Category: Contributed by Seth Allcorn

Writing Collaborative Poetry

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In this post Howard Stein explains the creative process through which he and Seth Allcorn developed the collaborative poetry in their forthcoming book – Whiteboardings: Creating Collaborative Poetry in a Third Space.

He begins by describing “proto-poems”, which are largely unconsciously-driven, mental associations evoked by memories of events that have emotional significance. They consist of narrative sentences, phrases, fragments of ideas, line breaks, stanza breaks, that at first sight appear to take the form of a poem. Proto-poems are not first drafts. They exist somewhere in the aesthetic space between fantasy, imagination, free association, narrative, and poem.

The collaborative poems in Whiteboardings: Creating Collaborative Poetry in a Third Space, began with proto-poems generated by Seth Allcorn – emerging from his “lived experience” - and transformed into poems by Howard Stein.

According to Stein, "Some of Seth’s proto-poems immediately resonated with me, my life experiences, my emotions, even my bodily sensations. I could practically walk into the scene the proto-poem conjured."

This post will introduce you to the process of collaborative poetry with three examples from the forthcoming book. You will be able to hear Howard Stein read these poems as you read along with the included text.

Allcorn describes these poems as coming from his "lived experience, “sticky” memories that he has "revisited throughout his life". According to Allcorn, "The poems hold meaning for me, some I am aware of and undoubtedly some that I am not although the poems suggest that there is yet another path, a third way to awareness."

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Psychoanalysis, teaching, and learning

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CPOS is proud to present their third biennial workshop, "New Engagement with the Future: Psychoanalytic Perspectives on Anxieties and Defenses in Teaching and Learning (about Management and Organizations)". The workshop will be presented online as part of the annual symposium of the International Society for the Psychoanalytic Study of Organizations on June 29, 2022 at 6:30am CST.

For more information and to sign up visit: https://am2022.ispso.org/AM22-Workshops

CPOS associates will share their experiences at the intersection between psychoanalysis, educational institutions, and classroom teaching practices – focusing on how we see psychoanalysis as potentially disruptive to dominant theories, practices, and discourses of teaching and learning. Psychoanalysis usefully provides important concepts that can help us unpack unconscious meanings and motivations – transference and countertransference, splitting and projection, denial and defense, illusion and disillusionment. And, it offers something more – a way of being and working in the space of education that has the potential to encourage reflection in action and support our efforts to work together to move past the trauma of the pandemic and build a better world.

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The psychodynamics of bearing witness

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We all see “bad stuff” that is toxic and traumatic in nature and harmful to others, animals, economies, and the environment. Those that bear witness are fundamentally injured in ways that are individualized and deeply personal. The fantastic nature of the witnessed event(s), such as the recent footage from Ukraine, is accentuated by unconscious dynamics such as fantasies, selective retention and recall, and mediated by rationalization and denial, transforming the moral injury to make it tolerable. What happened is manipulated in mind to minimize the stress of the witnessing and the anxiety about having “helplessly” observed. Bearing witness suggests that writing and speaking about the “knee on the neck” also helps to “process” what was witnessed.

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Unpacking Squid Games

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On the surface, the Squid Game is a sustained critique of class and ultimately the egregious excesses of contemporary capitalism. Akin to the highly successful Hunger Games franchise, poor contestants are pitted against each other by the wealthy, and the audience invariably identifies with the few proletarian protagonists who display some moral compass amid a primitive “dog-eat-dog world” at once contrived and sensational and yet a direct mirror of contemporary society. Below the surface, however, and in addition to what some critics may see as mere “pretense at social commentary,” the Squid Game succeeds at offering incisive organizational commentary, and particularly at illuminating the terrifying efficiencies of state-sponsored and organizational violence. Indeed, for the psychosocially-informed viewer, the series has many easily observed organizational linkages, most notably elements of the Nazi era, but also much of the history of mercantilism, colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and ill-conceived but common organizational change dynamics such as downsizing resident in the plot.

The cocoon transference: An intrapsychic trap of ambivalence

We describe the "cocoon transference" as resistance to change and suggest ways of intervening in defensive cocoon transferences as part of implementing organizational change. The cocoon transference recreates, or transfers, patterns of non-attachment set in motion early in life. The cocoon transference may be enacted as a defensive process when interpersonal relationships or social settings are perceived as a threat to the self. The workplace presents many interpersonal "dangers" that can trigger a defensive cocoon transference. As a result, people withdraw from important aspects of organizational change (e.g. brainstorming, scenario planning, and strategy formation). In times of stress and change this kind of intrapersonal, ultimately interpersonal, dynamic should be anticipated as a potential barrier to change.