Culture & Psychology, 3(1), 1-19. Guenther (2020). Homo Allegoris: How art perception and allegory analysis reveal the life script ideology. ...
In the following article, I will briefly introduce the method of Allegory Analysis (AA) (Guenther, 2020, 2021, in press) and then outline it in its application to the case study of. The goal of this article is to introduce AA and illustrate it using the particularly illustrative case of Theresa. It will be shown how AA can be a new psychotherapeutic method in the therapist’s toolbox, with which the human psyche in its individual uniqueness can be understood in the clinical context through creative means. Allegories of patients are defined here as complex linguistic constructs of multiple metaphors and as expressions of complex affective perception and experience. In order to understand a human psyche through its allegories, AA proceeds in four steps: (1) picking up and describing the allegories, (2) summarizing them into a so-called allegory poem, (3) interpreting the allegories on the part of the therapist, and (4) participatory interpretation of the allegories with the patient. The present case of Theresa illustrates the application of the AA method in an outpatient psychotherapeutic context and shows how through AA. In Theresa’s case, the client was found to be ideologically guided by values such as autonomy, freedom, honesty, sustainability, charity, and connectedness. Her psychosis represented an autopoietic self-healing attempt to recover these values, which had been inaccessible to her in the antecedent process. The AA showed that Theresa believes that crises in the market economy, interpersonal coexistence, and climate change are at a critical point that threatens the existence of the world and thus her psychological stability. Moreover, in Theresa’s allegories, it is evident that she had managed to use her values and beliefs autopoietically to stabilize her crisis through her coping strategy: externalization through poetic-allegorical language.
Dynamic semiosis is inherently bound to time. As time flows from indefinite past to equally indefinite future, its role in the present is to be the basis for meaning construction—signs emerge in that flow of time and function in their role of organizers of experience within that flow. The flow of human experience is felt as non-linear—as it is based on the affective relating to the world. So is all nature—our biological world consists of an infinite number of non-linear forms. But is the flow of irreversible time linear? It flows from infinite past toward equally infinite future, and the only point of determining its ontological status is the infinite present moment. Hence the question cannot be answered—as the infinitely small time point of the present has no structure of itself. Neither can it reflect the future as it is not yet happened, nor the past—as the latter is based on imaginative reconstruction. And in that reconstruction, we are hostages to the tradition of assuming the linearity of time—in analogy with that of space. We look at how the human mind operates at different levels of meaning oppositions—from binary relations to dialectical synthesis.
In the present paper I investigate the phenomenon of mindfulness from a cultural-psychological perspective. During the past years mindfulness has been primarily treated as an independent (intervention) variable trying to evidence its effectiveness in relation to psychotherapy as well as to specific work outcomes such as a decrease in stress symptoms at work. Yet, what has been rather missing within the literature is the microgenetic analysis of mindfulness – thus the factors that lead to the need for mindfulness-based interventions as well as the social consequences that follow over the course of a more mindfulness-centered life. Arguing with E.E. Boesch, I show based on an autoethnography that the need for mindfulness emerges when there are conflicts with one’s fantasms (private needs, goals, wants, wishes) or with a specific myth in one’s community (you should work hard in order to become a good citizen). I conclude with the findings that mindfulness has the power to alter one’s fantasms hierachy as well as the stance towards a specific myth in one’s community. This is further evidenced by analyzing the glass bead game of H. Hesse and which role mindfulness plays in there – a transformative role for individuals and groups.
The present manuscript proposes an extension of the psychoanalytical method catathymic imagery (also guided affective imagery) based upon Boeschian Cultural Psychology for the organizational domain. Employees need to appropriate their job-related environment in a meaningful way. However, this endeavor is often more complex than it seems. Regularly, employees introject foreign goals and needs within their Self and appropriate their job-related action field in a foreign manner. This leads to repressed personal needs and goals which is called the amorphian inner in Boeschian Cultural Psychology. Yet, this amorphian inner is often a vague feeling or a shadowy intuition, and employees have a hard time to structure it, accordingly. It is in this regard that I propose the FOCI method—the fully objectified catathymic imagery. Here, practitioner and psychologist negotiate the meaning of a painting for instance while being able to rely on visual and acoustic stimuli for that negotiation—in contrast to catathymic imagery where the acoustic focus is pre-dominant. I instance the FOCI method by an autoethnography and show how the method could help people to make a shadowy intuition structured and differentiated which encourages them afterwards to re-appropriate their job-related environment in a personally meaningful way. Questions remain whether FOCI outperforms simple catathymic imagery.
We live in a zeitgeist in which the transfer of information is increasingly related to images (through smartphones, social media, etc.). We live in a zeitgeist in which people are experiencing a rapid change in values and mores, in which culture has less and less to do with locality but is seen as an apperceptive tool that is negotiated reciprocally: intra- and inter-individually. We live in a zeitgeist of truth-appearances or probabilities based on statistical models, in which ambiguities are increasing in our lives. Just remember the perception of the Covid pandemic in 2020 and 2021. We live in a zeitgeist where the need for metaphors and allegories is greater than ever. But why? Through my research (Guenther, 2020, 2021), it could be outlined that in the moment of crisis, people are drawn to creativity and poetry because they offer a way to deal with uncertainties in a highly affective situation that cannot be captured by literal words (Mota, 2021). To describe complex and ambiguous concepts or feelings, people have always consulted allegories. Whether that was Justitia for jurisprudence as something rational (Fig. 1), the Venus for love as something emotional (Fig. 2) or the sculpture of the elephant on the shoulders of a man for bearing heavy weight of natural extinction on mankind’s shoulders in the twenty-first century (Fig. 3).
In this chapter, AA, which was introduced as a therapeutic tool in chapter above (Guenther, in press), is exemplified by the case of Isepal. Isepal’s allegories powerfully exemplify the possibility of understanding human psyche through organic metaphors and allegories. As will be shown, through the application of AA to Isepal’s case, central themes for therapy could be uncovered: life-script-ideologies, inner parts, ambivalences, psychodynamics, and hypergeneralizations. New insights into the cultural psyche of Isepal could be developed and further steps for treatment could be derived. Similar to Isepal, AA can be applied to other clients in therapeutic practice who articulate their crisis in a metaphorical-allegorical way. As psychotherapeutic research often requires (and the method of AA requests in general), the study is participatory by nature. This means that Isepal was included in the analysis process. Their influence will be highlighted in the process of this chapter (1. Life-script-ideologies are defined “[…] as a cultural psychological tool, originating from the individual values, meaning making system, and sign mediation of the past experiences, organizing the psychological perception […]” (Guenther, 2021). 2. “Like any sign, they orient the mind in irreversible time from the experiences of the past to the hypergeneralized assumptions of the future. The psychological process of hypergeneralization is when a “[...] person has overgeneralized the sign used in the mediational hierarchy to the level where speech turns into speechlessness” (Valsiner, 2001, p. 94). In other words: “If something has become very deeply embedded into our meaning-making or value-system, we often cannot put it into words anymore; it is a very powerful life-script-ideology, guiding our everyday functioning in the world, it is intangible and implicit. Allegories as affective generalizations include hypergeneralisations” (Guenther LPF. Allegory analysis. A methodological framework for a tool for psychology. In: Campil MA (ed) Organic metaphors in theoretical models of social sciences (14). Springer, in press, chapter above)).
A large and important part of the MSc studies at all Austrian and many European Universities is the mandatory internship, which takes up to one semester in duration. During this significant time, students should look for a place that offers internships to prospective psychologists and hopefully also corresponds with the thematic area of their interest. This step has already proven to be incredibly difficult for many, since internships tend to be booked years in advance and, out of what is left, the selection is very tough. Thereby, the individual experiences of this study phase vary significantly: from an incredibly productive and interesting time to boredom and torture. Although first participation in active psychological work is formally seen as an important step for knowledge and skill expansion, for many young individuals this time determines what they want and do not want to do in their future. This paper shall become a guide through the MSc internship and experiences of psychology students during this time. All the steps — from the decision in which field the internship will be done, to the final essay that is a mandatory formality accompanying the internship — will be described and analysed in terms of personal experience, individual development and future-oriented decision making.
Some relations between poetry and Cultural Psychology have been investigated in the past. Yet, the very nature of poetry and its fundamental links to Cultural Psychology remain uninvestigated. By outlining the essence of poetry – its rhythmic-melodic, linguistically pictorial character – I show how poetry is in deep accordance with Cultural Psychology of Semiotic Dynamics. Poetry is all about experiences and emotions; these emotive experiences explain the basic relatedness of a person towards an object and shed light onto the complex processes of sign construction. It is only while taking into account the genetic Gestalt, previous and subsequent elements within a specific rhythmic and pictorial form that we are able to unravel this specific relatedness. Different poetic texts might then treat the same object but the relatedness towards it might diverge drastically. Based on these poetic elements, I define culture as a poetic field. Referring to a fictitious example, I explain that researchers and practitioners need to take into account a person’s complex rhythmic actions, that are divided genetically into different forms to understand his/her complex experiences of the environment. Then this illuminative power of relatedness sheds light onto the dynamically complex structuring and re-structuring of culture.
