Approaches to Overcoming the Pressures of Pervasive Enemies

In light of the recent tragedy of the Aurora, Colorado shoot-

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ing this paper argues that society must acknowledge violence as reaching crisis proportions and must examine how it relates to youth and violent crime in order to find solutions to transform this impasse into creative, positive action. The “Now is the Time” project, recently created in Chicago through the collaboration of theater companies and libraries, reaches out to youth and their communities to give them a voice and an expressive platform for telling their stories and to resolve personal issues.

From my experience teaching high school students and university undergraduates, I recommend strategies that may render a deeper understanding of youth culture and assist in combating their rebellious reaction to mainstream society. I contrast approaches to overcoming the pressures of “pervasive enemies” through the lens of Lou Andreas Salomé (1861-1937), a psychoanalyst and confidante of Nietzsche, Rilke and Freud and advocate for all types of creative expression for the transformation of self. My approach is a focus on: (1) peer groups, gangs, violence in media and popular culture; (2) Salomé’s position on transformation; and (3) a strategy for developing empathy through role-play employing the “prismatic effect.”

Schools are dangerous places since there is disconnect between the lives of students and teachers as a consequence of the threat of bullying by peers causing students to live in fear. Families, schools, and society generally do not adequately address this issue. Teachers, staff and students must show respect and dignity acting as a team to engage students in productive action.

Multiple “enemies” are pervasive, tempting youth’s participation, from bullying to drugs, from gangs to guns, from shooter video games to extreme sports. Violence is prevalent in teen culture: think of playing first-person shooter video games (a genre of action game centered on weapon-based combat through protagonist-first-person perspective), listening to rap lyrics containing suggestive language, or participating in sports that extol daring. Cultural influences such as these begin in childhood, targeting impressionable teens through images and actors. Some children’s cartoons contain violence, sadism, or frightening science fiction, including “social bullying” (CBC statistics, released September 27, 2012). During the Olympics, ads announced fall TV programs such

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as Mad Doctors, Grimm, or Mi5, alongside Tylenol or Coca Cola commercials.

At the same time, many young people are channeled into activities that can transform their lives in a positive direction. For example, Chicago’s “Now is the Time” project is one such citywide initiative that is inspiring young people to make positive change in their communities and stop youth violence and intolerance. This program is an open platform that offers youth participation and self-expression through storytelling-theater, as well as a peer audience, and becomes an experiential medium for understanding humanity and developing empathy for suffering caused by violence. It also connects students, libraries and community centers through theater, interactive exhibits, and workshops. It focuses on social activism and civic responsibility while creating healthy communities.

Toronto, Canada has a similar “Youth Action Plan” that targets youth violence and youth unemployment. Ontario’s Ministry of Children and Youth Services funnels “The Youth Challenge Fund” into neighborhoods with priority resource allocation in view of the gun violence in Toronto this year: a mass shooting at a community barbeque in July, with two dead and 23 injured, and a shooting at Toronto’s Eaton Centre that left another two dead in June (both incidences were linked to rival gangs). This project has become a successful tool to stabilize the community by engaging youth with police through “soft policing” and creating after-school jobs. As a bridging effort, the chief of police held a town hall meeting in Scarborough, and a town planner is currently working with the community to garner cooperative action (www.thestar.com/news/article/1246850). As building trust is vital, an innovative York University Project involves Jane-Finch youth and York University students to make NOISE (New Opportunities for Innovative Student Engagement) for social change as high school students will be working in hands-on social action projects (YFile: Aug. 27, 2012).

The commonality between Chicago and Toronto demonstrates that youth seek respect and identity within social communities to build reciprocal trust, connections to jobs and sustainable social programs. It is, of course, impossible to predict people’s

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anti-social behavior simply because they play video games or because they display “narcissistic personality disorder”—as is the case of Anders Behring Breivik, convicted in Norway with a maximum sentence for murdering 77 people in July 2011. However, projects such as those involving youth in Chicago and Toronto promote community spirit and a purpose for youth that transcend negative tendencies.

A model for transformation I designate as “prismatic effect” is a unique way of interacting experientially on an individual level as well as within social groups: Salomé opened the possibility of character modification through interaction with others and through subsequent transformation of self. She advocated fantasy and visualization through creative expression in which the dynamics of transformation and restructuring of the self come into play. She was instrumental in encouraging René Rilke’s artistic expression through extensive creative collaboration, actualizing his potential and transformation as Rainer Maria Rilke (Heiderose Brandt-Butscher, Clio’s Psyche, Vol. 18, No. 4, March, 2012).

Salomé exuded a “prismatic effect” upon those with whom she interacted: with feminists who read her articles in Imago; with colleagues in the avant-garde psychoanalytic society in Vienna, particularly Sigmund Freud and Anna Freud; with the artistic community of Berlin’s “Freie Bühne”—during her 20-year contribution as critic for Director Gerhardt Hauptmann’s realism theatre (from 1885-1904). Salomé should be viewed as a “prism” promoting the “refraction” of the self while infusing the dynamics of creativity in all its forms. The Newtonian notion of “prism” is synergized by the psychology of color in its spiritual effect, postulated by Wassily Kandinsky (Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1910).

Interpersonal relating with the other evolves in a process I term metaphorically “refraction,” implying the “prism’s” intrinsic dynamics that transform the self into other possibilities. As a result, the self evolves with an enriched conception of being imbued with renewed agency. The refraction allows for creative expression of the unconscious self, hence reinforcing the possibility of its transformation. A reciprocal exchange stimulates creative impetus and achieves a reciprocal creative output while furthering self-actualization. The articulation of unconscious layers of experience

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encourages the other to create from an intuitive or “ur-creative” source (Peter Salm, The Poem as Plant: A Biological View of Goethe’s Faust, 1971).

Empathy is intrinsic to a deep understanding of the other; an empathic attitude can dissipate the narcissistic tendency to focus on the self. Any medium of art involving the creative process encourages transformation of the self. Accordingly, artistic expression transforms narcissism’s focus on self with the opportunity for empathic understanding. The accent shifts from self towards understanding and acceptance of the other’s worldview.

Furthermore, the “prismatic effect” activates an extraordinary intuitive perception of the other’s psyche. Formulated as “perception” (Max Weber’s “Verstehen”; British object relations’ empathic “attunement”), psychological depth and life’s experiences represent a contextualized perspective. The “refraction” of self is one potential development for engaging youth through the creative process that promotes experiential transformation through roleplay.

An intrinsic complementarity—“prismatic effect”/empathy is exemplified by role-play which promotes “ur-creative power.” Creative and “expressive art therapy is transformative” (Stephen Levine, Poiesis: The Language of Psychology and the Speech of the Soul, 1997). Moreover, at a University of Toronto workshop on “Role-Play” (OISE, “Holistic Teachers,” September 15, 2012), David Booth demonstrated that “powerful changes in self-understanding occur when students and teachers work collaboratively in role. Role-play extends into role-creating—social role, self-role, character role; you become the strongest ‘you’ in the safety of the role. In undergraduate humanities courses, my students turned historical readings, short story excerpts, articles, or scientific accounts into dramatic skits or dialogue through which they integrated lecture topics and debated important issues. Through the “prismatic effect”—on “intra-psychic and interpersonal levels”—all youth are included and participate in their created role. As the late Andrew Brink pointed out, “Not only does creativity assist in recovering for reprocessing lost but much needed unconscious affect, it provides a sort of ‘theatre of repair’ wherein found and created objects can be manipulated and realigned…It is a

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major challenge for the humanities, with untold rewards in redescribing the creative arts as not just culturally decorative but as inseparable from healthy living on intra-psychic and inter-personal levels” (“Repair Theory and Creativity,” Clio’s Psyche, Vol. 18, No. 4, March, 2012).

I suggest that community centers invite youth volunteers to train and subsequently connect young people and encourage them to serve as role models to participate in arts, sports, and jobs. Projects might include apprenticeship programs, arts, crafts, and practical skills. Holistic bridging efforts, through the “prismatic effect,” together with attuned peer role models, can transform youth while actualizing their potential and integrate them within a productive community.

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