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  Self, self, and interpersonal life:
imagination being mirrored?

gary e. davis
March 10 , 2019
 
 

Ironically, the most active imagination isn’t forming a phenomenon, rather letting phenomenality form itself, which of course is a personification of a phenomenon. The experience is as if the phenomenon enacts itself, if one lets it.

Such letting phenomena have self-efficacy is phenomenogenic and, as belonging to the phenomenon, may tend to mirror one’s Selfality, born from the full temp-orality that nonconsciously backgrounds one’s accessible selfidentity (or overt sense of self), which is not basically unconscious (disowned displacement), rather self-disclosive to onself by the other from one’s background Selfality being mir-rored in phenomenogeny as if “self-evincive” phenomenality has intentionality.

For example, experiencing numinousness as belonging to the phenomenon is Self-mirroring. Inspiring appeal of the phenomenon is Self-mirroring. The better that one is letting it be, the more Self mirroring may belong to phenomenogeny.

In interaction (which overtly orients itself relative to s/p differentiality—i.e.,
self irt interpersonal relations), a Self/self difference may show itself through
the interaction contrary to each person’s overt intent.

Creatively, this is commonly associated with enhancive projection and improv-isational emergence or discovery of new possibilities of interaction.

Symptomatically, it’s associated with projective identification (i.e., disowning something as belonging to—identififed with or as—the alienating other, i.e., the other made alienating by “their” instancing [what one unconsciously disowns]). Conversely, one may be unwittingly mirroring to the other.

The more that free play is ongoing (e.g., in energetically improvised “play off” each other), the more likely that S/s differentiality comes into the interpersonal relations, and may be happily surprising.

That’s why psychotherapists welcome “free association,” of course, which invites free play of mind.

In any case, mixing of imagined phenomena with real phenomena gives dram-actional complexity to both, which may be creative (on the way to something artistic) or enlightening (on the way of self discovery).

I’d enjoy pursuing this further through relational psychoanalysis, which can also lead to fun senses of textual rewriting in reading (symptomatically as systematic misreading), which Derrida liked to pursue.

Relative to potentials of phenomenogeny through letting there be phenomena’s “own” expressiveness, deliberate creativity may conceal potentials of free mirror-play, like clear definition conceals potential ambiguity (potentially creative or potentially enlightening). Creative re-personification of real others is a common ploy in creating fiction. Fantasy bonds may be a primary resource for fictional character development (and storiation of implications arising from highly char-acterized displacement of fantasy). Controlled projective identification (e.g., expanding a sense of someone into an alienating other, for the sake of following a trail of consequences) is another ploy in fiction.

Extremes of phenomenogeny echo archetypes—or archetropes, I prefer. Arche-type/tropes are more than stereotypes. Stereotypes are proximally cultural, about over used figurativity. Archetypes/tropes are transcultural symbology or human-istic conceptuality.

The Shakespearean round is transcultural: spring/romance, summer/comedy, autumn/tragedy, winter/irony. A categorial archetropy is exemplified by Heide-ggerian fourfold. Analytical psychology (Jungian tradition) finds lots of archetropy (as archetyping), especially genderal archetroping (e.g., anima implicit to mascu-linity—the woman within; animus implicit to femininity), which has come “out of the closet” in LGBTQ culture, as one finds one’s potential in the other (homophilia in hetersexuality, heterophilia in homosexuality). Yet, gendering can also be independent of personal denotations: phenomenographical.

So, I hope that The Life of Imagination doesn’t conceive free play as merely “cognitive play,” because that would cause self-concealing of relationality that is integral to creative potential. As The Life proffers “a new conception of imagin-ation that places it at the heart of our engagement with the world― thinking, acting, feeling, making, and being”―wonderful!―I hope that the relationality of that—being in of there being—is integral to appreciating creative phenomeno-geny. I hope that the “cognitive ecology of our embodied life” derives from “engagement with the world,” not basically cognitive “and” engagement.

 


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  Be fair. © 2019, gary e. davis