4 Steps Of Psychoanalytic Application Through Autoethnography
This article will adopt a psychological frame to examine and employ autoethnography as a means to realise self-image through a poem written by the researcher. The analysis will use four extracts from different poetic pieces to reflect the process of realisation that guided the researcher to write a poem to document the experience.
The four extracts that will be used in the analysis are taken from: A Forest Flute by Madison Julius Cawein, The Reed Flute and I by Abeer Ameer, The Flute Player by Ali Al-Babyli, and I Am The Flute by Nawras Abu Saleh.
There will be an extension in the analysis of Abeer Ameer’s poem to include an interview that was conducted between her and the researcher, relating to Jalaluddin Rumi who was a 13th-century Persian poet, an Islamic Dervish, and a Sufi Mystic. Rumi is regarded as one of the greatest spiritual masters and poetical intellectuals.
Active Imagination: A Forest Flute
The process started with an encounter and there was an instant click, in other words, that made sense right away. Some things, people, or experiences take time to make sense and others just instantly do. When things make sense, an attachment or connection is formed between the two ends where they meet.
Thus, when an encounter that makes sense takes place between people, music, art, poetry, or instruments, the magic happens. That is when the active imagination is perking as was Cawein’s with poetry.
Madison Julius Cawein (1865–1914) was a poet from Louisville, Kentucky. According to Deadtree Publishing, he was an American poet, novelist and playwright whose poetic style led to his being referred to as the “Keats of Kentucky.” According to My Poetic Side, Cawein’s infatuation with nature was always there. He believed in and was captivated by the supernatural in nature.
The supernatural in nature gave way to fantasy and dreams to manifest in Cawein’s poetry and his active imagination was heightened in his fantastical encounter with the mesmerising flute in the forest:
A Forest Flute
“I Heard a reed among the hills,
I heard the flute, a bird-like note,
That made the place a magic well,
On which enchantment seemed to float,
A spirit in a rainbow shell.
I knew what danced there with its flute,
Unseen, a part of soul and mind:
I saw the imprint of its foot,
In many a flower of orchis-kind.
I knew it of an ancient race,
Some myth the Greeks had known of old.
Could I have spoken it face to face
Of what lost dreams I might have told!”
According to Jungian Psychotherapy, using imagination, fantasy, dreams, and meditation, a client is able to bring their unconscious into the present through narrative or action. Active imagination relies on a client’s undirected observation of their imagination or dreams, not an intended image of their desires.
The active imagination allowed the visualisation of a part of the soul and mind. The flute is what drew the listener in and what they saw dancing there was a part of a soul and mind. Even though they saw the imprint of its foot, they still wished to have spoken to it face to face. The reality of what the speaker may have seen remains a question of whether it was a dream or a spirit of the supernatural. In both cases, the active imagination was manifested in the encounter due to the enchantment of the flute’s laments.
Collective Unconsciousness: The Reed Flute and I
The process turned into a form of evaluation. The evaluation included some unconscious comparison of the self to ability and whether the beholder could connect and play the flute. It was through this doubt that distance grew and the sound made was a screech that frightened the birds on the trees. However, the surroundings faded away when the cries became echoes of laments that reflected the instrument. Ameer was inspired by the laments of the flute.
Abeer Ameer is an Iraqi poet who grew up in the UK. She started writing in 2012, and even earlier back in 2008. Ameer wrote of her forebears in her first collection, Inhale/Exile which was published in 2020. It was dedicated to the “holders of these stories” since Ameer believed that a poem develops an existence of its own when it is finished as she noted during the interview that was documented.
The cover of the book is illustrated to reflect the day the reed was cut. Inhale/Exile begins with a poem about a storyteller on a rooftop in Najaf, Iraq, follows tales of courage and survival and ends with a woman cooking food for neighbours on the anniversary of her son’s death.
The extract that was taken from Ameer’s book was the poem, The Reed Flute and I:
The Reed Flute and I
after Mawlana Jalauddin Rumi
“As the reed flute sings you weep your sorrow;
your heart still beats in the place you left. the weight
of your yesterdays that were once tomorrows
halves you, just like the day the reed was cut
pulled from its bed, carved to carry the breath
of the carver to ears held far. Its inhale
is your exhale; as if straight from your own chest.
Its wails redden your eyes. Its larynx speaks your exile.
The same parting that split the reed from its bed
brings you together and you can’t know until
you’ve always known; when they said farewell, you bled
so long, knowing you would not fare well, and still
only long for the place your heart comes from.
Reading in tongue; all music yearns for home.”
The poem reflects a longing sorrow for a missed place. After the interview, it was clear that the place where the heart is still beating is a spiritual place not a physical one or at least that was the author’s intention. Ameer believes that her intention when writing only became an interpretation among others as the poem developed its own being. Ameer defines poetry as a language that is only limited by words while music is a language limited by sounds. She emphasised how a few words in poetry can carry through a whole story.
There is an attached survey that is investigating the link between poetry and music to relate to this poem in particular answered by Ameer. Ameer was inspired by The Song of The Reed Flute by Rumi who was speaking of the reed flute’s lament because of the separation. The connection paved the way to the ongoing cycle of poetry and each person gets inspired by another to form a collective experience reflected in the aesthetic values of poetry and music. This collective experience is held in the collective unconscious. Thus, people from different cultures can connect with one another to keep the cycle going.
According to Jungian Psychotherapy, rather than only possessing experiences from our personal history or our psyche, the collective unconscious organizes all of the experiences within a species. Jung believed the collective unconscious was inherited and inherent to each being, rather than a result of specific events. The collective unconscious holds mental images that cannot be explained historically or through experience, but exist only as an evolutionary by-product.
Being For Others: The Flute Player
The process led the beholder to see themselves in others as Sartre explained in being for others. They were no longer a beholder from afar, they were playing the flute. Thus, they became the flute player as others saw them be.
The flute player was called upon in the poem of The Flute Player by Ali Al-Babyli. The poem was originally written in Arabic so an English translation by the researcher of the chosen extracts is provided along with the original extracts:
“ قصيدة ياعازف الناي
يا عازف الناي صوت الناي أشجاني
قل أنت بيتاً وخذ من آهتي الثاني
ودعتهم ومرار البعد ملء فمي
والشوق أوقد في الأحشاء نيرانا
يا عازف الناي, قل للناي عن ألمي
وصف سيولاً جرت من أدمعي ودمي
لعل لحنك يحكي ما أحس به
فاللحن أبلغ تعبيرا من الكلم
يا عازف الناي جف الدمع من عيني
ظمأت فابحث بهذا القفر عن عينِ
لما تخافت صوتي في مسامعهم
أرسلت أسأل عن أخبارهم عيني
داري جراحك لا يدري بها بشر
وقل لنفسك ذا ما شاءه القدر
واصبر فإن هموم النفس تفتنها
فخيرة الخلق نالوا الخير اذ صبروا
يا غربة الآه في صدري كم انتفضت
وهم بقربي فما حسوا وماشعروا”
The English translation:
Oh, flute player! The flute’s voice delighted me
You play a stanza and take another from my sorrows
I bid them farewell and the separation’s pains filled my mouth
and the longing set fires within
Oh, flute player tell the flute of my pains
and describe the floods running from my tears and blood
Maybe your music would tell of how I feel
Since music expresses more than words ever could
Oh flute player, the tears have dried up from my eyes
I am thirsty so I look with this drought for a well
When my voice grew still in their ears,
I sent asking my eyes how they were
Hide your wounds, no human would know
and tell yourself this is what fate wanted
and have patience because the sorrow of the spirit makes it resilient
The best of creations are graced when patient
Oh! the foreign cry in my chest, shaking!
and they are near me, but could not feel or sense.
In Frank Devita’s words, the being-for-others is how I see myself when I feel the gaze of another. The idea of the Self, according to Sartre, emerges as a result of this gaze. The being-for-others is my concept in my consciousness of myself, as I come to know it by being observed.
Sartre stated that through my conduct, I am responsible for the way I appear in the consciousness of the Other, but that the Other still constitutes my being by their own freedom and subjectivity, thus serving as the ground of my being-for-others. Thus, I cannot access or control the subjectivity of another and am not the foundation of my being-for-others.
Whereas, I live life from the inside looking out and away from myself, pre-reflective, in contrast, when the Other looks at me I become an object of evaluation for them in their world just like any other object they encounter; as a consequence, I now become aware of myself as an object, self-reflective.
In effect, the consciousness which had been acting in a pre-reflective manner now via ‘the look’ of the Other, views itself as an object fixed in space and time with definable qualities and characteristics. For Sartre, this is a fundamental point in that the Other becomes a mediator between me and myself; without the Other, I cannot escape my own subjective experience and perspective. Hence, for Sartre, the Other’s look allows me to achieve a sense of objectivity regarding myself.
Individuation: I Am The Flute
The process comes to the merge as the self-realisation of the instrument is completed. It was no longer a beholder, a comparable object, or a player of the instrument. The identification realised a personal aspect of individuality and the flute player became the flute.
The original text was written by Nawras Abu Saleh who is a Palestinian director. It was published on Azureedge in 2017. The original text is an Arabic prose article and the following extract is taken from it and translated into English by the researcher to be included in the research:
“أنا الناي يشبهني وحيدا، مقطوعًا إلا من الحنين، خاويًا إلا من الأسرار، مجذوعًا إلا من الغصن، فإن لم تُقطع لن تبلغ، وإن لم تُجرح لن تشدو، وإن لم ترحل في حقائب العازفين لن ترتقي المسامع، وإن لم تكابد الترحال لن تصل، دع عنك ظل الأم الشجرة، واترك لذاتك النأي الخلاّق، أنا الناي، أنا أنت.”
The translation into English:
I am the flute, similarly alone; Cut off except from the longing; empty except from the secrets; pulled except from the branch. Because if you are not cut, you will not reach; and if you are not hurt, you will not cry; and if you do not leave among the instrument players’ baggage, one’s ears will not rise; and if you do not withstand the departure, you will not arrive. Let go of the mother tree’s shadow and unchain your true self. I am the flute. I am you.
The journey to growth was never linear. The awareness of the search that leads to the consciousness of the self is in itself reflected in Satre’s being for itself. “Being for itself (pour-soi) is the mode of existence of consciousness, consisting in its own activity and purposive nature.”
Thus, it is when the individual becomes aware of their being and journey that they can look back with a smile and move forward into the process of individuation. According to Jungian Psychotherapy, individuals with emotional difficulties often feel like they live fragmented, disjointed lives filled with varying degrees of emotional experiences. Forward progress is often impaired as a result of inner conflict and self-sabotage stemming from the segregation of the different selves within a person.
Individuation involves integrating all of a person’s past positive and negative experiences in such a way that the person can live a healthy, productive, and emotionally stable life. Individuation allows a person to become unique and essentially individual from other human beings and the collective unconscious.
The process of individuation occurs through various methods, including dream interpretation and active imagination, and gives birth to a mature, holistically healthy, and harmonious individual.
In the end, the search led the researcher, Manar Yehia, to find their voice in identifying with the instrument, realising being for itself. Thus, life is an ongoing search and it can be different for each person based on the instrument they identify with. However, the researcher in this article identified with the reed flute as illustrated in the following poem:
The Search For The Flute
“A soul longs for a place a core belongs to,
Where it still beats, refusing to part.
The same parting that split the reed from its bed,
When they said farewell, you bled.
An exhale that brought life to be,
An instrument, moving by the heavenly breath.
A breath flowing through the reed flute,
Laments the cries of the instrument.
All music yearns for a home to
Dwell on the stories it has to tell, searching, always.
The reed flute weeping those stories,
Of your life and separation still.
A being with the power to exist,
Separate from home, holds on with longing echoes.
An echo firing from deep within the reed,
To guide you to the one you miss.”
The article employed autoethnography to psychologically analyse the process of realisation by using A Forest Flute by Madison Julius Cawein, The Reed Flute and I by Abeer Ameer, The Flute Player by Ali Al-Babyli, and I Am The Flute by Nawras Abu Saleh. This employment resembled the experience that was reflected in the concluded poem of The Search For The Flute.
It started with encountering the instrument from afar. It seemed like an ancient being that glimmered in the forest. It was a Forest Flute that could express suffering and tell stories that were never told. Then, the comparison started between The Reed Flute and I. It was a matter of time till I eventually became The Flute Player. Finally, the realisation of the being for itself hit because I Am The Flute.
