Day 51 - Philosophy

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Photo by Arun Clarke on Unsplash
Day 51 - I have a love/hate relationship with philosophy.  I love to ask the big questions – “Who am I – what does it mean to be human?” “What does it mean to love someone?” “Why are we here?” “What is the meaning of life?” “Is there a God?”

 

I’ve never taken a formal philosophy class and as I’ve said before, I sort of crumble at the overwhelming complexity of the world, and yet…

 

I really liked the show “The good place”!!  It tried to break philosophy down a bit for us, and I really appreciated that!!

 

I bring all this up, because I think I also have a love/hate relationship to Stephen Levine’s writings.  I will write more about Levine’s concept of Poiesis over the next few posts (see a short list of his writings on this topic below).  But I want to give a bit of a background.   

 

Many years ago (1988?), I took a short course on Objects Relations theory taught by Bob Fox at Lesley.  I then took Bob’s introductory class on Existential-Psychoanalytic Therapy. At that time, I had been out of school for about 5 years and it was really exciting to be reading philosophy and new psychoanalytic thought.  (I went on to get a PhD in Clinical Psychology, enrolling in that program another 6 years later.  My work with Bob gave me some confidence to pursue further academic work.  I am so grateful). 


It was all very new.  I remember writing a paper in my doctoral program on post-modernism, because I really didn’t understand it!!  Bob's reading list was great - and provided an opportunity to begin to delve into philosophy and psychology in really interesting ways.

 

All this is by way of saying, I really enjoyed being challenged to think.  But there was also no critique of this way of thinking as being primarily posited by White European/American men.  I was longing for – and curious about the feminist and multicultural critiques of these ideas – or at least the recognition that other worldviews might see the framing of ideas in this way from another angle.

 

This question has preoccupied me for more than 30 years now!!

 

More to come…

 

Levine, S. (1997). Poiesis: The language of psychology and the speech of the soul (2nd Ed.). Jessica Kingsley Publishers.

 

Levine, S. K. (2005). The philosophy of expressive arts therapy: Poiesis as a response to the world. In P. J. Knill, E. G. Levine, & Levine, S. K., Principles and practice of expressive arts therapy: Toward a therapeutic aesthetics (pp. 15-74). Jessica Kingsley Press.

 

Levine, S. K. (2015). The Tao of Poiesis: Expressive arts therapy and Taoist philosophy. Creative Arts in Education and Therapy, 1(1),15–25. doi:https://10.15534/CAET/2015/1/4

 

Levine, S. K. (2022). Introduction: Encountering the other. Poiesis: A Journal of the Arts & Communication, 19, 8-13.

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