Psychology Commons^™

Eco-Interoception: What Plants, Fungi And Protista Have Taught My Body, Sara Riley Dotterer

Art Theses and Dissertations

To me, ecology is the relational, full-body awareness that I am made up of and deeply connected to everything around me; and for better or worse, this is reciprocal. I form ecotones, an ecological transitional zone between two ecosystems, with the world around me. I use this ecotonal lens to blur binaries and dissolve boundaries between me and the world “outside my body.” During my Masters of Fine Arts at Southern Methodist University, I have continuously explored and represented the lives of various more-than-human species outside of my body, including plants, fungi and protista through an ecotonal lens. Although these …

Eliciting Awe In The Spectator: The Case Of A Dhrupad-Based Dance Performance, Santarpia Alfonso, Andrée Martin, Armando Menicacci, Pierre De Olivieira, Daniel Lemieux, Laurence Éthier, Caroline Charbonneau, Bruno Pucella, Christophe Flambard, Les Frères Gundecha, Louis-Charles Lusignan, Alice Bourgasser, Élizabeth-Anne Dorléans, Ariane Dubé-Lavigne, Angélique Poulin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies Advance Publication Archive

This paper describes “Kalos, eîdos, skopeîn,” an immersive Dhrupad-based dance installation designed to elicit feelings of awe in the spectators, in a real-life artistic context. This study used a mixed-methods approach in order to explore spectators’ awe experience (N=45), using specific scales and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results suggested that “Kalos, eîdos, skopeîn,” with its combination of nature motifs and the slow dance-walk associated with the Dhrupad music in the choreography, was able to produce awe-related moments in some spectators and inspire a degree of positive emotions. Our qualitative results viewed awe explicitly as a positive emotion and showed that generally …

Eliciting Awe In The Spectator: The Case Of A Dhrupad-Based Dance Performance, Alfonso Santarpia, Andrée Martin, Armando Menicacci, Pierre De Oliveira, Daniel Lemieux, Laurence Éthier, Caroline Charbonneau, Bruno Pucella, Christophe Flambard, Les Frères Gundecha, Louis-Charles Lusignan, Alice Bourgasser, Élisabeth-Anne Dorléans, Ariane Dubé-Lavigne, Angélique Poulin

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

This paper describes “Kalos, eîdos, skopeîn,” an immersive Dhrupad-based dance installation designed to elicit feelings of awe in the spectators, in a real-life artistic context. This study used a mixed-methods approach in order to explore spectators’ awe experience (N=45), using specific scales and interpretative phenomenological analysis. Results suggested that “Kalos, eîdos, skopeîn,” with its combination of nature motifs and the slow dance-walk associated with the Dhrupad music in the choreography, was able to produce awe-related moments in some spectators and inspire a degree of positive emotions. Our qualitative results viewed awe explicitly as a positive emotion and showed that generally …

Searching: Waves, Spencer Molnar

Theses and Dissertations

This supportive statement examines a philosophical conception of the self and how it can be identified through experience, consciousness, and perception by focusing on a human inclination to rationalize, or concretize, that which is everchanging. The methods of exploring this concept were achieved by examining the formal structure of composition and materials through the process of visual art. By pushing against historical traditions of creating spatial illusions in visual art, we can conclude that the legibility of an artwork is equally dependent on the experiential world as it is the social construction of image making. The question that is left …

Self-Actualization And The Need To Create As A Limit On Copyright, Christopher S. Yoo

All Faculty Scholarship

Personhood theory is almost invariably cited as one of the primary theoretical bases for copyright. The conventional wisdom views creative works as the embodiment of their creator’s personality. This unique connection between authors and their works justifies giving authors property interests in the results of their creative efforts.

This Chapter argues that the conventional wisdom is too limited. It offers too narrow a vision of the ways that creativity can develop personality by focusing exclusively on the results of the creative process and ignoring the self-actualizing benefits of the creative process itself. German aesthetic theory broadens the understanding of the …

The Psychology Of Dystopian And Post-Apocalyptic Stories: The Proverbial Question Of Whether Life Will Imitate Art, Donna Roberts

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

Dystopian and Post-Apocalyptic genres challenge our notions of Aristotelian mimesis vs Anti-mimesis – i.e., In the study of the human condition, does life imitate art or art imitate life? Popular culture, then and now, provides us with examples to depict the circularity of these notions and the psychological importance of exploring this aspect of human nature, particularly the contemplation of our own collective demise. While we recoil in horror at the images these genres portray, we are also morbidly fascinated by them, and we can’t help but ask ourselves . . . Could that really happen? Will that happen?

Comment …

Painting Intimacy: Art-Based Research Of Intimacy, Michal Lev

Expressive Therapies Dissertations

This art-based research explores whether — and, if so, how — the process of painting, together with witnessing and reflection on the process and imagery, further an understanding of intimacy. The research also examines the conditions that favor intimacy, the obstacles to intimacy, and the particular features of artistic media, processes and reflection, through the editing of video footage, that can further the intimate experience. The participants in the study were five adults (including the researcher) between the ages of thirty and eighty who were familiar with the creation of visual art. Among them were three women and two men …

Aesthetics And Imagining The Octopus’S Mind, André Krebber, Maike Riedinger, Yvette Watt

Animal Sentience

Several commentators on Mather’s target article discuss the challenges of finding adequate cognitive methods and concepts for accessing the mind and experience of octopuses. Building on Godfrey-Smith’s commentary, we propose aesthetics as a way. The arts provide means to perform what Godfrey-Smith calls an “imaginative leap” to access the experience of octopuses, especially mimesis. We are trying to do this in our current project Okto-Lab. Laboratory for Octopus Aesthetics.

Sourcing Enchantment: From Elemental Appropriation To Imaginal Symbolics, Schwartz, Michael

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

Critical theorists and social commentators agree that modernity and postmodernity suffer from historical pathologies of world disenchantment. What might be done? Drawing on John Sallis’ phenomenology of the elemental and Tibetan Buddhist teachings on elemental practices, this paper investigates the imagination in its doubling as imaginal in generating a symbolics of the self, world, and other that is always already enchanted; an aesthetics of existence where the world itself shows forth like a work of art replete with exorbitant logics.

Reembodying, Human Consciousness In The Earth, John Briggs

CONSCIOUSNESS: Ideas and Research for the Twenty-First Century

For the last 20,000 years or so the dominant mode of human consciousness has been one that divides reality into subjects and objects, and focuses on human desires and needs. This anthropocentric mode of consciousness has invented religions, built civilizations, amassed knowledge, and developed technology and science. It has also disembodied us from the Earth and led to the Anthropocene Era. Still with us is another mode of human consciousness that arguably once existed in a balance with the anthropocentric mode during our long hunter-gatherer, Paleolithic sojourn. This holistic, integrative mode of consciousness experiences the Earth as a mother, and …

Clay As A Spiritual Practice, Kat Mciver

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

art, expressive arts, spiritual practice, clay, clay as a spiritual practice, art therapy, Mary Magdalene, interior light, surrender, Divine Presence

The Art Of Observation And Experience, Andrée Salom

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Mindfulness practices aim to develop intentional awareness of the present moment. This paper touches on two of the difficulties that may arise in the course of such practice. On the one hand, the present moment may be overwhelming if there is an over-identification with the content that the practices uncover. On the other hand, the present moment may seem excessively foreign if there is an over-identification with the witnessing of such content. Art can prevent an over-identification on both poles of this equation by acting as a container for content, a source of somatic discharge, and a facilitator for observing …

Alchemy Series, Ellen Questel

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

As medieval alchemists did not distinguish between psyche and matter, so too the artist, the images, and the materials of art are partners in the process of revealing. The artist shares her process of working with the archetypal images presented here.

Altered States Of Consciousness And Creative Expression, Micah Linton

International Journal of Transpersonal Studies

Hypnagogia, a state of consciousness between wakefulness and sleep, provides a palette where conscious awareness intertwines with dream images. This state is compared with synesthesia, the imaginal realm, and Jung's active imagination process as inspiration for artistic creation.

Interpreting, Stephanie Jo Kent

Doctoral Dissertations

What do community interpreting for the Deaf in western societies, conference interpreting for the European Parliament, and language brokering in international management have in common? Academic research and professional training have historically emphasized the linguistic and cognitive challenges of interpreting, neglecting or ignoring the social aspects that structure communication. All forms of interpreting are inherently social; they involve relationships among at least three people and two languages. The contexts explored here, American Sign Language/English interpreting and spoken language interpreting within the European Parliament, show that simultaneous interpreting involves attitudes, norms and values about intercultural communication that overemphasize information and discount …

Neuroscience And Hindu Aesthetics: A Critical Analysis Of V.S. Ramachandran’S “Science Of Art”, Logan R. Beitmen

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Neuroaesthetics is the study of the brain’s response to artistic stimuli. The neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran contends that art is primarily “caricature” or “exaggeration.” Exaggerated forms hyperactivate neurons in viewers’ brains, which in turn produce specific, “universal” responses. Ramachandran identifies a precursor for his theory in the concept of rasa (literally “juice”) from classical Hindu aesthetics, which he associates with “exaggeration.” The canonical Sanskrit texts of Bharata Muni’s Natya Shastra and Abhinavagupta’s Abhinavabharati, however, do not support Ramachandran’s conclusions. They present audiences as dynamic co-creators, not passive recipients. I believe we could more accurately model the neurology of Hindu aesthetic experiences …

Stability Of Art Preference In Frontotemporal Dementia, Andrea Halpern, Margaret G. O'Connor

Faculty Journal Articles

We examined aesthetic preference for reproductions of paintings among frontotemporal dementia (FTD) patients, in two sessions separated by 2 weeks. The artworks were in three different styles: representational, quasirepresentational, and abstract. Stability of preference for the paintings was equivalent to that shown by a matched group of Alzheimer's disease patients and a group of healthy controls drawn from an earlier study. We expected that preference for representational art would be affected by disruptions in language processes in the FTD group. However, this was not the case and the FTD patients, despite severe language processing deficits, performed similarly across all three …

Signs And Symbols: Art And Language In Art Therapy, Malissa Morrell

Journal of Clinical Art Therapy

This paper is a preliminary attempt at theory building by exploring the use of art and language in art therapy through a theoretical inquiry model. Inductive and deductive processes are used to explore literature from the fields of psychology, art philosophy (particularly aesthetics), and linguistics. Concepts common to each of these disciplines are then further explored through the lens of bilingual therapy. Practical applications are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.