|
Places: An exploration of physical environments and their influence on intrapsychic processes
Bogner, R. (2002). Places: An exploration of physical environments and their influence on intrapsychic processes. (Doctoral dissertation, Pacifica Graduate Institute, 2002). UMI No. 3060747
The earth's places have become interchangeable commodities: home and ancestral lands are easily abandoned and neglected. Western culture values mobility.
Archetypal psychology has resurrected the concept of the autonomy of matter--rocks, fields, rivers, and buildings--but the aliveness of the non-human world, and our environment's interaction with and effect on the individual psyche remains a secret in mainstream thinking.
Places have found advocates in philosophy, phenomenology, mythology, poetry, and geomantic practices. This dissertation joins their contributions to an ensouled place-world with my own views and the experiences and insights of the participants in this filmed project.
Aware as a former professional photographer of our time's visual proclivity, I have chosen film as my medium to convey the simple message to those who have forgotten; I am the place where I am.
Places: Dialogues with Land, Home, the Earth, a seventy minute film recorded in digital video, shows the interaction of seven participants with places that have meaning for them. For them, convent, tipi, Victorian mansion, rock plateau, open range, and labyrinth are not mere site or location. In their sheltering aliveness, these places are integral parts of the individual psyche. The varied ways of place depicted in this work invite readers and viewers to examine affinity with—or estrangement from—places in their own lives.
The process and act of engaging with our physical environments while being observed by a camera constellates complexes or evokes repressed memories in both the observer and the observed. Crew, camera, participant, and audience become immersed in alchemical work that hopes to transmute prevailing indifference into a conscious relationship with the earth's places.
|
|
