This thesis is an exploration of the psychodynamic body and its mythos. I take a phenomenological approach to research that remains connected to lived experience. I begin with image making, painting from the subjective body in response to the ancient Mesopotamian myth of the flood and archaic cultural material on the flood theme. I discover a relationship between this imagery, this mythos, and earlier work on the Dionysian mythology and mysteries. I gather these images together and with work on my own family history I create a painting performance titled Wings from the Deep. The mythos, the poetic structure, of this performance and this thesis, is an exploration of how a people, a person, a body, can journey through traumatic states. The core phenomenon of this thesis is the psychodynamic movement from deadness to aliveness, a movement at the heart of the psychotherapeutic process. I apply knowledge of the psychotherapeutic conversation to the research process by writing to an important other, Etty Hillesum, a young Dutch Jewish woman who wrote a series of diaries during the Holocaust. I then link this conversation with my earlier imagery and the images of the Holocaust to the biblical myth of the flood. This linking of somatic states to mythic material through imagery and text is how I develop the poetic language integral to this thesis. I create a constant dialogue from body to image to word, a process, a language, that mirrors psychotherapy. The psychodynamic body structures the mythos of this thesis. The psychodynamic body structures a mythos of psychotherapy. CD SOUNDTRACK AND DVD PERFORMANCE AVAILABLE AT UWS LIBRARY. / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/235921 |
| Date | January 2008 |
| Creators | Hueneke, Anna, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Psychology |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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