Statement of intent and possible projects

 With my independently designed interdisciplinary studies degree I have sought to study how we mean, and the ways in which how we mean affect or possibly even effect what we are able to mean. I started college wanting to study spirituality from a psychological perspective however I soon realized this was not a discourse that was allowed to be considered at this time in this university. The prickly striving for scientific recognition within the cognitive behavioral approach is important and restricts research into the gooey nature of such things as spirituality. This restriction, and the reading of some Foucault, got me to thinking how interesting it is that what we are able to mean is always necessarily restricted. I am also interested in the application of this recognition of situated meaning within therapeutic philosophies and technologies.

I am particularly interested in the powerful and political nature of discourse. I find much interest in the postmodern idea of social construction however I think that it leaves out something very important from the existential movement in philosophy, which is, the push for responsibility. For me social constructivism and deconstruction are important insofar as they can help us to create and re-cognize our methods and mediums for meaning. My major can be summed up in this quote from Donna Haraway in her article Situated Knowledges, “We need the power of modem critical theories of how meanings and bodies get made, not in order to deny meaning and bodies, but in order to live in meanings and bodies that have a chance for a future” (Haraway, 1991, 187).

My own gambit is my cognitive resonance to the idea the social (re)construction of reality, and the existential push for participation and responsibility. This is important for therapeutic technologies such as Gestalt, as Erving and Miriam Polster say in Gestalt Therapy Integrated “The therapeutic technology rests on the basic belief that we do create our own lives and that in re-owning out own creations, we become emboldened to change our world” (Polster & Polsteer, 1973, 79). This is based on the idea that “The self is not a structure, it is a process” (Poster, 1973, 122).

The project I believe I am most interested in conducting would be an exploration of metaphor in psychology comparing older psychologies such as that of Freud historically situated in Newtonian Mechanics and newer postmodern therapeutic techniques such as Gestalt where I would expect to find more ecological or quantum mechanical metaphors.  I am interested in the way metaphor both affects and possibly effects the perception of the self from both inside and out.  

Another project would be along similar lines but would be more of an exploration of myth and metaphor where I would look at metaphor as the vehicle of current partialy shared mythology.  This could involve an exploration of sub cultural metaphors such as those found in hobbies like climbing, fire performance, acrobatics, ect.  As well as the and the historically situated origins of metaphors such as 'I see what you mean' tracing back to vision becoming the primary means of knowing the world in the 18th century enlightenment.  This would also highlight how metaphor both affects and even to some degree effects the sense of self and one's lived experience of the world. 

I have taken two graduate classes in the expressive arts counseling department so I would also be interested in researching metaphor as a therapeutic technology. 

And it seems that the similar strain in all of my proposed projects has something to do with they ways in which metaphor affects or even effects the sense of self and lived experience of reality.  However Metaphor and Reality seems like too big of a book to write in this context.