SEMINAR/WORKSHOP MATERIALS

SEMINAR/WORKSHOP MATERIALS

CONTENTS

Introduction - About Us

1. Cinemorphics - A Brief Overview (Revised)

2. Cinemorphics 2.0 - Exercises, Games & Experiments

3. Cinemorphing - Related Forms

4. Film Production Departments Relevant To Cinemorphics

5. Suggested Reading and Viewing

6. Consensus Trance (Article)

7. Multiple Selves (Article)
8. The Psychology of Selves (Article)
9. Intro to Archetype Work (Article)

INTRODUCTION - ABOUT US

The reference materials presented below are for use in conjunction with Cinemorphics seminars and workshops. For these articles, lists, etc. to be useful, effective and safe, they must be used only as directed within the context of a particular seminar/workshop.

Background information on seminar/workshop facilitators Charles Webb and Edwina Hyson-Webb:

Charles H. Webb, M.S. 

Before I got into film making professionally, I was working on a Ph.D. in Psychobiology at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania, USA. During that time, I taught courses in learning, motivation & emotion, and sensation & perception at the university as part of a teaching fellowship. After I received my Masters degree and completed the doctoral course work, I engaged in a research/dissertation project…”An Operational Analysis of Behavior” that involved using a motion picture camera to “gather data” on human subjects. By this time I was questioning my choice of a career in academia and had connected with the experimental film culture at the university (I had also taken the camera home from the lab and made a film with it). I was invited to join a newly formed commercial film production company and decided to leave the doctoral program before writing my thesis. This was in 1968. In 1970 I moved to San Francisco and became heavily involved with forming and operating an actors/directors workshop in addition to making movies…primarily TV commercials and music related projects at that time. It was during these actor/director workshop sessions (the actors got to direct, the directors got to act…with my knowledge of psychology as a backdrop) that the seeds of Cinemorphics were sown. When I have applied Cinemorphics, first to myself and later in individual or group situations, it is the basic actors/directors workshop approach that I have drawn from.

After I experimented with Cinemorphics on myself in 1992 as a way to re-write, re-direct and re-produce myself in order to control alcohol and drug use, I left the film business for a time (as part of the re-write), became involved in the nightclub business and found myself answering many questions from people who had known “the other me” about how I had been able to accomplish such a transformation. During this period I did not have a formal Cinemorphics “practice” but did work with quite a few individuals, primarily with a view towards helping them deal with alcohol and drug abuse. The methodology I developed then is described in the Cinemorphics FAQ and elsewhere on my site. I had them look at me as an acting coach/talent manager rather than as a “therapist”. I would have them write a description of their “who they are now”, then re-write it…rehearse it, buy new wardrobe, practice new daily routines, etc…almost as if they were preparing for a professional career in theater or film. I had a lot of success with this approach.

In a few years I got back into film production per se but, additionally, formed an ongoing film acting/Cinemorphics workshop that met once a week continuously for about three years. The setting and structure was more or less conventional…a small theater I has access to, character work, script work, physical presentation work, “image strategy”, etc.…all with a built in audience of the other participants.

I then decided to change the format and concentrate on Cinemorphic work exclusively. While the groups that resulted explored a wide variety of desired participant outcomes, the emphasis shifted from problem solving to play. Once many of these participants had glimpsed the realization that they were “fictitious characters”, they became captivated with the possibility of making themselves into the work of art rather than just using certain techniques to “fix” the character they had thought themselves to be up until that time.

Here is a description (from a January 2006 blog post) of this new format, which I adopted and actively used from 2006-2010.

“In response to a growing interest in Cinemorphics consulting, I am currently in the process of forming several small ‘acting-coaching’ groups (4-8 ‘actors’ each). I am working with small groups rather than individuals because I have found that, much like in a play or ensemble film, this approach creates a dynamic that reinforces and enhances effective character development. Each group will meet once a week for approximately twelve weeks.
. The method that I am using in the beginning stages of group formation relies as much upon the form of the actor-coach interaction as the content. The ‘sessions’ do not occur on a set schedule in a particular place (office, stage, etc.) but, rather, occur in the ‘real’ world (coffee house, park, hotel lobby, etc.) on a variable schedule of ‘odd’ times. These ‘sessions’ can almost feel like cloak and dagger meetings among operatives in a spy movie or a band of international jewel thieves planning their next caper. This procedure results in a ‘breaking of the mold’…the typical method of arranging a series of appointments at a common location, and a new ‘re-casting’…acting ‘out of character’ from the very beginning. This primes the pump for the re-writing and re-performing of the personas of the actors (in any given small group) that will follow, as well as creating an atmosphere of real life game-like intrigue…a zone outside of ordinary, day to day habituated reality.”

Since 2010 I have slowed down a bit as far at the Cinemorphics practice is concerned (always seem to have one or two “actors” I am working with); actively applied Cinemorphics in book form, (see Method Aging and the Infinite Game) to the “problem” of aging; formed a new production company and am more actively involved in independent feature film production and distribution than I have been in some time. CW

Edwina Hyson-Webb, M.A., MFT                                                                                 

Education & Current License/Certifications:

M.A. Clinical Psychology, John F. Kennedy University, Pleasant Hill, Ca. 1991

MFT - Marriage and Family Therapist License, State of Ca. (U.S.A.)   1995

MAC - Master Addictions Counselor, National Board of Addic. Exam.  1995

CGP - Certified Group Psychotherapist, National Registry, New York  1997

African American Health Services Specialist Certificate, S.F., DPH    1999

Supervisory Training -  S.F. Department of Public Health     2000/2004

Life Experience:

Practical life experiences in a wide range of social, economic, cultural and ethnic situations contribute to my ability to work appropriately with very diverse populations and to deal effectively with crisis situations.

Work Experience – Counseling:

In addition to individual work, I have led over 4000 hours of groups with AXIS 1, AXIS 11, dual/triple Dx’ed clients & their families.  Group focus has been: living skills, chemical dependency, psych. ed., expressive arts, psychodynamic, etc.

Sitike Counseling Center, Women's Intensive Day Tx: (S.F.) May - 09 - currently

Counselor: This is a 5 day a week program with 3 phases, lasting up to a year. I do group and individual sessions, assessments and referrals. Focus is on Behavioral Health (mix of Mental Health & Substance Abuse). Many clients have CPS cases &/or are court mandated. Some have long history of DV, PTSD &/or homelessness.

West Yavapai Guidance Center, Windhaven Hospital Facility: Sept. 07–Oct. 08

Social Worker (Prescott, AZ); clients had very diverse backgrounds. Duties included assessing needs/goals, discharge planning/placement, groups, coordinating care with medical staff, family/significant others, and other care providers, 5150's, many clinical staff, agency and community meetings, documented care for AHCCCS, Medicare and private pay clients.

Cinemorphics: (San Francisco)  May 06 - currently

Workshop Co-Facilitator; I provide workshops with Charles Webb, founder of Cinemorphics. Focus is on helping clients create personal change using film and theatre techniques to discover more about themselves and to achieve their goals.

Episcopal Community Services: (San Francisco)  Feb. 06 - May - 07

Senior Case Manager; duties incl. intensive CM, individual and group therapy, intake interviews and assessments, crisis interventions, referrals, consulting and coordinating with families & outside providers, doing Ed. groups & social events.     

Senior Community: (S.F.) Activities Director   Aug. 05 – Dec. 05

Created activities program for seniors living in a high-rise development.

                                                                                                           

Sunset Mental Health Services, City & County of S.F.: Feb. 00 - Apr. 05

Therapist; in charge of Voc. Rehab. Program including stipend/voucher clients; also did assessments, off site interventions and consultations, extensive group, 1:1 and family therapy; gave seminars and supervised group work of interns.

Haight  Ashbury Free Clinic, Jail Psychiatric Services:  Oct. 94 - Feb. 00

At S.F. County Jails I created/implemented a group therapy program in Psych. Housing.  I did assessments in psych. and in general population, helped develop groups for general population, did individual and family therapy, 5150’s, case management, referrals, consultations, peer reviews & presented intern seminars.

Cal. Pacific Medical Center - Westside Lodge:   Jan. 92 - Jun 94

Chronic/acute mentally ill, in residential Tx. Secondary issues incl. AXIS 11 Dx., chemical dependency, court,  physical difficulties, relationship difficulties, anger, sexual and gender issues. I did assessments, 1:1’s, groups, outings, 5150’s, family and crisis interventions, consultations in-house and with outside providers, documentation, advocacy, case management incl. D/C planning/placements.

Tom Smith S.A.T.C., San Francisco General Hospital:  Apr. 91 - Dec. 91

Six week voluntary and mandated inpatient treatment for alcoholics and other drug addicts, secondary issues included dual diagnosis, HIV+ status, C.P.S., probation and parole, very diverse ethnic, educational, and social backgrounds. 

I did groups, workshops, 1:1 counseling, intakes, assessments & documentation.

BAART (Methadone Clinic) Detox/Facet:   Mar. 90 - Feb. 91

Part time (paid position) Methadone clinic.  Mental Health Worker at Geary St. in Detox and Maintenance, also FACET (pregnant addicts/mothers).

Women Emerging: (San Francisco)      Jan. 89 - July 90

Member of Board of Directors.  Administration Assistant, part time (paid position).  I assessed/screened intakes, did counseling, made referrals. I also provided training and supervision to volunteers, education to public via pamphlets, T.V. and radio appearances, established social services, vocational and other liaisons, participated in fund raising and in outreach.

Other Professional Work Experience:

I have taught school and have worked for Canadian Federal Government, in bookkeeping and personnel depts. at Manpower and Revenue Canada Taxation. In industry I’ve worked as a bookkeeper, junior accountant, office manager, property manager, newspaper columnist, script writer, film/video production manager and editor - in Canada, U. S. and Europe.

1.

CINEMORPHICS

A Brief Overview

(Revised) 

“The universe is not made of atoms, it is made of characters and their stories.”

Muriel Rukeyser

WHAT IS CINEMORPHICS?

The name Cinemorphics refers to the process and art of changing, transforming, transmuting the construct known as the ego, persona, self, etc....(what someone thinks of when asked to describe himself or herself...one's idea of oneself)...from one form into another, by making use of the methods and techniques of acting and movie/theater production. Bodily changes may also be addressed or result from this change in the construct, and emotional as well as physical health may be improved.

WHAT CAN CINEMORPHICS DO FOR ME?

Such changes may be sought for a number of reasons...to fix some problem either physical or psychological...for serious personal growth or, possibly most importantly, as a form of PLAY.

"You" are a bodymind, not a body with a mind or vice versa. Things that influence either, influence both…powerfully.

"You" are a verb, not a noun. "You" are fluid, constantly changing…at every level. The static "you" is a persistent illusion.

"You"… "Your self", persona, ego…”who you are”…however named, is a construct that is formed by the interaction of genetics, imprinting, conditioning and learning. "You" have little input into this process until after "you" have been thoroughly shaped by "your" parents, peers, culture.

Now consider that this "you" that "you" now seem to be is, actually, very much like a fictitious character that may appear in a novel, play or movie and may be re-written, re-produced and re-performed, using the techniques of those media…

More specifically…

When someone asks, who are you?, your response may include your name, age, sex, race, height, weight, hair and eye color, where you live, whether you are married or not, whether you have children, what you do for a living, your hobbies, your likes and dislikes, your religious beliefs, your hopes, fears, hang-ups, skills, etc. If pushed, you could produce an exhaustive "character" description of all of the things that, when combined, make up what you take to be you. You identify with this description, this construct.

This description of who you take yourself to be...your ego...includes genetic, biological and physical components as well as culturally conditioned, learned and psychologically "shaped" components. Most of these components have been assembled over a long period of time without your intervention. (e.g. you were born with black hair and learned to speak Spanish growing up.) Some you believe you have intentionally cultivated (e.g. you decided to learn to play the guitar and make your living as a musician). In many cases the distinction between which of your attributes were come by intentionally and which were thrust upon you by nature or nurture is very blurry.

In any case, this description of whom you think you really are, this construct with which you identify, can be looked at in another way. If written out, your description of yourself reads like a character description in a movie script, play or novel. Consider yourself a fictitious character that has been devised by the haphazard, natural forces of ordinary life in the world but which you have believed is the real and only you.

Now that you realize that this "you" that you can observe and describe is very much like a character in a movie, consider the possibilities. If your life is like a movie or play and you are the main character, lets have a look at how your character was written...to a great extent not by you...and how you are being directed...also in many cases not by you. If you don't like what you see, demand a re-write. Your character...your self...is not written in stone. It is malleable and can be re-written, then rehearsed and performed by you...at first with the collaboration of and direction by a professional and then by you alone. You can also learn to be your own best, most discerning audience, write your own reviews...decide what is working and what is not. You become the producer, the star performer, the critic. You learn how to take charge.

From now on, you are THE PLAYER.

"If you think you are and everybody else thinks you are, then you are."

Jean Genet

HOW DO I DO THIS?

This self shift is accomplished either through a series of one on one sessions (production meetings) with a Cinemorphics facilitator (producer/director), or one or more intensive workshops. What follows is an overview of how these sessions and workshops are conducted.

You will be asked to provide a brief medical and psychological history and a summary of what you want to accomplish by using this process. The director of the sessions or workshop will describe the types and levels of change that Cinemorphics can provide, outline the procedures of, as well as the dangers inherent in the process.

You will then write a character description of "you"...your character as you now see it...which will be reviewed, discussed and then re-scripted, rehearsed and then performed, first in the private session or workshop environment and then in ordinary, day-to-day surroundings. (This involves a deconstruction of the “old you” followed by a reconstruction of the revised version and is a far more detailed process than is implied by this brief overview.) Videotape may be used as a feedback device in these rehearsal and performance stages. During the course of the sessions you will possibly have assignments to do which relate to certain components of your new character. (e.g., if you decide that your new character speaks French, you could be directed to take a course in French. Or, you may simply be directed to go shopping...finally buy that intriguing hat you always thought would make you look mysterious, but always put off getting.) Following the rehearsal, then performance and "audience" stage, you and your director will evaluate the effectiveness of your re-written character and your enactment of it...whether it "plays" or needs more development. (See Cinemorphics 2.0: Exercises, Games & Experiments to get a more detailed sense of the kinds of things that can happen at this stage of the process.)

“Between pictures, there is no Lon Chaney.”

Lon Chaney

YOU MENTIONED LEVELS OF CHANGE?

While one level of change is not inherently better than another, there are different kinds and amounts of change that are possible depending on what you want to accomplish. Some levels are more detailed and elaborate than others.

For example, your character synopsis may include shyness, which you eliminate in your re-write. This may be the only thing you want to change and the only thing you work on. When you are successful, of course, this one change can affect everything else in your life.

Or, your character synopsis may include obesity and shyness, which interact. Your new character is thin and flamboyant. You must work on both aspects of this in order to be able to play the part. In this case physical change must accompany rehearsal and "method" acting of flamboyant scenarios.

Or, you may want to make a more comprehensive change... be re-written and directed in identifying with and performing a character very different than the one you are playing at the beginning of the process. This could involve changing your name, your hair color, your wardrobe, your job, your routines, your skills, your "image", the way you conduct personal relationships, etc. You turn yourself into a work of art. (This type of Cinemorphic Play is has been developed into a form of ongoing, interactive performance art and is referred to as Cinemorphing. Cinemorphing is discussed in more detail elsewhere.)

Also, many well known studies have shown that behavioral changes can result in physiological changes...heart rate, blood pressure, neurochemistry, etc. So, as was alluded to above, one change can affect everything else in your life - or many changes can result in the manifestation of a single objective and/or situation, which you have desired that is now written into your script.

Additionally…after realizing that who you think you really are is simply a construct that you have identified with, a fictitious character that can

be altered and performed, a tool that you use as you live your life…you may begin to dig deeper and ask more basic questions. Who am I really...who or what identifies with this fictitious character I have taken to be myself? Who is the observer...the witness to all this...who is making the changes in the character I am playing now? These are extremely significant questions and looking at them may result in a "waking up", a dropping away of the husk of persona altogether. In this respect Cinemorphics allows another sideways approach - to Zen, Advaita, Taoism and the other nondual traditions which can also be explored in advanced sessions and workshops.

"The ego is just the dream of the Witness, the film that the Witness creates..., simply so it will have something to watch at the movies."

Ken Wilber

WHAT ABOUT DANGERS?

Individuals with certain medical conditions and diagnoses of certain types of mental illness should not use Cinemorphics alone as a tool for change. Conventional medical approaches and psychotherapy, SUPERVISED BY A DOCTOR OR OTHER QUALIFIED HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONAL, need to be used prior to and in conjunction with Cinemorphics in these cases.

Also, when someone significantly changes even one aspect of themselves and their life, everything else changes as well (for good or bad - see above). A prudent consideration of this must be taken before you decide to re-construct yourself.

“Be careful what you're dreaming...soon your dream'll be dreaming you.”

Willie Nelson

CAN YOU POINT TO EXAMPLES OF THE CINEMORPHIC EFFECT IN EVERYDAY LIFE?

As we look around our increasingly post-modern culture...particularly via the media...we can begin to identify powerful examples of the effect.

Many film/stage actors, musicians and other celebrities have gone through this process with striking effect. Character creation techniques are utilized extensively off the screen and stage as well as on. The process is evident in the political and business arena and is used by con-men, criminals and spies...and pro-wrestlers. Post- operative transsexuals take the Cinemorphic process to one of its extremes...physical sex change as well as persona identity change. Thousands use aliases and conjure up alternate personalities in internet chat rooms and role playing games. Hundreds of thousands make a geographic change, introduce themselves with a new nickname and experiment with being a new person in a new location. You, yourself, have probably experienced becoming a "different person" on vacation, particularly in a foreign country.

As you become aware of the effect you will begin to see it everywhere, applied unconsciously and unsystematically in most cases.

Cinemorphics can change that…at least for the conscious PLAYER.

“Play is the only way the highest

intelligence of humankind

can unfold.”

Joseph Chilton Pearce

“You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail.”

Charlie Parker

2.

CINEMORPHICS 2.0

CINEMORPHIC PLAY

(Cinemorphing)

Exercises, Games & Experiments

Disclaimer

The routines presented here are for entertainment purposes only. No claim is made that any other benefit will be derived from practicing them. It is understood that some may result in physical or psychological harm to the player and are entered into at the player’s own risk.

(This list contains a limited number of suggested exercises, games and experiments that un-do and/or “not do” the “old” default self/persona, and/or “do” the new, fictitious self/persona only and is far from exhaustive. Have fun with it, improvise…come up with your own variations on these themes. Try one or two on for size. It should be noted that certain types of highly individualized, personal, confidential and client restricted [and possibly most intriguing and effective] games/tactics are not included in this list. The list avoids extreme danger, sexual situations, illegal behavior, etc., for example. Only the player’s imagination and developing improvisational skills limit where these other types of games and experiments may lead. Let your Cinemorphics practitioner be your guide in the beginning. As jazz genius Charlie Parker once said, “You’ve got to learn your instrument. Then you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail”. What follows will help you practice. Once you get the hang of it, the wailing is up to you.)

1. Invent Lives For Yourself

You only live once, as they say here. Others, elsewhere, Will assure you that you have already lived out several previous lives. No matter. You can multiply your own lives yourself, and feel them proliferating. To do so you need to carry out a relatively long and fairly demanding experiment, but whose effects are well worth the effort.

During a period of several weeks, try systematically inventing lives for yourself. Tell your new barber you were a taxi driver in Detroit before you delivered pizzas in New York. Recount your years of teaching in Australia to a distant cousin. To your nephews spin yarns about places you never saw, livelihoods you never made (who's to know, after all.), great and small adventures, of fox hunts and fogbound ports.

Do it properly. Don't just tinker. Recount the same stories several times. Spice up the anecdotes, add new details, fill in the blanks and eliminate implausibilities. Tell the same stories to the same people. Take care not to get muddled up. If need be, take notes, fill out cards, do research. Persevere.

Rehearse these characters “in your head” as thought experiments.

After a few months, you'll be familiar with these alternative lives. You'll have answered a lot of questions, and explained a good deal. You will have described, narrated, taken up, and repeated the key episodes of your various parallel autobiographies. Above all you'll have implanted your fabrications into the minds of people who believe what you've told them, and who will pass them to others in the version you made up for them. They believe it.

Why don't you? The point you need to reach is when you start to doubt whether it's all false, and when you can't quite tell what belongs to fiction, and what to your real life. Or when-it comes to the same thing-you can admit to yourself (without forcing or sudden delirium) that what you used to consider your "true life" is really, in fact, just one fiction among others. No more, no less. (from ASTONISH YOURSELF! By Roger-Pol Droit)

2. Take a "vacation" to an unfamiliar location and be someone else while you're gone. Possibly use another name (or the name on your ID if necessary in another country). Make up a new personal history for yourself. This is a version of the Astonish Yourself! Experiment. Don't use this as a period of debauchery...act "normal" (relatively)...just act like someone other than the habituated everyday you.

3. Start consistently writing letters to the editor of at least one daily newspaper "in character"...the character being the new persona you are developing. Sign a new name or altered version of your current name to these. Don't look at this as a joke or spoof. Take the things you say seriously...try to form the opinions your altered persona would express. Experiment with points of view different from the ones you typically hold as the "old" you. If your opinions are challenged...your new persona attacked...by either the editor or other readers, notice the protective feelings you now have for this "fictitious" character...which you are beginning to identify with.

4. Spend the day "as" a well known personality. i.e. pretend you are…say… Johnny Depp or Lady Gaga all day…identify with and play an array of different personas. Don't just feel it from the inside…act it out. Do impersonations. Variation: Be an animal for a day…a gorilla, say…or a cat.

This casual exercise can be developed in detail also to interesting effect e.g…

Reincarnation: Research some dead historic figure, either well known or obscure, then “reanimate” them, complete with accurate costume, props, speech patterns, etc. in actual locations.

Doppelganger: Do the same for a living person, again either well known or obscure. Create their double. Possibly confront them with themselves.

Movie/theater/literary characters: Do the same with a well described fictitious character.

Make scenes: Once a character is ready to “manifest” in public, work with one or more other players who have also developed characters along one of these lines, to put together scenarios, either scripted or improvised, to perform, with variations, in several locations, e.g. a café, a train station, in a park, etc…anywhere there will be an audience that can either just watch or become “spect-actors” (Boal).

Note: These scenes can also be played out in public with the players not yet in full historic/double/fictitious character and costume…just as actors rehearsing, to interesting effect. This would be more like Boal’s Invisible Theater.

Record these experiments with HIDDEN cameras if desired. Obviously recording them with even a small crew will change/damage the effect. It may be, in the case of period costumed players, that the spect-actors will record the scenes with their phone cameras. “Insider” friends of the players can also do this, of course. An interesting side effect of this would be a subsequent viral YouTube post.

5. Social media. Set up email, Facebook, twitter, Instagram, etc. accounts and a blog for your new character in your new character’s name. Post to it regularly. Tell stories. Make “friends”. Use these as tools to flesh out the new character.

6. Change the routines in your daily life. Your habitual ways of doing things outline a footprint of "you" in the world. If you want to alter your persona you should alter this footprint. If you drive to work via the same route every day, go a different way. Or take the bus...or a hot-air balloon. Shop at different stores. Eat at different restaurants. Hang out in a part of town you are not familiar with.

While “in character” as your re-written self, become a regular at several businesses, coffeehouses, restaurants, etc. that cater to customers in a different age group and/or demographic than what Is "typical" for you. e.g. Hang out at a biker bar (If you aren't a biker) and get to know the owner. Hang out at a coffeehouse near a college campus. Attend music concerts featuring new groups you have never heard of. Re-write yourself as the age of the other customers when you are there.

Shake things up.

7. Paparazzi yourself. Get someone to follow you around for a couple of days taking your picture in public…at places you usually hang out… as the "character" you are now. Pose. Have the photographer direct you. Now...adjust yourself a bit. Create a new look. New hair style, grow beard if you are a guy. Different costume. Get photographed again in places you don't usually go. Compare the two sets of pictures. Note reactions of people watching you get your picture taken.

Alternatively, pretend and try to come to believe that every moment of your life is being recorded on audio and video. Either imagine yourself as the main character in a comprehensive, over the top reality show, or the subject of constant surveillance by a government agency. In either case, you are “always on”…always “performing”…never “just living”, dropping character, etc. The audience never stops watching.

8. A significant piece of the puzzle when "trying on" a new character can be the way this new character dresses. What kind of "costume" should they wear to enhance and reinforce the presentation. Most people adopt some kind of habitual uniform whether they identify it as such or not. Change your “uniform” to match your new persona. Go shopping in strange stores.

As an extension of this, re-decorate (art direct) your living space to reflect your new character’s preferences. Buy “props” that reflect your new character’s interests.

8.1  As a corollary to these activities (this is a necessary part of your entire Cinemorphics project as it is with any film or theater project.), make a budget. How much is producing this new character you are developing going to cost? How are you going to raise the money?

9. Un-occupied and un-employed (see The Un-TV and the 10 MPH Car by Bernard McGrane). Stand in a relatively busy place and do nothing. Be un-occupied and un-employed for twenty minutes. Don't pretend to be waiting for someone, relaxing, "people watching", or the like, if someone asks what you are doing. That would be "doing waiting", "doing relaxing" or "doing people watching". You have no job and you are doing nothing. Take notes on how this makes you feel. How do others react to this? What is everyone else “doing”? Do the Police take notice?

10. Write a detailed character description of yourself. An inventory. Maybe as a list down one side of the page. Make another list on the other side of the page with changes opposite each item. (Obviously, some items will not be changed.) Based on this new list, write another, more general character description of yourself. Give this new character description a nickname. Practice associating this new character description and nickname.  Your new nickname is "Venus" and you are going to the grocery, think "now 'Venus' is going to the grocery" and act like "Venus" would act while on this errand.

11.  Edmond A. MacInaugh's book DISGUISE TECHNIQUES - Fool All Of The People Some Of The Time, is practical and street-wise. MacInaugh's techniques are not thought experiments or film/stage acting tricks (although they could be used as such). They are aimed squarely at the "real" world. In his view all the world really IS a stage...and a playground. I quote directly from DISQUISE TECHNIQUES, below, to give you the flavor and a glimpse of the power of MacInaugh's work:

"If you have mastered the basic techniques of disguise, learned to recognize the image you present to the world as well as how to alter it at will to suit your own purposes, and if you have developed the ability to see others accurately, then you are ready to test your skills on an unwitting audience.

Start small; for your first disguise attempts, an ordinary, non-threatening persona is best. You will find that in the early stages brief excursions into a different identity will be enough to get your adrenaline flowing. Practicing in the privacy of your room is one thing, taking your new self into the street quite another. Don't worry if you feel foolish or shy in the beginning, and don't be hard on yourself if you stammer or find yourself seized with uncontrollable laughter. Other people won't think too much about it; they are more concerned about themselves than they are about you. Unless someone has just seen you rob a bank or hijack a plane, he won't be inclined to study your appearance.

After you have paid the utmost attention to every detail of your disguise, you will probably be amazed, possibly even disappointed, at how unobservant the average person is. The new you will be accepted at face value; people will tend to see you just as you present yourself, and act accordingly. Let's say, for example, that you generally dress and act like a respectable member of the community, then you disguise yourself as a bum. You will feel strange as pedestrians look the other way and make plenty of room for you on the side- walk, as if your penniless condition were contagious. "Wait a minute!" you may think. "Can't you tell this is me?"

The answer is no. Of course they can't. You are used to having people react to you as a respectable sort. That is how you have presented yourself, albeit unconsciously, by your choice of clothing, manner, and speech. When you present yourself as a derelict, why shouldn't people react to you as a derelict just as naturally?

Experience will increase your self-confidence. Just like the new kid in school, your disguise personality will slowly open up and find his own footing, gradually feeling more comfortable in his new world. Your experiences will bring you many surprising revelations, not only about the art of disguise as such, but also about the way others think, feel, and act, about how society operates, and about yourself and who you are. Putting yourself in the shoes of a different kind of person will teach you a great deal about what it is like to actually be that person, and this knowledge will help you to further develop your skills.

Ironically, as you become unrecognizable to others, you will come to know yourself. Through diligent practice of the art of disguise, you will embark on a voyage of self-discovery that will continue throughout your life. Even after you have become a master, there will always be more to learn. So have a good trip—and good luck!"

Note: Try out a new persona and disguise on people who know you well. Can you “pass”?

12. Think of several things that are "just not me" and do them. e.g. Learn a new language (unless you already know several), put on some music and dance alone in your living room (unless you make a habit of this), talk to yourself (while alone)…does your voice sound strange to you, talk to yourself in public…embarrassed?, panhandle, speak to strangers as you walk down the street, wear something outrageous…out of character, sit and meditate (if you don't usually meditate), just sit…alone…in your living room for twenty minutes…doing nothing. Get a tattoo. If you have tattoos, explore getting them removed.

13. Open mike. Get in front of an audience and perform…do stand-up, read poetry, sing, play an instrument (if you can’t play an instrument, take lessons)...show up dressed like a clown and try to juggle. Even if you can't really do any of these things well…take the risk…the stretch. Feel what its like to perform in front of a live audience in a formalized setting.

14. Write your own obituary. Take notes on how this makes you feel. Put it away. Have a look at it several weeks later...after starting the process of re-conceiving, re-writing and re-"doing" yourself. Make notes on how you feel at this point. Consult your obituary from time to time.

15. Anti-relaxation exercise. (Most acting workshops feature breathing and relaxation exercises. This is our variation on that.) Based on your new character’s description, imagine a situation that would threaten your new character. The situation will occur in five minutes. The anxiety builds. Hyperventilate. Your new character is close to a panic attack. You hear an announcement that the situation is not going to happen. Observe how you feel.

16.  Character interview/interrogation. This involves two players, in character, one a bureaucratic figure who requires information from the other. Mundane stuff, name, rank, serial number, parents names, street address, employment history, what you were doing at certain times during the past week, etc. The player being interviewed must invent the details of an ordinary (fictitious) life and then remember them when asked again later in the interview to determine if the “subject” is consistent or “lying”.

17. During a rehearsal or performance of your fictitious character, play the character as sick, in pain, toothache, etc. Try to feel the discomfort. See how this modifies the entire performance. Fill out an official medical history form as your new character. Imagine a medical history that would have resulted in the manifestation of symptoms that you were exhibiting during rehearsal. If possible, consult a doctor “in character”.

18. Sit opposite another player and stare into each other’s eyes for several minutes. Who do you see? Does the other person’s face change the longer you stare? How does this make you feel?

Sit in front of a mirror and stare into your own eyes for several minutes. Who do you see? Do you recognize yourself? Is it the same person who bears your name?

19.  During a rehearsal or performance with others who are also in character, have your new character denounce the old “you”. Detail what an unsavory character the old you was. Name names. Go to the extreme. Pull a picture of the old you (your new character is in a different “costume” now) out of your pocket and tear it up or burn it. How does the new you feel about this?

20.  Participate in a process/therapy group in character. The others in the group will also be in character. The group is led by a professional facilitator. Everyone talks about their problems, triumphs, etc.

21.  Tell yourself lies. This is a technique for shifting into your new fictitious character. It is a not-doing of your old character and a doing of your new one at the same time. Make an inventory of your old character’s thoughts and their opposites (the new character’s thoughts). e.g. I am envious vs. It make me glad to see other people happy; I repress my feelings vs. I am free to express what I feel; I have no willpower vs. I complete everything I start, etc. Repeat these lies to yourself as often as possible as you develop your new character.

22. Involuntary change of surroundings. Two other players in character “kidnap” you, blindfold you, drive you to a location that is unfamiliar to you, push you out of the car and leave you to your own devices. This is a variation on simply traveling to an unfamiliar location, e.g. a foreign country where you don’t speak the language, as a means of disrupting, dis-habituating your “old” self.

23. Another disruption of persona technique is to intentionally play the fool in public. Wear shabby clothing, stumble about in a clumsy fashion, make ridiculous statements, etc. Or, suddenly go into your “fool” self from your “normal” self. Be out of character in some bizarre way. Leave everyone puzzled without an explanation. Your reputation is threatened. You become suspect.

24.  Privately attempt to adopt a belief system in a highly charged area (religion, politics, sexual mores, etc.) directly opposite from the one you hold. Ask yourself to feel how the “other side” experiences these beliefs. Try to hold or re-evoke these unfamiliar emotions for a period of time. Construct an imaginary persona for the “person” feeling these emotions. How does this imaginary persona look, behave, etc. Where do they live?

25.  Buy several magazines dealing with (to you) unfamiliar, uninteresting or repugnant subject matter and read them thoroughly while having a meal (series of meals) at restaurants serving food of an ethnicity or style that is either strange to you or you completely hate.

26.  Disable your body. Spend a day in a wheelchair. Spend an hour blindfolded in your own home, sightless. Don’t speak for a day. Use a chalkboard to communicate.

27. Listen to a recording of your own voice describing the way that you think other people see you. Do this as your old self and your “new” self. Is that you describing yourself…or a stranger? Does the voice you hear sound like “your” voice?

28. Say your “old” name (e.g. Roberto) over and over until the words lose meaning. Who is “Roberto” now? Hold a common object in your hand, say a spoon, and repeat the word “spoon” until it loses meaning. What is it that you are holding in your hand?

29.  Try to locate where in your body or mind your “I” is. Who is it that is making this search? Is it the same witness who was describing you in Exercise 27?

30.  Become aware of yourself as you speak. Try to maintain this awareness for an entire day. Notice that your voice sounds alien…like that of a stranger (as in 27, above). Pay close attention to other mundane, automatic things you do during the day. Are “you” doing these things or are they “doing” you?

31. The drift. Take a walk or public transit ride in a city with no destination in mind. Let chance (e.g. a coin flip) dictate which way you turn, which bus you take, etc. Set a time limit on this (2-3 hrs?). Take notes. Try to retrace your steps (transit rides) a few days later.

32. Eat backwards (inspired by Alfred Jarry). Order an elaborate meal in a good restaurant. Instruct the waiter to serve the courses in reverse order…after dinner drinks, coffee, sweet dessert first, cheese plate next, salad course next, main course, 2^nd wine next, first course 1^st wine (e.g. fish) next, hors D’oeuvres next, aperitif last. Try this with a group of players, all of whom consider the order of the courses normal. How do the waiters and the other restaurant patrons react to this? Take notes.

33. Imagine the ideal, optimized, fully actualized character/persona that you desire to inhabit…the best version of the new imaginal you. Make a detailed attribute list/inventory of this character. Be outrageous in your description of the excellence of this character. Create an almost impossible, uncompromising ideal. Give this new character a name. Write or print all of this on a single piece of paper. Fold and seal your ideal character’s details in an envelope. Write the character’s name on the envelope, the “lose”/hide the envelope somewhere where you are apt to forget it. Engage in other activities…forget this process. You may never find the envelope, find it in a few days (if sooner, hide again), in a few months. When it does turn up, if you have forgotten you hid it, open it and read about your ideal self. How does the description compare to the “who” you are at the time of discovery? Do you still find your ideal character appealing?

34.  Play detective. Have another player follow you, takes notes on your activities, take pictures of you, etc. as a private detective would (“secretly”), while you are in character. After a few days, review the report. What do you see?

Alternative: If you have the budget, hire a real detective and have them follow someone…you “in character” and in disguise…take notes, photographs, etc. The detective does not know its “you”, of course. Does your new character pass muster? Or does the professional observer blow your cover?

35.  Self-shifting. Create a “wardrobe” of selves that you can put on for different occasions or change into at will. Additionally, look at yourself as a constantly evolving work of performance art. This is an advanced exercise that can involve much hard work and development…or not…if the player, once told that he/she is a fiction, “gets it”.

“One should either be a work of art or wear a work of art”

Oscar Wilde

36. Designate particular times and places where you play your new character….where the rules of ordinary consensus reality are suspended (see T.A.Z.) below). Throw a dinner party, which includes only players who are in character. Throw another dinner party, which includes non-players (in their default personas) as well as players. Is there a difference?

37.  Form a social club (secret society?) for players only…a Temporary Autonomous Zone…a T.A.Z…(In this case, a more permanent autonomous zone.)

As conceived by Hakim Bey… A T.A.Z. is a liberated area “of land, time or imagination” where one can be for something, not just against, and where new ways of being human together can be explored and experimented with. Locating itself in the cracks and fault lines in the global grid of control and alienation, a T.A.Z. is an eruption of free culture where life is experienced at maximum intensity. It should feel like an exceptional party where for a brief moment our desires are made manifest and we all become the creators of the art of everyday life….i.e. PLAY…

Burning Man is a quintessential Temporary Autonomous Zone or Magic Circle as described by Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens…

“All play moves and has its being within a play-ground marked off beforehand either materially or ideally, deliberately or as a matter of course. Just as there is no formal difference between play and ritual, so the ‘consecrated spot’ cannot be formally distinguished from the play-ground. The arena, the card-table, the magic circle, the temple, the stage, the screen, the tennis court, the court of justice, etc, are all in form and function play-grounds, i.e. forbidden spots, isolated, hedged round, hallowed, within which special rules obtain. All are temporary worlds within the ordinary world, dedicated to the performance of an act apart.^”

Burning Man is an annual event and a thriving year-round culture. The event takes place the week leading up to and including Labor Day, in Nevada's Black Rock Desert. The Burning Man organization (Black Rock City LLC) creates the infrastructure of Black Rock City, wherein attendees (or "participants") dedicate themselves to the spirit of community, art, self-expression, and self-reliance. They depart one week later, leaving no trace. As simple as this may seem, trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been to the event is a bit like trying to explain what a particular color looks like to someone who is blind.

(Brazilian version…from http://eyesonbrazil.com/2008/06/05/first-there-was-burning-man/)

The Baobah facility can become a T.A.Z.  during Cinemorphics workshops…a place of “not doing” ordinary reality…a place where participants learn to leave their consensus trance at the door.

38. Silent retreat…no talk, no media/technology. No communication for one week. A self-imposed exile. Fast for the last two days of this (fluids only) and do not sleep for the last 48 hours of the retreat. Variation…just do the fast/”forced” wakefulness for 48 hours. Take notes. What happens to your new “self”? Can you find it? What about your former/old persona? Eat and sleep. Who are you when you wake up? Are you more awake after eating and sleeping or when you were hungry and sleepy?

39. Solve the koan…

“Who is it dragging this corpse around?”

40.  Suggest or invent your own exercise(s)/game)s) to complete this list.

Below are some (possibly impractical…see 8.1 above)) suggestions from former workshop participants. The Cinemorphics team is not recommending these activities, just passing them along in order to convey the mood/scope of past Cinemorphic activity. Again, as was noted at the top of this list, our discretion and adherence to legal restriction, has prevented us from including for publication many of the most interesting and effective exercises and games that have been written into players’ repertoires and produced over the years. Some of these, however, can be divulged to workshop participants in the form of confidential, private communications and will be the subject of at least one discussion group during any given workshop cycle.

If these are not already part of your character description/inventory…

Take a basic course in film production, or at least read up on what’s involved in putting together a fully produced film, in order to learn the different areas that Cinemorphics can inform the production of your new reality/self construct. To get some idea of the areas involved check out:

http://www.media-match.com/usa/jobtypes/job-descriptions.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_crew

Attend circus clown school.

Train to be a circus tightrope walker and/or trapeze artist.

Learn a martial art.

Take flying lessons.

Go skydiving.

Learn to scuba dive, then do the research and preparation necessary to go hunting for sunken treasure.

Take race car/stunt driving lessons.

Take singing lessons.

Take cooking lessons from a master chef, then apply for jobs in several upscale restaurants.

Audition for a TV reality/contest show.

Write, publish and promote a novel. (e.g. via Amazon CreateSpace.com)

Apply for jobs using your fictitious character’s fictitious resume/CV.

Run for a political office.

Become obsessed (and an expert on) some enduring, unsolved mystery. (e.g. the Voynich manuscript, the shroud of Turin, the Easter Islands Rongorongo) to the point where the obsession defines one of your fictitious characters.

Spend at least 48 hours alone on the streets of a major city “homeless”. Eat in food lines, panhandle, claim illness and wait in line at a general hospital emergency room, etc.

Spend at least 48 hours alone in an isolated forest, mountain or desert area. Have only water and minimal food with you. Sleep in the open. (like shamanic vision quest)

Do volunteer work with the poor.

Meet with representatives of several religious organizations other than the one you were raised in. e.g. If you were raised Catholic, meet with an Evangelical Protestant group, a Buddhist group, a Sufi sect, a Scientologist group, etc.  Allow then to explain their belief system to you and attempt to convince you to join them (or not).

Mask Work. Whole separate area. Research the various uses of masks…ritual, performance, shamanic, protective, criminal, etc. Experiment with wearing various kinds of masks…feel their power.

From Wikipedia…

Throughout the world masks are used for their expressive power as a feature of masked performance - both ritually and in various theatre traditions. The ritual and theatrical definitions of mask usage frequently overlap and merge but still provide a useful basis for categorisation. The image of juxtaposed Comedy and Tragedy masks are widely used to represent the Performing Arts, and specifically Drama.
In ancient Rome the word persona meant 'a mask'; it also referred to an individual who had full Roman citizenship. A citizen could demonstrate his or her lineage through imagines, death masks of the ancestors. These were wax casts kept in a lararium, the family shrine. Rites of passage, such as initiation of young members of the family, or funerals, were carried out at the shrine under the watch of the ancestral masks. At funerals professional actors would wear these masks to perform deeds of the lives of the ancestors,^[24] thus linking the role of mask as a ritual object and in theatre.
Masks are a familiar and vivid element in many folk and traditional pageants, ceremonies, rituals and festivals, and are often of an ancient origin. The mask is normally a part of a costume that adorns the whole body and embodies a tradition important to the religious and/or social life of the community as whole or a particular group within the community. Masks are used almost universally and maintain their power and mystery both for their wearers and their audience.The continued popularity of wearing masks at carnival, and for children at parties and for festivals such as Halloween are good examples. Nowadays these are usually mass-produced plastic masks, often associated with popular films, TV programmes or cartoon characters - they are, however, reminders of the enduring power of pretence and play and the power and appeal of masks.

Etc…

© 2014 Charles Webb

3.

Cinemorphing

Cinemorphic play in “real” situations (un-mediated/no camera “cinema” …open ended…”infinite game like”…) THE WAY WE DO IT…THESE MUST OCCUR SECRETLY…IT MUST NEVER BE REVEALED THAT ANYTHING IS BEING STAGED IN THE PUBLIC PLACES FULL OF NON-PLAYERS (THAT OUR PLAYERS MAY INTERACT WITH) WHERE WE WILL PERFORM OUR SCENARIOS. THESE ARE NOT PROTESTS, INTERVENTIONS OR OBVIOUS SITUATIONIST-LIKE PRANKS. THEY ALWAYS APPEAR TO BE “REAL LIFE”. WE WILL LEAVE NO TRACE.

THE ABOVE HAS TO DO WITH THE FORM OF THE PLAYING. NEXT…THE CONTENT OF THE CHARACTERS AND STAGED SITUATION (THE MOST IMPORTANT THING FOR OUR PROJECT)…MUST BE CONSIDERED.

Related Forms

Links:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_theater

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happening
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_action_role-playing_game
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternate_reality_game
(Important for Cinemorphics. Please see Alternate Reality Gaming page for detailed discussion.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnival

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Improv_Everywhere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cacophony_Society

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burning_Man

http://eyesonbrazil.com/2008/06/05/first-there-was-burning-man/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_walk

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosplay

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporary_Autonomous_Zone

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commedia_dell%27arte

http://citizencinema.net/direct-action/

INVISIBLE THEATER

Invisible theatre is a form of theatrical performance that is enacted in a place where people would not normally expect to see one (for example in the street or in a shopping centre) and often with the performers attempting to disguise the fact that it is a performance from those who observe and who may choose to participate in it, thus leading spectators to view it as a real, unstaged event. The Brazilian theater practitioner Augusto Boal & Panagiotis Assimakopoulos developed the form during his time in Argentina in the 1970s as part of his Theater of the Oppressed, which focused on oppression and social issues. Boal went on to develop forum theater.^[1]

A similar form of "micro-theater" was portrayed by Samuel R. Delany in his science-fiction novel Triton. The leader of the 'micro-theater' was a woman named "The Spike".^[2]

Purpose

The purpose of invisible theatre is to make a point publicly in much the same motivational vein as graffiti or political demonstration, or it may be done in order to help actors gain a sense of what a realistic reaction might be to a certain scenario; for example, a heated argument over a political or social issue. This type of theatre is performed in public with unexpected bystanders, whom the actors will try to get unknowingly involved in the scene.

Common misconceptions

A common mistake is that Invisible Theatre is punking or joking as shown in the television shows Candid Camera and Punk'd.. This is a gross mistake. Invisible Theatre is all about showing oppression in everyday life, in an everyday setting, without the audience or Spect-actors knowing. Punking and invisible "jokes" are completely different art form.

Some believe an example of Invisible Theatre is that of the group "Improv Everywhere." Improv Everywhere is an organization of people who collaborate online to pull a mass prank on unsuspecting pedestrians and bystanders. For example 200 members organized themselves to all appear in Grand Central Station in New York and just freeze in the middle of the walkway. All 200 members just stood there frozen as onlookers watched them in confusion. Since the onlookers were unaware that these were really actors who had reorganized themselves, some consider it Invisible Theater but really it is closer to punking, as it has nothing to do with oppression.

Another false conception is that the Free Hugs Campaign started by Juan Mann demonstrates Invisible Theatre. People would hold up "FREE HUGS" signs and strangers walking by were able to get hugs for free. This could be considered Invisible Theatre, as it is not a joke or a punk, but again as it has no basis in oppression it is not Invisible Theatre.

Comparison to happenings

"Happenings" are events that occur for a brief moment of time and are planned out. They are used to create awareness about an issue without the audience knowing what is happening. The events usually take place in lofts, streets or alley ways. The events are usually scripted but the audience is unaware of this.^[3]

Boal is actually quite clear in Tecnicas latinoamericanas de teatro popular that invisible theater and happenings are distinct: "El teatro invisible no debe ser confundido con el happening, que es un hecho teatral insólito, caótico, en que todo puede ocurrir, anárquicamente. [Invisible theater must not be confused with the happening, which is an unusual theatrical event, chaotic, in which everything can occur, anarchically.]" ^[4]

HAPPENINGS

A happening is a performance, event or situation meant to be considered art, usually as performance art. Happenings occur anywhere and are often multi-disciplinary, with a nonlinear narrative and the active participation of the audience. Key elements of happenings are planned, and artists sometimes keep room for improvisation. This new media art aspect to happenings eliminates the boundary between the artwork and its viewer.

In the late 1960s, perhaps due to the depiction in films of hippie culture, the term was much less specifically used to mean any gathering of interest from a pool hall meetup or a jamming of a few young people to a beer blast or fancy formal party.

History

Origins

Allan Kaprow first coined the term "happening" in the spring of 1957 at an art picnic at George Segal's farm to describe the art pieces that were going on.^{[1] The first appearance in print was in Kaprow's famous "Legacy of Jackson Pollock" essay that was published in 1958 but primarily written in 1956. "Happening" also appeared in print in one issue of the Rutgers University undergraduate literary magazine, Anthologist}.^{[2] The form was imitated and the term was adopted by artists across the U.S., Germany, and Japan. Jack Kerouac referred to Kaprow as "The Happenings man", and an ad showing a woman floating in outer space declared, "I dreamt I was in a happening in my Maidenform brassiere".}

Happenings are difficult to describe, in part because each one is unique and completely different from one another. One definition comes from Wardrip-Fruin and Montfort in The New Media Reader, "The term "Happening" has been used to describe many performances and events, organized by Allan Kaprow and others during the 1950s and 1960s, including a number of theatrical productions that were traditionally scripted and invited only limited audience interaction."^{[3] Another definition is, "a purposefully composed form of theatre in which diverse alogical elements, including nonmatrixed performing, are organized in a compartmented structure".[4] A "Happening" of the same performance will have different outcomes because each performance depends on the action of the audience. In New York City especially, "Happenings" became quite popular even though many have neither seen nor experienced them.}

Happenings can be a form of participatory new media art, emphasizing an interaction between the performer and the audience. Breaking the fourth wall between performer and spectator, it replaces criticism with support. For some happenings, everyone present is included in the making of the art and even the form of the art depends on audience engagement, for they are a key factor in where the performers' spontaneity leads. Later happenings had no set rules, only vague guidelines that the performers follow based on surrounding props. Unlike other forms of art, Happenings that allow chance to enter are ever-changing. When chance determines the path the performance will follow, there is no room for failure. As Kaprow wrote in his essay, "'Happenings' in the New York Scene", "Visitors to a Happening are now and then not sure what has taken place, when it has ended, even when things have gone 'wrong'. For when something goes 'wrong', something far more 'right,' more revelatory, has many times emerged".^{[5][full citation needed]} The art thrives on an artist's whim, with the comfort of giving their mistakes the benefit of the doubt. The art defines itself by the fact that it is a unique, one-time experience that depends on audience response. It cannot be bought or brought home, which entitles every Happening artist to a sense of privacy. As Kaprow explains in the aforementioned essay, since the performances are always different, each one of these artists cannot lose their creative drive to a mainstream force.

Kaprow’s piece 18 Happenings in 6 Parts (1959) is commonly cited as the first happening,^{[by whom?]} although that distinction is sometimes given to a 1952 performance of Theater Piece No. 1 at Black Mountain College by John Cage, one of Kaprow's teachers in the mid-1950s. Cage stood reading from a ladder, Charles Olson read from another ladder, Robert Rauschenberg showed some of his paintings and played wax cylinders of Édith Piaf on an Edison horn recorder, David Tudor performed on a prepared piano and Merce Cunningham danced.^{[6] All these things took place at the same time, among the audience rather than on a stage. Happenings flourished in New York City in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Key contributors to the form included Carolee Schneemann, Red Grooms, Robert Whitman, Jim Dine Car Crash},^{[7] Claes Oldenburg, Robert Delford Brown, Lucas Samaras, and Robert Rauschenberg. Some of their work is documented in Michael Kirby's book Happenings} (1966).^{[8] Interestingly, Kaprow claimed that "some of us will become famous, and we will have proven once again that the only success occurred when there was a lack of it". (New Media Reader, p 87)[full citation needed]}

During the summer of 1959, Red Grooms along with others (Yvonne Andersen, Bill Barrell, Sylvia Small and Dominic Falcone) staged the non-narrative "play" Walking Man, which began with construction sounds, such as sawing. Grooms recalls, "The curtains were opened by me, playing a fireman wearing a simple costume of white pants and T-shirt with a poncholike cloak and a Smokey Stoverish fireman's helmet. Bill, the 'star' in a tall hat and black overcoat, walked back and forth across the stage with great wooden gestures. Yvonne sat on the floor by a suspended fire engine. She was a blind woman with tin-foil covered glasses and cup. Sylvia played a radio and pulled on hanging junk. For the finale, I hid behand a false door and shouted pop code words. Then the cast did a wild run around and it ended".^{[9] Dubbing his 148 Delancey Street studio The Delancey Street Museum, Grooms staged three more happenings there, A Garden}, The Burning Building and The Magic Trainride (originally titled Fireman's Dream). No wonder Kaprow called Grooms "a Charlie Chaplin forever dreaming about fire".^{[9] On the opening night of The Burning Building}, Bob Thompson solicited an audience member for a light, since none of the cast had one, and this gesture of spontaneous theater recurred in eight subsequent performances.^[9]

The Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama staged nude happenings during the late '60s in New York City.^[10][11]

Difference from plays

Happenings emphasize the organic connection between art and its environment. Kaprow supports that "happenings invite us to cast aside for a moment these proper manners and partake wholly in the real nature of the art and life. It is a rough and sudden act, where one often feels "dirty", and dirt, we might begin to realize, is also organic and fertile, and everything including the visitors can grow a little into such circumstances." Secondly, happenings have no plot or philosophy, but rather is materialized in an improvisatory fashion. There is no direction thus the outcome is unpredictable. "It is generated in action by a headful of ideas...and it frequently has words but they may or may not make literal sense. If they do, their meaning is not representational of what the whole element conveys. Hence they carry a brief, detached quality. If they do not make sense, then they are acknowledgement of the sound of the word rather than the meaning conveyed by it." Last, due to the convention's nature, there is no such term as "failure" which can be applied. "For when something goes "wrong", something far more "right", more revelatory may emerge. This sort of sudden near-miracle presently is made more likely by chance procedures." As a conclusion, a happening is fresh while it lasts and cannot be reproduced (Wardrip-Fruin, 86).^{[full citation needed]}

Regarding happenings, Red Grooms has remarked, "I had the sense that I knew it was something. I knew it was something because I didn't know what it was. I think that's when you're at your best point. When you're really doing something, you're doing it all out, but you don't know what it is."^[9]

The lack of plot as well as the expected audience participation can be likened to Augusto Boal's Theater of the Oppressed, which also claims that "spectator is a bad word". Boal expected audience members to participate in the theater of the oppressed by becoming the actors. His goal was to allow the downtrodden to act out the forces oppressing them in order to mobilize the people into political action. Both Kaprow and Boal are reinventing theater to try to make plays more interactive and to abolish the traditional narrative form to make theater something more free-form and organic.^[13]

Contribution toward digital media

Allan Kaprow's and other artists of the 1950s and 1960s that performed these Happenings helped put "new media technology developments into context".^{[this quote needs a citation]} It was highly influential in true intermedia work and the interactivity in art.^{[citation needed]} The Happenings allowed other artists to create performances that would attract attention to the issue they wanted to portray. Digital media examples of Happenings could be as simple as artists creating a webpage about their issues or going on to blogs, forums and other networks that they could send mass art and information through.^{[citation needed]} Currently happenings today can be found with Jazz in a whole new way through the artistic collaboration of renowned musicians American saxophonist David Liebman, French jazz pianist Jean-Marie Machado, and multimedia visual artist Barbara Januszkiewicz. their group Jazz Vision Trio^{[14] is using new media techniques and real-time improvising with jazz and art. Samples of this mixing music and art can be found on YouTube.[citation needed]} Dave Liebman a NEA 2011 Jazz master is a perfect example of a forward-thinking player whose advanced style and association with Miles Davis makes him one of the most influential jazz musicians of his era.^{[citation needed]} He recalls mixing it up with the happenings in and around New York in the 1960s.^{[this quote needs a citation]} It is like visiting an old idea but making it new again.^{[citation needed]}

Around the world

In 1959 the French artist Yves Klein first performed Zone de Sensibilité Picturale Immatérielle. The work involved the sale of documentation of ownership of empty space (the Immaterial Zone), taking the form of a cheque, in exchange for gold; if the buyer wished, the piece could then be completed in an elaborate ritual in which the buyer would burn the cheque, and Klein would throw half of the gold into the Seine.^{[15] The ritual would be performed in the presence of an art critic or distinguished dealer, an art museum director and at least two witnesses.[15]}

In 1960, Jean-Jacques Lebel oversaw and partook in the first European Happening L'enterrement de la Chose in Venice. For his performance there - called Happening Funeral Ceremony of the Anti-Process - Lebel invited the audience to attend a ceremony in formal dress. In a decorated room within a grand residence, a draped 'cadaver' rested on a plinth which was then ritually stabbed by an 'executioner' while a 'service' was read consisting of extracts from the French décadent writer Joris-Karl Huysmans and le Marquis de Sade. Then pall-bearers carried the coffin out into a gondola and the 'body' - which was in fact a mechanical sculpture by Jean Tinguely - was ceremonially slid into the canal.^[16]

Poet and painter Adrian Henri claimed to have organized the first happenings in England in Liverpool in 1962,^{[17] taking place during the Merseyside Arts Festival.[18] The most important event in London was the Albert Hall “International Poetry Incarnation” on June 11, 1965, where an audience of 7,000 people witnessed and participated in performances by some of the leading avant-garde} young British and American poets of the day (see British Poetry Revival and Poetry of the United States). One of the participants, Jeff Nuttall, went on to organize a number of further happenings, often working with his friend Bob Cobbing, sound poet and performance poet.

In Tokyo in 1964, Yoko Ono created a happening by performing her "Cut Piece" at the Sogetsu Art Center. She walked onto the stage draped in fabric, presented the audience with a pair of scissors, and instructed the audience to cut the fabric away gradually until the performer decides they should stop.^[19]

In Belgium, the first happenings were organized around 1965–1968 in Antwerp, Brussels and Ostend by artists Hugo Heyrman and Panamarenko.

In the Netherlands,the first documented happening took place in 1961, with the Dutch artist and performer Wim T. Schippers emptying a bottle of soda water in the North Sea near Petten. Later on, he organized random walks in the Amsterdam City Centre. Provo organized happenings around the little statue "Het Lieverdje" on the Spui, a square in the centre of Amsterdam, from 1966 till 1968. Police often raided these events.

In the 1960s Joseph Beuys, Wolf Vostell, Nam June Paik, Charlotte Moorman, Dick Higgins, and HA Schult staged Happenings in Germany.

In Australia, the Yellow House Artist Collective in Sydney housed 24-hour happenings throughout the early 1970s.

Behind the Iron Curtain, in Poland, artist and theater director Tadeusz Kantor staged the first happenings starting in 1965. Also, in the second half of 1980s, a student-based happening movement Orange Alternative founded by Major Waldemar Fydrych became known for its much attended happenings (over 10 thousand participants at one time) aimed against the military regime led by General Jaruzelski and the fear blocking the Polish society ever since the Martial Law had been imposed in December 1981.

Since 1993 the artist Jens Galschiøt have made political happenings all over the world, in November 1993 he made the happening my inner beast where twenty sculptures were erected within 55 hours without the knowledge of the authorities all over Europe. Pillar of Shame is a series of Galschiøt's sculptures. The first was erected in Hong Kong on 4 June 1997, ahead of the handover from British to Chinese rule on 1 July 1997, as a protest against China's crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. On 1 May 1999, a Pillar of Shame was set up on the Zócalo^{[20] in Mexico City. It stood for two days in front of the Parliament to protest the oppression of the region's indigenous people.}

The non-profit, artist-run organization, iKatun,^{[21] has reflected the use of "Happenings" influence while incorporating the medium of internet. They aim is one that "fosters public engagement in the politics of information".[full citation needed]} Their project entitled The International Database of Corporate Commands presents a scrutinizing look at the super-saturating advertisements slogans, and "commands" of companies. "The Institute for Infinitely Small Things uses these commands to conduct research performances- performances in which we attempt to enact, as literally as possible, what the command tells us to do and where it tells us to do it. For example, a user may look at a long list of slogans on the website database section, and may submit, in text, his or her take on the most literal way to act out the slogan/ command. The iKatun team will then act out the slogan in a research-performance related way. This means of performance art draws on the collaboration of the web world and tangible reality to conduct a new, modern Happening.^[22]

Modern happenings

• Flash mob
• Improv Everywhere
• Performance art
• Zombie walk
• Subway party
• International Pillow Fight Day
• Silent Disco

LIVE ACTION ROLE PLAYING GAMES (LARP)


A live action role-playing game (LARP) is a form of role-playing game where the participants physically act out their characters' actions. The players pursue goals within a fictional setting represented by the real world while interacting with each other in character. The outcome of player actions may be mediated by game rules or determined by consensus among players. Event arrangers called gamemasters decide the setting and rules to be used and facilitate play.
The first LARPs were run in the late 1970s, inspired by tabletop role-playing games and genre fiction. The activity spread internationally during the 1980s and has diversified into a wide variety of styles. Play may be very game-like or may be more concerned with dramatic or artistic expression. Events can also be designed to achieve educational or political goals. The fictional genres used vary greatly, from realistic modern or historical settings to fantastic or futuristic eras. Production values are sometimes minimal, but can involve elaborate venues and costumes. LARPs range in size from small private events lasting a few hours to large public events with thousands of players lasting for days.
History

Main article: History of live action role-playing games

LARP does not have a single point of origin, but was invented independently by groups in North America, Europe, and Australia.^[20] These groups shared an experience with genre fiction or tabletop role-playing games, and a desire to physically experience such settings. In addition to tabletop role-playing, LARP is rooted in childhood games of make believe, play fighting, costume parties, roleplay simulations, Commedia dell'arte, improvisational theatre, psychodrama, military simulations, and historical reenactment groups such as the Society for Creative Anachronism.^[21]
Purpose
Today, LARP is a widespread activity internationally. Games with thousands of participants are run by for-profit companies, and a small industry exists to sell costume, armour and foam weapons intended primarily for LARP.^[34]

Most LARPs are intended as games for entertainment. Enjoyable aspects can include the collaborative creation of a story, the attempt to overcome challenges in pursuit of a character's objectives, and a sense of immersion in a fictional setting.^[35] LARPs may also include other game-like aspects such as intellectual puzzles, and sport-like aspects such as fighting with simulated weapons.
Some LARPs stress artistic considerations such as dramatic interaction or challenging subject matter. Avant-garde or arthaus events have especially experimental approaches and high culture aspirations and are occasionally held in fine-art contexts such as festivals or art museums. The themes of avant-garde events often include politics, culture, religion, sexuality and the human condition. Such LARPs are common in the Nordic countries but also present elsewhere.^[36][37]
In addition to entertainment and artistic merit, LARP events may be designed for educational or political purposes. For example, the Danish secondary school Østerskov Efterskole uses LARP to teach most of its classes.^[38] Language classes can be taught by immersing students in a role-playing scenario in which they are forced to improvise speech or writing in the language they are learning.^[39] Politically themed LARP events may attempt to awaken or shape political thinking within a culture.^[40][41]

Because LARP involves a controlled artificial environment within which people interact, it has sometimes been used as a research tool to test theories in social fields such as economics or law. For example, LARP has been used to study the application of game theory to the development of criminal law.^[42]Fiction and reality
During a LARP, player actions in the real world represent character actions in an imaginary setting.^[4] Game rules, physical symbols and theatrical improvisation are used to bridge differences between the real world and the setting. For example, a rope could signify an imaginary wall. Realistic-looking weapon props and risky physical activity are sometimes discouraged or forbidden for safety reasons.^[43] While the fictional timeline in a tabletop RPG often progresses in game-time, which may be much faster or slower than the time passing for players, LARPs are different in that they usually run in real-time, with game-time only being used in special circumstances.^[44]

There is a distinction between when a player is in character, meaning they are actively representing their character, and when the player is out-of-character, meaning they are being themselves. Some LARPs encourage players to stay consistently in character except in emergencies, while others accept players being out-of-character at times.^[45] In a LARP, it is usually assumed that players are speaking and acting in character unless otherwise noted, which is the opposite of normal practice in tabletop role-playing games.^[46] Character knowledge is usually considered to be separate from player knowledge, and acting upon information a character would not know may be viewed as cheating.
Cultural significance
While most LARPs maintain a clear distinction between the real world and the fictional setting, pervasive LARPs mingle fiction with modern reality in a fashion similar to alternate reality games. Bystanders who are unaware that a game is taking place may be treated as part of the fictional setting, and in-character materials may be incorporated into the real world.^[47][48]
Roleplaying may be seen as part of a movement in Western culture towards participatory arts, as opposed to traditional spectator arts.^[64] Participants in a LARP cast off the role of passive observer and take on new roles that are often outside of their daily life and contrary to their culture.^[65] The arrangers of a LARP and the other participants act as co-creators of the game.^[66] This collaborative process of creating shared fictional worlds may be associated with a broader burgeoning "geek" culture in developed societies that is in turn associated with prolonged education, high uptake of information technology and increased leisure time.^[67] In comparison to the mainstream video-game industry, which is highly commercialized and often marketed towards a male audience, LARP is less commoditized, and women actively contribute as authors and participants.^[68]
LARP is not well known in most countries and is sometimes confused with other role-playing, reenactment, costuming, or dramatic activities. While fan and gamer culture in general has become increasingly mainstream in developed countries, LARP has often not achieved the same degree of cultural acceptability. This may be due to intolerance of the resemblance to childhood games of pretend, a perceived risk of over-identification with the characters, and the absence of mass marketing.^[69][70] In US films such as the 2006 documentary Darkon, the 2007 documentary Monster Camp, and the 2008 comedy Role Models, fantasy LARP is depicted as somewhat ridiculous and escapist, but also treated affectionately as a "constructive social outlet".^[71][72][73] In the Nordic countries, LARP has achieved a high level of public recognition and popularity. It is often shown in a positive light in mainstream media, with an emphasis on the dramatic and creative aspects.^[74] However, even in Norway, where LARP has greater recognition than in most other countries, it has still not achieved full recognition as a cultural activity by government bodies.^[75]
Communities have formed around the creation, play and discussion of LARP. These communities have developed a subculture that crosses over with role-playing, fan, reenactment, and drama subcultures.^[69][76] Early LARP subculture focused on Tolkien-like fantasy, but it later broadened to include appreciation of other genres, especially the horror genre with the rapid uptake of the World of Darkness setting in the 1990s.^[76][77] Like many subcultures, LARP groups often have a common context of shared experience, language, humour, and clothing that can be regarded by some as a lifestyle.^[69]
LARP has been a subject of academic research and theory. Much of this research originates from role-players, especially from the publications of the Nordic Knutepunkt role-playing conventions.^[78] The broader academic community has recently begun to study LARP as well, both to compare it to other media and other varieties of interactive gaming, and also to evaluate it in its own right.^[47][79]
It has been speculated that LARP may one day evolve into a major industry in the form of location-based games using ubiquitous computing.^[80]

CARNIVAL

Carnival (often spelled Carnaval) is a festive season which occurs immediately before Lent; the main events are usually during February. Carnival typically involves a public celebration or parade combining some elements of a circus, mask and public street party. People often dress up or masquerade during the celebrations, which mark an overturning of the norms of daily life. In Germany and the Netherlands, the Carnival season is traditionally opened on 11/11 (often at 11:11 a.m.). This dates back to celebrations before the former longer Advent season (40 days now reduced to about four weeks), or with harvest celebrations of St. Martin's Day.
Carnival is traditionally held in areas with a large Catholic and to a lesser extent, Eastern Orthodox makeup. Protestant areas usually do not have Carnival celebrations or have modified traditions, such as the Danish Carnival or other Shrove Tuesday events. Conversely, the Philippines, though a predominantly Roman Catholic country, does not have Carnival celebrations because it has been culturally influenced by neighboring Asian nations, which do not have Carnival celebrations.^[1]

IMPROV EVERYWHERE

Improv Everywhere (often abbreviated IE) is a comedic performance art group based in New York City, formed in 2001 by Charlie Todd. Its slogan is "We Cause Scenes".

The group carries out pranks, which they call "missions", in public places. The stated goal of these missions is to cause scenes of "chaos and joy." Some of the group's missions use hundreds or even thousands of performers and are similar to flash mobs, while other missions utilize only a handful of performers. Improv Everywhere has stated that they do not identify their work with the term flash mob, in part because the group was created two years prior to the flash mob trend.^[1]

While Improv Everywhere was created years before YouTube, the group has grown in notoriety since joining the site in April of 2006. To date, Improv Everywhere's videos have been viewed over 350 million times on YouTube.^{[2] They have over 1.6 million YouTube[2] subscribers. In 2007, the group shot a television pilot for NBC.[3] In May 2009, Harper Collins released a book about Improv Everywhere, Causing a Scene[4] The book, written by founder Charlie Todd and senior agent} Alex Scordelis, is a behind-the-scenes look at some of the group's stunts. In 2013, a feature length documentary about Improv Everywhere premiered at the South By Southwest Festival in Austin, Texas. The film, titled We Cause Scenes, was released digitally on iTunes and other platforms in January of 2014.^[5]

Background

After graduating from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,^{[6] Todd started the group in August 2001 after playing a prank in a Manhattan bar with some friends that involved him pretending to be musician Ben Folds.[7] Later that year Todd started taking classes at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York City where he first met most of the "Senior Agents" of Improv Everywhere. The owners of the theatre, The Upright Citizens Brigade (UCB), had a television series from 1998–2000 on Comedy Central. While primarily a sketch comedy show, the UCB often filmed their characters in public places with hidden cameras and showed the footage under the end credits. Both the UCB's show and their teachings on improv have been influential to Improv Everywhere.[1] Todd currently performs on a house team at the UCBT in New York, where he also taught for many years.[8]}

Missions / Events

While long-time members of Improv Everywhere are usually the principal performers in missions, many are open to the public.^{[1] IE has organized and carried out over 100 missions, from synchronized swimming in a park fountain to repeating a five-minute sequence of events in a Starbucks coffee shop over and over again for an hour, to having an actor pose as playwright Anton Chekhov and give an unauthorized staged reading at a Barnes & Noble one hundred years after his death. All the missions share a certain modus operandi}: Members ("agents") play their roles entirely straight, not breaking character or betraying that they are acting. IE claims the missions are benevolent, aiming to give the observers a laugh and a positive experience.^[9]

Improv Everywhere has been profiled by many national and international media outlets including The New York Times, The Today Show, and ABC's Nightline.^{[10][11] Todd was interviewed on an episode of This American Life} in 2005, and Improv Everywhere was also featured in the pilot episode for This American Life's television show on Showtime.^[12]

Frozen Grand Central

Improv Everywhere's most popular YouTube video is "Frozen Grand Central", which has received over 33 million views.^{[13] The two minute video depicts 200 IE Agents freezing in place simultaneously for five minutes in New York's Grand Central Terminal. The video was listed as number 49 in Urlesque's 100 Most Iconic Internet Videos.[14] Martin Bashir declared on Nightline that the video was "one of the funniest moments ever captured on tape."[15] According to Charlie Todd, the prank has been recreated by fans in 100 cities around the world.[16]}

The No Pants Subway Ride

The annual "No Pants Subway Ride" event involves a large number of people riding the subway, all claiming to have forgotten their pants by accident and not to know each other. The event started in 2002 with only seven participants and has grown into an international phenomenon involving thousands of participants around the world. During a No Pants mission on 22 January 2006, the New York City Police Department handcuffed eight members of the group while on the subway (according to the group, over 160 people had participated in the city-wide event). The eight handcuffed participants had been riding the 6 train and were taken into custody and issued summonses for disorderly conduct. After appearing in court, the charges were dismissed.^{[17] Despite the setback, IE continued the tradition each January, and in more recent years, the police have arrived at the event's meeting point not to make arrests, but to serve as friendly escorts. On January 12, 2014, over 4,000 people participated in the No Pants Subway Ride in New York, and thousands more participated in 60 additional cities in over 25 countries around the world. Todd has stated that the No Pants Subway Ride has evolved from a small prank into an "international celebration of silliness".[18]}

Fake U2 Concert

On 21 May 2005 IE staged a fake U2 street concert on a rooftop in New York hours before the real U2 were scheduled to perform at Madison Square Garden.^{[19] A crowd formed, most of which thought that the people on the rooftop were actually U2. However, just like at the filming of the band's Where the Streets Have No Name} video in 1987, the police eventually shut the performance down, but not before IE was able to exhaust their four-song repertoire and get most of the way through an encore repeat of "Vertigo". The crowd, even those who had realized that this was a prank, shouted "one more song!," and then "let them play!" when the police officers arrived. This mission was number 23 on the VH1 countdown of the "40 Greatest Pranks."^[20]

Best Buy Uniform Prank

During the Best Buy Uniform prank mission, an 80-person IE team entered a Best Buy store dressed in blue shirts and khaki pants—the uniform colors of Best Buy employees—and answered questions for customers (though denying being an employee of Best Buy if asked). While many of the store's actual employees laughed and took photos of the pranksters, the store's management called the police. After assessing the situation the police informed the Best Buy staff that they could not do anything except ask the IE agents to leave the store as there was nothing illegal about wearing a blue polo shirt with khaki pants.^[21]

Further readings

• Charlie Todd and Alex Scordelis, Causing a Scene, Harper Collins, 2009

CACOPHONY SOCIETY

The Cacophony Society “ is a randomly gathered network of free spirits united in the pursuit of experiences beyond the pale of mainstream society.” It was started in 1986 by surviving members of the now dead Suicide Club of San Francisco.^[1]

Cacophony has been described as an indirect culture jamming outgrowth of the Dada movement, and the Situationists. One of its central concepts is the Trip to the Zone, or Zone Trip, inspired by the 1979 Film Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky.

According to self-designated members of the Society, “you may already be a member.” The anarchic nature of the Society means that membership is left open-ended and anyone may sponsor an event, though not every idea pitched garners attendance by members. Cacophony events often involve costumes and pranks in public places and sometimes going into places that are generally off limits to the public. Cacophonists have been known to regale Christmas shoppers with improved Christmas carols while dressed as Santa Claus, and later invite strippers to sit on Santa's lap (SantaCon).

San Francisco chapter

Members of the Cacophony Society's first group were also the primary organizers of the annual Burning Man festival after Cacophony co-founder John Law attended its previous incarnation as an as-yet-unnamed beach party at Baker Beach in 1988 and publicized the 1989 event in the Cacophony Society newsletter. Cacophonist Kevin Evans conceived of Zone Trip #4 in 1990 and organized it with John Law and Michael Mikel, publicizing it in the newsletter as "A Bad Day at Black Rock". Larry Harvey and Jerry James were subsequently invited to bring their effigy along, after they were prevented from burning it on the beach by law enforcement. Other events created by the Society are: the Atomic Cafe, the Chinese New Year’s Treasure Hunt, the picnic on the Golden Gate Bridge, the Brides of March, Urban Iditarod, and the Sewer Walk. After a lull in activity in the San Francisco branch of the society in the late 1990s and the cessation of publication of that chapter’s monthly newsletter Rough Draft listing of events for the San Francisco Cacophony Society (172 issues were produced during the years 1986 to 2001), a group of subscribers to the practically defunct society’s email discussion list became active under the Cacophony Society aegis following a mock Pigeon Roast put on by a fictitious organization calling itself "Bay Area Rotisserie Friends" in San Francisco’s Union Square in 2000 proposed by Drunken Consumptive Panda. This new group of Cacophonists is occasionally referred to by its members as Cacophony 2.0 and emphasize their chaotic, ebullient spirit with the motto “If you don’t live it, it won’t come out your [bull]horn.” The Society’s newsletter was briefly revived under the name 2econd Draft.

In 2013 Kevin Evans, Carrie Galbraith and John Law co-authored "Tales of the San Francisco Cacophony Society",^[2] a book published by Last Gasp.

In 2013 a digitized collection of The San Francisco Cacophony Society's Rough Draft newsletters was uploaded to Internet Archive.^[3]

Los Angeles chapter

The Los Angeles branch of the society listed events in their monthly newsletter, "Tales from the Zone." After several years of mailing out monthly newsletters, they switched to an on-line newsletter format. The events produced by the Los Angeles branch often pushed the boundaries of pranksterism with several historic events, including "Cement Cuddlers," an event where they filled a dozen teddy bears with cement and put them on toy store shelves, complete with bar-coded labels; "Pet Cemetery Bingo"; "The Crucifixion of the Easter Bunny"; and "Klowns against Commerce," which tested the limits to which a clown could abuse businessmen in downtown Los Angeles before being assaulted or arrested.

The Los Angeles group splintered in late 2000 when longtime leader Reverend Al declared a "bold new direction" for the branch and allegedly joined an Orthodox Christian community out of guilt over the deaths of two young Cacophonists who reportedly died in a drunken post-event car accident (though one of the men eventually turned out to be completely fictitious, and the other, Peter "Mr. Outer Space" Geiberger, was discovered some months later, alive and well and quite amused at tumult resulting from his 'death'. On September 13, 2006 Geiberger actually died, which proved somewhat anticlimactic in light of the elaborate mourning of his initial "passing.") In 2005 Reverend Al resurfaced as Dr. A.P. Ridenour, leader of a safety consciousness organization, The Art of Bleeding, along with several members of the Orthodox faction of Los Angeles Cacophony.

In 2008, The Los Angeles Cacophony Society was revived by San Francisco Cacophonist Heathervescent and Rev. Borfo with Michael Mikel's Blessing. These events included Cacophony classics like the Brides of March and Santacon as well as new events: Xmas in July, The Caveman Picnic, the LA Marathon Zombie Stop and zone trips to San Pedro's Sunken City, LAX-T, Salvation Mountain and beyond.

Portland chapter

By the mid-90s, Cacophony had spread to four major centers along the American west coast.^{[citation needed]} In 1996, Portland Cacophony hosted the infamous first Naughty Santa rampage to take place outside of San Francisco.^[4] This was the first use of the term "SantaCon". The arrival of the planeload of Santas was met by Portland's police in riot gear, as someone in the SFPD had sent word ahead.^[5] Swift, thoughtful and very friendly action by Santa Melmoth, inviting the nice police along for the fun, kept confrontations to a minimum. The weekend resulted in only one arrest - involving a gift wrapped in a Playboy centerfold given to someone without checking the recipient's ID to make sure he was over 18.^[6]

For several years Portland Caco took responsibility for the Disgruntled Postal Workers - a group of surly, heavily armed people in postal uniforms who, when they felt like it, delivered newspapers and other forms of "mail" at the Burning Man annual festival, until the Burning Man organizers outlawed their guns (which, reportedly,^{[citation needed]} made some of them even more disgruntled). A kinder - gentler BRCPO (Black Rock City Post Office) which actually delivers and sends US postal mail from and to the Burning Man event (with their own BRCPO postmark by special arrangement from the US Postmaster^{[citation needed]}), is still run by PDX Cacophony associates.^{[citation needed]}

Other favorite events include; Stripper Bingo, Goodwill Hunting, Brides of March, Rest Stop at the Shamrock Run, Mondo Croquet, the Nuclear Family Picnic, the Ice Cream Anti-Social, Kindergarten Art in the Pearl, the Great Pumpkin Shoot, Spam Poetry Readings, Mutant Toy Workshops and SantaCon events throughout the year.

Costumed bar crawl events, notably Plunderathon, have been run with PDX Cacophony member support in association with Drunken Rampage, The Alter-Egos Society, and other groups.

Many individual members quietly conduct their own small D.I.Y. splinter missions, culture jams, zone trips, happenings, reverse shopping and "art projects" that do not require mass group participation or attract widespread attention.

Possibly the most widely known Cacophony member is novelist Chuck Palahniuk, who has mentioned his experiences with the Society in his writings, notably the book Fugitives and Refugees: A Walk in Portland, Oregon.^[7] He used the Cacophony Society as the basis for the fictional organization Project Mayhem in his novel Fight Club.^{[citation needed]} Palahniuk himself was pranked by a gang of Cacophonist waiters at one of his book readings in San Francisco.^[8]

Other chapters

Even as "official" Cacophony activity was dying down in San Fransico and Los Angeles, Caco chapters continued to spring up in other US cities and in other countries. Cacophony chapters are now or have been active in about two dozen North American cities and in at least a half dozen other countries. The Santas have been seen in Antarctica.

Smells Like Cacophony

Many activities have been inspired by Cacophony and vice versa. Although in San Francisco the 'official' Cacophony label is presently not used often, Zombie attacks, Peewee Herman day (commemorating Paul Reubens' arrest in a pornographic theater) and other goofs are alive and well. The Santa rampages, which many believe have devolved into simple pub crawls, have been largely disassociated from Cacophony. Periodically, clowns, bunnies, zombies, whores and others have staged anti-Santa activities, to shake things up (sometimes called counter-culture jamming). Another example of counter-culture-jamming was Smiley Man, a neon prank installed secretly on the Man at Burning Man 1996, the last year that Cacophony founder John Law was Director of Operations at Burning Man, before control of the festival was taken over by a new corporation headed by one of the other founders, Larry Harvey. John Law had been responsible for the original neon on the Man, six years earlier.

Flash mob activities share some ideas with Cacophony, as well as groups like Improv Everywhere and movements like Discordianism. The Society also has links to the Church of the SubGenius and the annual Saint Stupid's Day Parade held on April 1 in San Francisco, sponsored by Bishop Joey (AKA Ed Holmes) and to the Billboard Liberation Front a group of artist/pranksters responsible for many infamous billboard alterations. Urban Explorers also have taken some inspiration from early Cacophony events such as the Sewer Walks.

Commedia dell’arte

Commedia dell’arte (Italian pronunciation: [komˈmɛːdja delˈlarte]) is a form of theatre characterized by masked “types” which began in Italy in the 16th century and was responsible for the advent of the actresses and improvised performances based on sketches or scenarios. The closest translation of the name is “comedy of craft”; it is shortened from commedia dell’arte all’improvviso, or “comedy of the very creative ability of improvisation”. Here, arte does not refer to “art” as we currently consider the word, but rather to that which is made by artigiani (artisans).^[1] In fact, the term arte was coined much later, for in the early period the term used in contemporary accounts is commedia all'improviso. This was to distinguish the form from commedia erudita or learned comedy that was written by academics and performed by amateurs. Commedia dell’arte, conversely, was performed by professional actors (comici) who perfected a specific role or mask.

Italian theater historians, such as Roberto Tessari, Ferdinando Taviani, and Luciano Pinto, believe commedia was a response to the political and economic crisis of the 16th century and, as a consequence, became the first entirely professional form of theater.
The performers played on outside, temporary stages, and relied on various props (robbe) in place of extensive scenery. The better troupes were patronized by nobility, and during carnival period might be funded by the various towns or cities, in which they played. Extra funds were received by donations (essentially passing the hat) so anyone could view the performance free of charge. Key to the success of the commedia was the ability of the performers to travel to achieve fame and financial success. The most successful troupes performed before kings and nobility allowing individual actors, such as Isabella Andreini, her daughter-in-law Virginia Ramponi-Andreini, and Dionisio Martinelli, to become well known.
The characters of the commedia usually represent fixed social types, stock characters, such as foolish old men, devious servants, or military officers full of false bravado. Characters such as Pantalone, the miserly Venetian merchant; Dottore Gratiano, the pedant from Bologna; or Arlecchino, the mischievous servant from Bergamo, began as satires on Italian “types” and became the archetypes of many of the favorite characters of 17th- and 18th-century European theatre.
The commedia’s genesis may be related to carnival in Venice, where by 1570 the author/actor Andrea Calmo had created the character Il Magnifico, the precursor to the vecchio (old man) Pantalone. In the Flaminio Scala scenari for example, Il Magnifico persists and is interchangeable with Pantalone, into the seventeenth century. While Calmo's characters (which also included the Spanish Capitano and a dottore type) were not masked, it is uncertain at what point the characters donned the mask. However, the connection to carnival (the period between Epiphany and Ash Wednesday) would suggest that masking was a convention of carnival and was applied at some point. The tradition in Northern Italy is centred in Mantua, Florence, and Venice, where the major companies came under the aegis of the various dukes. Concomitantly, a Neapolitan tradition emerged in the south and featured the prominent stage figure Pulcinella. Pulcinella has been long associated with Naples, and derived into various types elsewhere—the most famous as the puppet character Punch (of the eponymous Punch and Judy shows) in England.

DIRECT ACTION CINEMA

by Rob Nilsson

Direct Action Cinema is…

…a practice created to allow actors and technicians high freedom and deep responsibility to create memorable cinema. It is a dynamic jazz ensemble of actors, camera, sound, directors, and editors that creates and interprets together, seeking the unexpected, the extraordinary, the miracles only a well-prepared combo can play.

·       Create a situation, define and develop a character. Combine the two and watch them collide, attract, and repel. Build drama from this dynamic, closer to the way life happens to us and we happen back.

·       Grow a narrative with the story spine hidden, accreting like a coral reef from within and according to its own inner energies.

·       Reject the ‘film as short story’ dictum promoted by Hollywood and the film schools. Smash the iron ball and chain of excessive plot. Create a poetic cinema based not on writing but on observing. Mistrust your ideas and trust your experiences. Discover, don’t prescribe.

·       Build a cinema not of auteurs but of interpreters. Film is not a director’s medium. The magicians who bottle the genie are the actors. The magician who lets the genie out of the bottle is the editor.

·       In acting - situations, rich discords, conflict, laughter, human dilemma, emotion.

·       In editing - a scavenger hunt for the miraculous.

·       Fear is the last barrier. Our path is towards our fear!

This is my Direct Action Manifesto, written 10 years before the days of Dogma. Then, as now, I ask myself where ideas, stories, and movies come from. We don’t know and yet we know. One way or the other, they just ‘occur’ to us. We look around us in the world. Something strikes a note. Then another and another and then there is a chord. And the chords and notes combine to make a pattern, which becomes a structure. And that structure works itself out and is called a poem, a song, a screenplay, a novel, a painting.

We don’t create what we know, although if the creation is going to be any good, we have to start with that. Young creators are constantly making the mistake of starting with ideas of exterior to their knowing. In this kind of creation, if it’s a movie, the movie becomes a movie about other movies, and the context is usually derivative and only occasionally interesting. The trick is to capture what we come to know as we work, dredging it up out of those mysterious swamps we usually traverse only in dreams.

Good creation always comes from the creator’s particular viewpoint, urgent hunch, or unexpected surmise, moving back and forth from inside urge to outside perception, and the end result is personal - a fingerprint - a unique, idiosyncratic statement peculiar to the creator’s mind only. And this seemingly tiny peculiarity is the thing that singles out the great from the mediocre, the unique from the commonplace.

I believe that everyone’s uniqueness, if wholly expressed, will have genius in it. My job as a filmmaker is to gather up the uniqueness of each person involved in the production and fashion it into a creation. I try to make that creation as much a reflection of my vision and taste as I can, taking into account all the critical input I can handle without losing sight of my own intentions.

Film is a great, unique gathering device, an apple barrel that holds all kind of delicious fruit. It is unique in that its gathering mechanism is random, eclectic, non-linear, intuitive, and wild, accepting of any and all input with much greater range than in theatre. In the production phase of cinema, there is almost nothing irrelevant. Anything might be used later in the cinema magician’s laboratory: the editing studio. As the early Russians pointed out, context is everything and the assembly of contexts a sort of infinite grab-baggery from the cosmos.

In my Direct Action lab the story which occurs to me, coming from God knows where, is only a starting point, a road map, a pithy suggestion of a juicy outcome. If I were writing a novel, I’d write it, edit it, worry it to death, and it would come from inside me, onto the page, and into your minds through the medium of language.

But if it’s a film, I have many more tricks up my sleeve, many more arrows in my quiver to employ, a totally different set of possibilities to explore, wider and more fertile collaborations to manage. My idea is: the more open my process in the beginning, the more options I will have for form, structure, and content in the end.

Therefore, I don’t write scripts. Most of the time. SIGNAL 7 and HEAT AND SUNLIGHT didn’t have scripts. STROKE, HUSHED, SINGING, and SCHEME, the new 9@NIGHT features, don’t have scripts. They have what I call scenarios: descriptions of a film idea, scene order, character suggestions. Rehearsals consist of improvising the character’s back story at great length, taking as much time as possible to give actors on-location experience (as opposed to intellectualized ideas) of their characters. The ideal is to do all of this out in the world in front of cameras. Then one day the back story ends and the film begins. Nothing changes, but now we’re making the movie. I have set the actors, cameras, art directors and other creators free into their cinematic world. I am still a sort of puppeteer, yes, but a puppeteer who wants to set the puppets free.

Wants to, but never quite does.

R. Nilsson

4.

Some Film Production Department Job Descriptions Relevant To Cinemorphics

Since Cinemorphics uses film production techniques and skills in its procedures and some workshop members may not be familiar with the various areas involved in putting together a movie, the following list of jobs and descriptions may provide some perspective.

Skills and techniques represented by the following film production departments may be effectively applied to Cinemorphics projects. The list does not include “in front of the camera” job descriptions and techniques (e.g. acting, method acting, actor coaching, workout trainer, etc.), but rather the “hidden” machinery of filmmaking so vital to the creation of the world of any given film. Technical departments (camera, sound, editing, etc.) are also not included, since the final product of a Cinemorphic production is not a film, but “real” life.

Executive Producer

The role of the Executive Producer is to oversee the work of the producer on behalf of the studio, the financiers or the distributors. They will ensure the film is completed on time, within budget, and to agreed artistic and technical standards. An Executive Producer may be a producer who has raised a significant proportion of a film's finance, or who has secured the underlying rights to the project. In major productions, the Executive Producer may be a representative or CEO of the film studio. In smaller companies or independent projects they may be the creator or writer.Typically, Executive Producers are not involved in the technical aspects of the filmmaking process, but have played a crucial financial or creative role in ensuring that the project goes into production. There may be several Executive Producers on a film who may take the lead role in a number of areas, such as development, financing or production.

Executive Producers must be excellent negotiators. They need a keen business sense, and an intimate knowledge of all aspects of film production, financing, marketing and distribution.
 

Producer

A Producer sets the situation for the production of a television show or movie.

A film Producer initiates, coordinates, supervises and controls all aspects of a production, from fundraising and hiring key personnel, to arranging for distributors. The Producer sees the project through to the end, from development to completion. Traditionally, the film Producer is considered the chief of staff while the director is in charge of the line. This "staff and line" organization mirrors that of most large corporations and the military. Under this arrangement, the Producer has overall control of the project and can terminate the director, but the director actually makes the film. It's the Producer who really authors a film. The Producer raises the money that pays for the film to be made, and is responsible for anything affecting the budget of the film. The Producer hires the director and the crew, manages the film through production and secures distribution for it when it is finished. In short, most of the time, it's the Producer who does the work to make a film happen. Good Producers are constantly on the lookout for material. Scripts, books, plays, news items, anything and everything these days can be turned into a movie. For every film they get made, a good Producer will have up to ten other scripts "in development". Some go for a wide spread of projects, others prefer to concentrate on one type of film that they can make their own. The advantages of having a slate of projects is obvious. It means you do not have all your fragile-skinned eggs in one basket. Remember: the development life of most scripts is several years.
 

Line Producer (Very relevant to Cinemorphics “productions”, hence the detail. Everyone using Cinemorphics should become their own Line Producer.))

The Line Producer is one of the first people to be employed on a film's production by the producer and executive producers. A Line Producer is a key member of the production team for a motion picture. Typically, a Line Producer manages the budget of a motion picture. Alternatively, or in addition, they may manage the day to day physical aspects of the film production, serving a role similar to the unit production manager. Line Producers usually do not act as part of the creative team for a picture. Because Line Producers work on location, they don't work on more than one film at a time (unlike other producer roles). A Line Producer may also hire key members of the crew, negotiate deals with vendors, and is considered the head of production. Line Producers are rarely involved in the development of the project, but often play a crucial role in costing the production in order to provide investors with the confidence to invest in the project. As soon as the finance has been raised, the Line Producer supervises the preparation of the film's budget, and the day to day planning and running of the production. Line Producers are usually employed on a freelance basis. They must expect to work long hours, though the role can be financially very rewarding. Career advancement is based on their experience and reputation. Where a Line Producer has a creative input to the production, he or she is often credited as a coproducer.

Responsibilities:
Line Producers are in charge of all the business aspects of the physical production of films. They are called Line Producers because they cannot start work until they know what the 'line' is between the 'above-the-line' costs, which relate to writers, producers, directors and cast, and the 'below-the-line' costs which include everything else, e.g., crew salaries, equipment rentals, development costs, locations, set design and construction, insurance, etc. Line Producers are usually recruited onto the production team during the later stages of development. They are given the script and asked to assess the likely 'below the line' cost of the production which involves breaking down the screenplay into a schedule - a timetable for the film shoot that shows how long it will take to shoot each scene. From this schedule the Line Producer can accurately estimate the cost of each day's shooting, and produce a provisional budget estimating the total amount of funding required. Once the producer and executive producers have raised the required finance, the film can go into pre-production.

During pre-production, Line Producers work closely with the director, production manager, first assistant director, art director and other heads of department to prepare the production schedule and budget, and to set the shoot date. Line Producers oversee all other pre-production activities, including hiring the production team, setting up the production office, location scouting, ensuring compliance with regulations and codes of practice, sourcing equipment and suppliers, selecting crew, engaging supporting artists and contributors, and monitoring the progress of the art department and other production departments.

During production, Line Producers hand over control of the final budget to the production accountant, and delegate the day to day operation of the production office to the production manager and production coordinator. However, Line Producers are ultimately responsible for overseeing all activities, and for ensuring that the production is completed on time and within budget. This requires setting up and implementing financial monitoring systems, controlling production expenditure, controlling production materials, and monitoring and controlling the progress of productions. Line Producers usually allow a 10% contingency in the budget to cater for unforeseen circumstances, and spend much of their time juggling figures and resources. Line Producers are responsible for certain health and safety procedures, and for sorting out any insurance claims. At the end of the shoot, the Line Producer oversees the 'wrap', or winding down, of the production.

Skills:
Line Producers must possess an in-depth knowledge of scheduling and budgeting, and of all the physical and technical processes of filmmaking. They need excellent industry contacts, and must command the respect of the production crew. Exceptional communication skills are required, as well as the diplomacy to balance the creative expectations of the director, artists and creative personnel with the financial resources available. They always need to plan for the worst, while simultaneously being able to inspire others to excel in their work. Unlike producers, Line Producers are not responsible under health and safety legislation for setting up health and safety procedures; however, they are required to carry out risk assessments according to regulatory requirements. They must therefore know how to identify the hazards in the production environment, to assess the level of risk, to recommend action, and to carry out a review of their assessment.

Qualifications/Experience:
No qualifications can prepare anyone completely for this hugely demanding role. Line Producers must have considerable industry experience, which can only be acquired by working for a number of years in film, television and/or commercial production. Individuals usually progress to the role of Line Producer by working their way through a variety of roles in assistant direction, location management and/or the production office. Many start their careers as runners or production assistants. Line Producers must also attend the required health and safety courses.

Researcher

Researchers work across all genres of television production, including news, sport, current affairs, documentaries and factual programs, light entertainment, children's, situation comedies, soaps or serial dramas, and one-off dramas. They originate or develop program ideas, drawing on their knowledge and understanding of industry requirements, and present their findings to decision makers. They are also fact checkers and 'brief' writers for onscreen presenters. They must understand, and work within, relevant legislation and regulations. They may be employed by broadcasters, or work on a freelance basis.
 

Writer

Writers are involved in the creation and/or development of all types of creative writing for film and TV. Creative writing covers a number of wide and varied forms including screen and radio (such as comedy/soap opera scripts, drama productions or documentaries). Writers may also help to create the content for video games and cartoons.

Typical work activities and skills required are likely to include some or all of the following:
-select subject matter based on personal or public interest: Writers must be aware of the cultural zeitgeist
-utilize application and discipline to write and rewrite continuously, and maintain originality
-develop the technical skills of writing and methods for creative and imaginative thought
-researching stories and character
-conduct research to obtain factual information and authentic detail, utilizing sources such as newspaper accounts, diaries, and interviews
-review, submit for approval, and revise written material to meet personal standards and satisfy needs of client, publisher, director, or producer
-select subject or theme for writing project based on personal interest and writing specialty, or assignment from publisher, client, producer, or director
-work to tight deadlines, especially for theater, screen and radio
-develop factors, such as theme, plot, characterization, psychological analysis, historical environment, action, and dialogue, to create material
-use literary skills to develop themes and storylines, while making characters and plots believable
-write humorous material for publication or performance, such as comedy routines, gags, comedy shows, or scripts for entertainers
-write fiction or nonfiction prose work, such as short story, novel, biography, article, descriptive or critical analysis, or essay
-adapt a play or script for moving pictures or television, based on original ideas or adapted from fictional, historical, or narrative sources
-organize material for project, plan arrangement or outline, and write synopsis

Storyboard Artist

Storyboard Artists translate screenplays, or sequences from screenplays, into a series of illustrations in comic book form. These illustrations have two functions: to help directors clarify exactly what they want to achieve, and to illustrate to all other heads of department exactly what is required, e.g., prosthetics for makeup, computer generated Images (CGI) for visual effects, props for the art department, etc.

In many ways comic books are the art form that most closely resembles cinema — they both tell stories in a primarily visual form, involving discrete, framed images linked sequentially to convey information. Although comic book images are static, it is often useful to employ the comic book form to develop complex sequences in films that require careful planning, and that cannot or should not be left to on-set improvisation. Helping the director to conceptualize these sequences is the specialized task of Storyboard Artists. They work on a freelance basis.

 

Director

The Director is the driving creative force in a film's production, and acts as the crucial link between the production, technical and creative teams. Directors are responsible for creatively translating the film's written script into actual images and sounds on the screen - he or she must visualize and define the style and structure of the film, then act as both a storyteller and team leader to bring this vision to reality. Directors' main duties include casting, script editing, shot composition, shot selection and editing. While the practical aspects of filmmaking, such as finance and marketing, are left to the producer, Directors must also always be aware of the constraints of the film's budget and schedule. In some cases, Directors assume multiple roles such as director/producer or director/writer. Being a Director requires great creative vision, dedication and commitment. Directors are ultimately responsible for a film's artistic and commercial success or failure.

Responsibilities:
Directors may write the film's script or commission it to be written; or they may be hired after an early draft of the script is complete. Directors must then develop a vision for the finished film, and define a practical route for achieving it. During pre-production, Directors make crucial decisions, such as selecting the right cast, crew and locations for the film. They then direct rehearsals, and the performances of the actors once the film is in production. Directors also manage the technical aspects of filming, including the camera, sound, lighting, design and special effects departments.

During post production, Directors work closely with editors through the many technical processes of editing, to reach the final cut or version of the film. At all stages, Directors are responsible for motivating the team to produce the best possible results. Directors must also appreciate the needs and expectations of the film's financiers.

Skills:
Directors must have exceptional artistic vision and creative skills to develop an engaging and original film. Unerring commitment and a deep passion for filmmaking are essential, along with the ability to act as a strong and confident leader. Directors must constantly make decisions, but must also be able to delegate, and to collaborate with others. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills are vital to get the best from the filmmaking team.

Directors must inspire and motivate the team to produce the film they have envisioned. They need an extensive understanding of the entire filmmaking process, from both technical and creative points of view. A capacity for long hours of intensive work, attention to detail, and the ability to remain calm and think clearly under great pressure, are key skills for this role. Directors also need great self belief and the determination to succeed.

Art Director

Art Directors act as project managers for the biggest department on any film - the art department. They facilitate the production designer's creative vision for all the locations and sets that eventually give the film its unique visual identity. Art Directors are responsible for the art department budget and schedule of work, and help the production designer to maximize the money allocated to the department. Art Directors are usually requested by the production designer, and are responsible for the assistant art director, the draughtsman* (as many as 20 draughtsmen may be employed on big budget films), the art department assistant(s) and all construction personnel. As Art Directors must find practical solutions to creative problems while simultaneously monitoring the budget, this is highly skilled work. Many Art Directors work on television dramas and commercials, as well as on films. The hours are long and the job can involve long periods working away from home. Art Directors work on a freelance basis.

Production Designer

Production Designers are major heads of department on film crews, and are responsible for the entire art department. They play a crucial role in helping directors to achieve the film's visual requirements, and in providing producers with carefully calculated schedules which offer viable ways of making films within agreed budgets and specified periods of time. Filming locations may range from an orderly Victorian parlor, to a late-night café, to the interior of an alien spaceship. The look of a set or location is vital in drawing the audience into the story, and is an essential element in making a film convincing and evocative. A great deal of work and imagination goes into constructing an appropriate backdrop to any story, and into selecting or constructing appropriate locations and/or sets.

 

Set Construction

Financial responsibilities include budgeting, tracking costs, generating reports, etc. Through drawings, a Construction Coordinator is directed artistically by the production designer and art director to produce their "vision" in three dimensions. Also responsible for the physical integrity of the structures built by the construction department.

Set Decorator

Set Decorators provide anything that furnishes a film set, excluding structural elements. They may have to provide a range of items, from lumps of sugar and tea spoons, to newspapers, furniture and drapes, to cars, carriages, or even cats and dogs. There are two types of props: action props, or all props that are described in the shooting script; and dressing props, or items that help to bring characters to life or to give a certain atmosphere and sense of period to a place.

Small details often tell the audience the most about characters in feature films: the pictures hanging on the walls of their homes; the contents of their fridge or bathroom cabinet; their books; the treasured objects kept in a box hidden in the desk drawer. All of these details are created by the imagination and creative flair of Set Decorators, who research, prepare and oversee the dressing of every set and adapted location on a feature film. Many Set Decorators work on commercials, where they are known as stylists, as well as on films.

Lighting Design

Often referred to as 'LD', this person works with producers, directors, set designers, and other essential crew members to create the 'look' of the show as it is interpreted through the writing. This position can be found in film, television, stage productions, and even concerts.

Lighting Supervisor

Lighting Director/Supervisor is the most senior role in television lighting departments. Using the script or brief from the production team they design the specific look required for each shot. They use their advanced technical skills to realize the design and, with the help of the rest of the lighting department, to set up and operate specialized lights and accessories. As lighting is an essential part of a programs' overall design and style, this is a key creative and technical role. Lighting Directors work closely with the lighting console operator, senior electrician (gaffer) and several electricians (sparks). On single camera shoots, the Lighting Camera person often takes responsibility for the lighting, although a gaffer, working alone or with a spark, may be brought in to assist on large projects or special setups.

 

Prop Master

Prop Masters (i.e. Property Masters) control all aspects of property departments. They oversee, and are responsible for, the procurement or production, inventory, care and maintenance of all props associated with productions, ensuring that they are available on time, and within budgetary requirements. They also ensure that selected props suit the film's style and overall design, and that they accurately reflect the production's time period and culture. Property Masters oversee the staff, and the smooth running, of the property department, working to high standards of accuracy and detail. As much of the work involved is administrative, the role is often office based. Property Masters are responsible to production designers, and work as part of the art department.
 

Costume Designer

Costume Designers start working on films at the beginning of pre-production. They are in charge of designing, creating, acquiring and hiring all costumes for actors and extras. This must be achieved within strict budgets, and to tight schedules. Costume Designers' work is integral to defining the overall 'look' of films, and their role requires a great deal of expertise. Their creative work ranges from designing original costumes, to overseeing the purchase and adaptation of ready made outfits. As heads of the costume department, Costume Designers are responsible for staffing, and for managing a team of skilled personnel. Costume Designers also supervise practical issues, such as departmental budgets and schedules, the organization of running wardrobes, and costume continuity.

 

Costumes / Wardrobe

The Costume Department is responsible for the design, fitting, hire, purchase, manufacture, continuity and care of all costume items on feature films. The term 'Costume' refers to the clothes that the actors wear, and these differ enormously from production to production, ranging from contemporary urban fashion to period ball gowns, and even wetsuits. The Costume Department is also responsible for jewellery, footwear, corsetry, hosiery, millinery and sometimes wig work. Costume is integral in defining the overall 'look' of the film. It provides the audience with information about the period, culture and society the actors inhabit and, on a more subtle level, the underlying themes of the film itself.

 

Hair Stylist

Hairdressers work on feature films and on some commercials and pop promos. They liaise closely with colleagues in the hair, makeup and costume departments, as well as with directors, actors and extras. They prepare performers' scalp and skin and create hairstyles to suit production requirements. They also work with wigs, hairpieces, and hair extensions and may be required to use chemical solutions, and to administer hair and scalp treatments as necessary. They oversee hair continuity during shoots, and remove products as required.

Makeup Artist

Makeup Artists work on feature films and on some commercials and pop promos, working to the chief makeup artist. Makeup and hair are key elements in the overall design of films or television productions, creating a look for the characters in relation to social class, and time periods, and any other elements required to create the desired illusion. Makeup Artists should be experienced in using a wide variety of professional makeup products. They must be able to work to makeup designs to meet production requirements. They also work with facial hair, and may be required to affix any required small prosthetics. They oversee makeup continuity on their performer(s) during the shoot, and remove products as required.

Special Effects

Special Effects is an artificial effect used to create an illusion in a movie. It refers to effects produced on the set, as opposed to those created in post production. Most movie illusions are created in post production. These are called visual effects. Special Effects Supervisor is the chief of a production's special effects crew.

Mechanical Effects

Mechanical Effects (also called Practical or Physical Effects), are usually accomplished during the live-action shooting. This includes the use of mechanized props, scenery and scale models, and pyrotechnics. Making a car appear to drive by itself, or blowing up a building are examples of Mechanical Effects. Mechanical Effects are often incorporated into set design and makeup. For example, a set may be built with break-away doors or walls, or prosthetic makeup can be used to make an actor look like a monster.

Stunt Coordinator

A Stunt Coordinator is a person who arranges and plans stunts

Production Accountant

Production Accountants are responsible for managing finances and maintaining financial records during film or TV production, working closely with the producer and the production office. Their job includes preparing schedules and budgets for film productions, and managing the day to day accounting financial reporting against the budgets.
 

Production Manager

Production Managers organize the business, finance and employment issues in film and television productions. As a Production Manager, you would be in charge of how the production budget is spent and making sure that everything runs smoothly during filming.

Before production begins, your work would involve:
meeting the producer and other senior production staff to examine scripts or program ideas
drawing up a shooting schedule and estimating cost
hiring crews and contractors, and negotiating rates of pay
negotiating costs and approving the booking of resources, equipment and suppliers
overseeing location bookings and arranging any necessary permissions and risk assessments


During filming, duties include:
making sure that the production runs to schedule, and reporting to the producer on progress
managing the production schedule and budget
managing the production team
dealing with any problems
making sure that insurance, health and safety rules, copyright laws and union agreements are followed

Location Manager

The Location Manager is the person who will be liaising directly with the film production company or advertising agency, and may be working closely with the film's director, taking decisions not only about the right location, but also the logistics of making that location work. The Location Manager will be closely involved with the rest of the production team dealing with many such logistical problems and their solutions — perhaps none of which may have been known to the Location Scout when first they started scouting. 

Location Scout

The Location Scouts and other location department staff work under the location manager. Their function is to provide as many potentially useful/viable ideas and/or options as possible for review by production; often the assistant director, production manager and subsequently, the director or even the executive producer in the case of narrative filmmaking. They are responsible for heading out to various areas that could serve as possible production locations. The Location Scout may be convinced that he or she has found the perfect spot, but it's not always the perfect spot that is the most practical: when there's an entire unit to be moved into position, decisions are made about the distances involved, the availability within the schedule on that day of the stars, key personnel, special equipment, etc., etc. Each time a Scout is asked to find something, it's invariably something new and quite different to the previous assignment. Commonplace locations, let's say kitchens or public parks, are very well covered by location libraries, so if the needs are simple, why not keep the solution simple? However the world of filming (and photography) is the world of imagination, so for each new script, each new concept, there's a new question needing an answer. For example, the kitchen might need a view through the window to a swimming pool, or the script might demand that the public park has a south facing slope overlooking a lake. No matter how good library photographs may be, there will always be occasions when a location needs to be re-photographed to demonstrate its suitability.

Fixer

A Fixer provides logistical support, facilitates permit, custom, location, talent, crews, equipment, accommodation and transportation for filmmakers who wish to conduct filming abroad.

Show Runner

A Show Runner is a television industry term referring to the person who is responsible for the day-to-day operation of a television series — although such persons generally are credited as an executive producer. Unlike films, where directors are typically in creative control of a production, in episodic television the showrunner usually outranks the director.

Production Assistant

Production Runners are the foot soldiers of a film or television production team, performing small but important tasks in the office, around the set and on location. Their duties may involve anything from office administration to crowd control, and from public relations to cleaning up locations. Production Runners are usually employed on a freelance basis, are not very well paid, and their hours are long and irregular. However, the work is usually extremely varied and provides a good entry level role into the film industry.

 

Still Photographer

Unit Stills Photographers take the vitally important photographs of film sets or studio shoots that are used to create the press and publicity for feature films. These arresting images, if they are used well, can genuinely contribute to a film's box office and international sales success. Unit Stills Photographers usually work on set, recording scenes from the film; alternatively, they may be required to set up photographs in the style of the film in a studio environment.  

Videographer: ENG

A Videographer is a person who works in the video medium — recording moving images and sound onto linear analog or digital tape, non-linear digital disc, or any other digital recording media, such as memory cards. On a set, he or she may be responsible for the lighting as well as the audio and images captured by the video camera/camcorder. Videographers differ from cinematographers because they record using video cameras/camcorders while cinematographers use film cameras to shoot film footage onto motion picture film stock. The development of high definition digital cinematography, however, is quickly blurring this distinction.

Video Playback

Video playback provides a point of reference for, and a method of monitoring, everything that is shot by the camera crew and recorded by the production sound mixer. Video assist is used by directors (and other relevant crew members such as script supervisors), who watch the video monitor during each take. If playback facilities are available, Video playback is used to review shots. This is captured by special video tape recorders which are fitted to film cameras next to the eye piece and record exactly what the camera operators see. Ensuring that all the required images are captured, and that the equipment is in full working order, are the responsibilities of the Video Assist Operator (VAO). VAOs are usually employed by camera facilities houses or specialist video playback companies and are requested by 1st Assistant Directors, directors or script supervisors. On larger films, VAOs work with assistants.
 

Web Designer

A Web Designer will be the creative lead and author of a websites unique design to convey the particular 'look' a company commissions them to create.

Unit Publicist

Unit Publicists (UPs) provide a vital conduit between producers, cast, crew and the media during film shoots. By generating publicity, they help sales agents to sell films and to create public interest. UPs work closely with producers, distributors and sales agents to plan all press strategy for film shoots, making sure that only the right amount of information is released at specific times, so that the press coverage is not jeopardized when the film is released.

PR Executive

A PR Executive will interpret opinions, advise top level management, generate a multitude of opportunities to increase firm awareness, create and execute good will, and track the results of a particular campaign.

Marketing Executive

A Marketing Executive will develop marketing campaigns that promote a company's product, service or idea. The role includes planning, advertising, public relations, organising events, product development, distribution, sponsorship and research.

Distributor

What do Distributors do?

A Distributor is responsible for coordinating the distribution of the finished movie to exhibitors, as well as the sale of video, DVD, Blu Ray and other media on which the movie will be made available.

(From: http://www.media-match.com/usa/jobtypes/job-descriptions.php

A comprehensive list of motion picture department job descriptions may be found there.)

5.

Cinemorphics Related Media

(A few suggestions)

Books

THE CRACK IN THE COSMIC EGG, Joseph Chilton Pearce (Read this one first)
THE FUTURE OF THE SELF, Walter Truett

DISGUISE TECHNIQUES – Fool All of the People Some of the Time, Edmond A. MacInaugh

ASTONISH YOURSELF! – 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life, Roger-Pol Droit

ZEN PHYSICS, David Darling

THE THIRD MIND, William S. Burroughs & Brion Gysin

THE CREATED SELF – Reinventing Body, Persona and Spirit, Robert J. Weber

ACTING TECHNIQUES FOR EVERYDAY LIFE, Jane Maria Robbins

UNIFORMS EXPOSED, Jennifer Craik

FINITE AND INFINITE GAMES – A Vision of Life as Play and Posssibility, James P. Carse

ALWAYS ASTONISHED, Fernando Pessoa

THE UN-TV AND THE 10 MPH CAR, Bernard McGrane

METHOD AGING AND THE INFINITE GAME, Charles Webb

GAMES FOR ACTORS AND NON-ACTORS, Augusto Boal

ACT OR DIE, Rick Edelstein

LIFE SHOW. John Lahr and Jonathan Price

IMMEDIATISM, Hakim Bey

WILD SURMISE, Rob Nilsson

WAKING UP, Charles Tart

QUANTUM PSYCHOLOGY, Robert Anton Wilson

PROMETHEUS RISING, Robert Anton Wilson

THE TEACHINGS OF DON CARLOS, Victor Sanchez

ENERGIZED HYPNOSIS, Christopher S. Hyatt and Calvin Iwema

PERSONAL MYTHOLOGY, David Feinstein and Stanley Krippner

SHAVING THE INSIDE OF YOUR SKULL, Mel Ash

THE BOOK On The Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts

A BOOK OF SURREALIST GAMES, Alastair Brotchie and Mel Gooding
THE VOICE DIALOGUE ANTHOLOGY, Edited by Dassie Hoffman, PhD
EMBRACING OUR SELVES, Hal and Sidra Stone
BIG MIND - BIG HEART, Dennis Genpo Merzel
CRAZY WISDOM, Wes "Scoop" Nisker
THE UNFOLDING SELF, Ralph Metzner
DREAMBODY-THE BODY'S ROLE IN HEALING THE SELF, Arnold Mindell
INDEPENDENT FILM AND VIDEOMAKERS GUIDE, Michael Wiese
THE TAO OF PSYCHOLOGY: SYNCHRONICITY AND THE SELF, Jean Shinoda Bolen

Films

HOLY MOTORS, Leos Carax

THE PASSENGER, Michelangelo Antonioni

DUST AND ILLUSIONS, Burning Man documentary

INTO THE ZONE, Cacophony Society documentary

COSPLAYERS: The Movie, Documentary about costume play

THE GREAT IMPOSTER, Based on the life of Fred Demera

CATCH ME IF YOU CAN, Based on the life of Frank Abagnale, Jr.

THE PRETENDER, U.S. network TV series from 1996 – 2000

Internet

secondlife.com

thesims.com

cinemorphics.blogspot.com

6.

Consensus Trance

The Sleep of Everyday Life 

Charles T. Tart

trance 1. A state of partly suspended animation or of inability to function; a daze; a stupor. 2. A state of profound abstraction of mind or spirit as in religious contemplation; ecstasy. 3. A sleeplike state such as that of deep hypnosis.

—Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary (1973)

In this chapter we examine our everyday, "normal" state of consciousness, but we will look at it in the way we examined the phenomena of hypnosis. What is the setting in which everyday consciousness develops? What are the induction procedures for creating it? What are the phenomena that the "hypnotist" can bring about? Normal consciousness will be referred to as consensus trance; the hypnotist will be personified as the culture. The "subject," the person subjected to this process, is you.

This may seem somewhat artificial at first, but we will come to see that consensus trance is a much more pervasive, powerful, and artificial state than ordinary hypnosis, and it is all too trancelike. Consensus trance involves a loss of much of our essential vitality. It is (all too much) a state of partly suspended animation and inability to function, a daze, a stupor. It is also a state of profound abstraction, a great retreat from immediate sensory/instinctual reality to abstractions about reality. As to the definition of trance as a state of ecstasy, consensus trance has its rewards, but it is questionable to call it "ecstasy."

Remember that the emphasis of the second part of this book is diagnostic of the psychopathology of everyday human life: what is lacking in human life that makes us so unhappy? Love, courage, compassion, creativity, and other positive aspects will concern us later. Here I will be emphasizing the negative side of culture and consensus trance induction. Nevertheless, we need culture. It gives us enormous benefits and is the matrix out of which our possible future evolution must arise. Keep in mind, also, that the consensus trance induction process is imperfect. We all have our own personal history that has uniquely shaped our own everyday consciousness. Just as people vary in their hypnotizability, we vary in how deep our consensus trance is. Thus the picture given below is too stereotyped, too simplified ... yet all too accurate.

CULTURE

Anthropologists have defined a culture as a group of people who share basic beliefs about the world and practices for coping with it. They interact with each other in a way that ensures the survival of the group, as well as a reinforcement and perpetuation of their basic beliefs. We speak of Chinese people and know that we are looking at quite different beliefs about the world than when we speak of Eskimos or Anglo-Americans.

Cultural Relativity

Anthropology has made a unique contribution to our understanding. By studying its detailed documentation of the differences, as well as the similarities, between many cultures, we have a better chance to realize individually the relativity of many (if not most) of our cultural beliefs. Societies of intelligent people, people who have passed the basic

1test of surviving as a culture, have quite different beliefs about many of the things we hold to be obvious or sacred. Much that we hold to be obvious about the world, much that we consider sacred truths, could and should be called into question.

As an example, I often present my students with this hypothetical situation: "Your brother has just been murdered. You know who the murderer is. How many of you would call the police?" Usually every hand goes up. If I then ask how many people would feel shamed and disgraced for calling the police, I get puzzled frowns. What am I talking about?

From the viewpoint of quite a few cultures, the class has just revealed itself to be composed of the dregs of human society, shameful people who should be shunned. When a blood relative has been murdered, that is family. Personally avenging one's family is a matter of personal honor! Do these people plan to do the honorable thing and personally avenge the murder? No, they will let the matter be handled by a group of strangers, strangers (the police) who do it for money! How degraded can humanity get! It's no wonder that you can't trust foreigners and that the world is such a terrible place!

ENCULTURATION

When we are born, we are a mass of potentials, possibilities waiting to be developed. We are not born into an environment that is completely neutral about our potentials, though, nor into one that will try to develop all of our potentials. We are born with the potential to take personal vengeance on someone who murders a family member, and feel proud that we have done the decent and honorable thing. We are born with a potential to feel fine about letting the police handle it. It's unlikely that both of these potentials will be developed.

Each of us is born into a culture, a group of people with a shared belief system, a consensus about how things are and how they ought to be. As soon as we are born, the culture, primarily through the agency of the parents, begins to pick and choose among our potentials. Some are considered good and are actively encouraged. Consider the following example that was obviously proper in our culture for a long time but now has become questionable: "You're a good girl for telling the teacher about that kid who hit your little brother! I'm proud of you!" Other potentials are considered bad, and their flowering is actively inhibited and punished. "You were a bad girl to hit that boy who hit your brother! You shouldn't do things like that! Nice little girls don't do things like that! How can I love you when you do things like that? Go to your room!"

"Normalcy" and Membership in Your Culture

Becoming "normal," becoming a full-fledged member of your culture, involves a selective shaping, a development of approved ("natural," "godly," "polite," "civil") potentials, an inhibition of disapproved ("evil," "criminal," "delinquent," "disrespectful") ones. While it might be theoretically possible to role-play only in accordance with social norms, without internalizing them, this is difficult for most people. From a culture's point of view, it is far better if your everyday mind, the habitual, automatized way you think and feel, is shaped to reflect the culture's consensus beliefs and values. Then you will automatically experience the right perceptions and interpretations, and so it will be "natural" to act in the culturally appropriate way, even when there are no agents of social coercion around. When you automatically think, behave, and feel "normally," when the internal workings of your mind automatically echo most of the values and beliefs of your culture, you have achieved cultural consensus trance. This interlocking set of beliefs includes a belief that we don't have a "belief system." Foreigners have strange "beliefs," but we know what's right!

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Cultures almost never encourage their members to question them. Physical survival has been too precarious for too many people for most of our history, so there is a deep, if implicit, feeling that our culture has kept us alive in a rough world; don't ask questions, don't rock the boat. Cultures try to be closed systems.

Yet many intelligent people have come to a realization of the relativity of some of their cultural values through personal experience. In the past those who traveled a lot, and who had the openness to see that not everyone else was a "savage" or "foreigner," could learn this. Our time is unique in that the enormous amount of anthropological material available on cultural relativity makes this realization much more readily available, even without travel. The kind of self-observation Gurdjieff taught, which we will discuss in detail later, can also help in transcending the limitations of our culture.

ESSENCE

Gurdjieff characterized a newborn baby as pure essence. Essence is your genuine, deepest self, your desires, tastes, likes and dislikes, potentials, inherent in you before the consensus trance induction process has begun to change it. Essence is who we really were when we came into this world.

Obviously we have limited repertoires as a newborn. Our characteristics include such things as being a good or a fitful sleeper, being generally content or irritable, liking certain tastes and not others. Essence also includes, in all those who become normal, the ability to learn a language and absorb a culture. But we are not a tabula rasa, a blank slate, on which culture can write as it pleases with no consequences to us. We also have our unique genetic and spiritual endowment, which will begin to manifest more as we grow, so we might dislike athletics and like walking in the woods, for example, or find the taste of carrots disgusting and like the smell of sweat, or enjoy poetry but find math boring, or search for the inner light in spite of being ridiculed by others.

Consensus trance induction is a process of shaping the behavior and the consciousness of the baby, the subject, to be "normal," to ensure that there is a high level of standardization of behavior and consciousness in all people so they fit social norms. To be American, you must speak good English, you must have reasonably polite manners of the kind peculiar to your culture, you must look both ways before crossing the street, you must respect your parents and teachers, respect the American flag, you must etc., etc., etc.—add your favorite five thousand beliefs and attitudes here.

We cultural hypnotists do not think of what we do as consensus trance induction, of course. Most of us would be horrified at the idea of inducing a trance that involves lessening animation, reducing reality contact, and that resembles stupor. We sincerely think of what we do with children as "education," as teaching them skills that they must have to live a happy life. We are helping the children, not entrancing them! And this is, of course, true in many ways. A child must learn to look both ways before crossing the street, for example, or he may be killed. Just as an ordinary hypnotist utilized truths (your vision is getting blurry and you see changing colors around the target) to induce the formal hypnotic trance, the cultural hypnotist utilizes many truths in inducing consensus trance.

What happens to essence, the basic and essential you, in the induction of consensus

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trance?

Suppression of Essence

If you are very lucky, and most of the characteristics of your essence are ones that happen to be valued in your culture, the induction of consensus trance is very smooth and free of conflict. Your adult life will probably be "normal" and successful. If your essence is short-tempered and aggressive, for example, and you happen to be born in a culture that admires warriors who are tough and proud, you may have to deal with realistic consequences of living in that kind of world, but there's no agonizing over whether you are normal. Suppose your essence is short-tempered and aggressive, but you happen to be born a woman in a culture where women are supposed to be docile and subservient. You may get into a lot of trouble when your temper comes out.

What would be even worse in this latter example, this aspect of your essence would probably be invalidated and punished until its external manifestations were suppressed. As an adult you would act docilely and subserviently, and try to feel that way inside. You would tell yourself that you are a good person, a normal person. Others would tell you you are normal, and would accept you as a friend, reinforcing your docile behavior and reinforcing your internal feeling of goodness. But inside, something, a part of your essence, has been squashed. If it has been squashed very thoroughly, so you don't even feel that quick temper, you may only have a vague feeling that something isn't right, that even though you should be happy, you don't feel very happy. Some of your animation, your essential energy, has been lost to the maintenance of consensus trance.

If the suppression hasn't been quite that thorough, so you know that lots of things make you angry but you can't or won't express the anger, then you can worry. "Am I normal? I'm not supposed to feel things like this, normal women don't get upset by these situations." Some of your essential energy has been lost by being tied up in knots, some goes into "neurotic" worrying about not being normal. Again, you have lost some animation.

Now we can begin our comparison of consensus trance induction with the induction of formal hypnotic trance.

SETTING AND PRELIMINARIES FOR CULTURAL HYPNOSIS

Recall the setting of our model hypnotic procedure. The Stanford Hypnotic Susceptibility Scale was administered in a relatively ordinary setting, a quiet room, a comfortable chair. The thought of being hypnotized adds a little glamour to the setting and procedure, but the usual scientific setting is low key and plays glamour down. The hypnotist may be somewhat older or of higher prestige than the subject, an "expert," but the hypnotic relationship is basically a relationship between two normal, competent, and consenting adults.

Constraints on Ordinary Hypnotic Induction

Although they may not be explicitly discussed, there are clear constraints on the hypnosis. For example:

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a. Itistime-limited,usuallyanhourortwo. b. Thesubjectdoesnotexpecttobebullied,threatened,orharmedinanyrealway

by the hypnotist. c. If the hypnosis does not work very well, the hypnotist will not blame the subject. d. Thehypnosismayworkwell,producingadeep"trance,"butthesubjectexpects

that the effects will only be temporary, and he will not be basically changed by his experience.

Basically, formal hypnotic induction is a voluntary and limited relationship between consenting adults, undertaken for scientific or educational reasons. The power given to the hypnotist by the subject is limited by time and the other deep ethical constraints mentioned above. A profound change in experience may occur for a while, but no basic or long-term changes in his personality or his reality are expected by the subject.

Consensus trance induction starts in conditions that give far more power and influence to the cultural hypnotists than is ever given in ordinary hypnosis induction.

Involuntary Nature of Consensus Trance Induction

First, consensus trance induction does not begin as a voluntary and limited relationship between two consenting and knowledgeable adults. It begins with birth. A newborn comes into the world with an immature body and nervous system, totally dependent upon its parents for its very survival, as well as its happiness. There is a sort of natural consent to learn, yet the power relationship puts a strong forced quality on that consent.

While the child will slowly acquire consciousness and capabilities to fill his own needs, the power relationship will remain very unbalanced for many years. Indeed, the power balance is much more like one we imagined and developed in myths, the power balance between gods and mere mortals, than like that between adults. The parents and other agents of the culture, the hypnotists, are relatively omniscient and omnipotent compared to the subject. Thus the setting for consensus trance induction involves much more power on the hypnotists' side than the usual hypnosis induction.

Unlimited Time for Consensus Trance Induction

Second, consensus trance induction is not limited to an hour's session. It involves years of repeated inductions and reinforcement of the effects of previous inductions. Given the way children experience time, the cultural hypnotists have forever to work on their subjects. Further, consensus trance is intended to last for a lifetime: there are no cultural hypnotists waiting to give you a suggestion to wake up.

This book is a suggestion to wake up. I am very glad that the power of the culture is not so strong that this suggestion cannot be given.

Use of Physical Force

Third, ordinary hypnotists cannot use force to persuade their subjects to cooperate in the process of being hypnotized. Indeed, it would be counterproductive in the usual setting. Cultural hypnotists, on the contrary, can use physical threats as needed, and actualize them with slaps, spankings, beatings, revocation of privileges, or confiscation of toys, when necessary. The fear of punishment and pain on the subject's part makes him very attentive

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to the desires of the cultural hypnotists and quick to act in the desired way. Since the easiest way to act in the culturally approved way is to feel that way inside, the fear of punishment helps structure internal mental and emotional processes in culturally approved ways.

Use of Emotional Force

Cultural hypnotists are not limited to physical threats and punishment. Since the parents are the major source of love and self-esteem for the subject, they may threaten to withhold love and approval from the subject, or actually withhold it until compliance is achieved. "I can't love such a dirty little boy!" Manipulating the natural love children have for parents is another variation of this: "You wouldn't do that if you loved Mommy!" Many psychologists have felt that this conditional use of love (I'll love you if...), coupled with invalidation of the child's own perceptions and feelings, has a far deeper impact than simple physical punishment. Since love and affection are so real and so vital, they are exceptionally powerful manipulators. The fact that there is so much real love in most parent-child relationships adds to the confusion that assists in consensus trance induction: when is behavior manipulative and when is it just love?

Love and Validation as Rewards for Conformity

Fourth, cultural hypnotists can offer love and personal validation as a reward for compliant behavior. "What a sweet thought you had. You're a good girl. I love you!" "All A's! You're so smart!" The ordinary hypnotist can offer approval ("You're doing fine"), but it seldom has the potency that love and approval from his parents had on a child.

The personal validation aspect of consensus trance induction is very important. We all have a "social instinct," a desire to be accepted by others, to have friends, to have a place in our social world, to be respected, to be "normal." At early ages this acceptance and validation are mediated almost exclusively by parents: they define what being normal means. As the child establishes social relationships with other adults and children (who also act as agents of the culture), he learns more about how he must act to be accepted. As these approved habits of acting become established and rewarded, they further structure the habitual patterns of mental functioning. Fear of rejection is a powerful motivator. All of us probably have some memories of childhood agonies about whether we were "normal."

Guilt

Fifth, the subject, the child, is clearly at fault for failing to act in the culturally desired way. "Good girls do their homework!" By not doing your homework, you are a bad girl. Nobody likes being thought bad, so pleasing the cultural hypnotist is much more important than pleasing an ordinary hypnotist. We are invalidated in so many ways and told we are bad so often that a general sense of unworthiness and guilt can easily be built up. New condemnations or invalidations tap into this accumulated guilt, giving the new incident a power beyond that it inherently has. This in turn further adds to the underlying feelings of inadequacy and guilt. Origin myths of original sin make the matter worse.

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Dissociation

Another factor that gives the consensus trance induction process great power is that the mental state of a young child is similar to the mental state of a deeply hypnotized subject in important ways. This increases the power of the "suggestions" made by the cultural hypnotists.

In a deep hypnotic state, for example, the consensus reality orientation (CRO) has faded into the background. When a particular experience is suggested, the suggestion and resulting experiences occur in relative isolation from other mental processes. When the hypnotist suggests your arm is heavy, a host of previous knowledge about normal arm processes and social situations does not immediately spring to mind and take energy away from the suggestion.

In our ordinary state there is an enormous amount of automatic association of previous knowledge to incoming stimuli. When something happens, this automatic association of all sorts of relevant knowledge helps you decide how to deal with the situation. A man begins talking to you as you walk down the street, for example. You notice the strangeness of his clothes, the odd way he pronounces words, a funny look in his eyes. Without seeming to think about it deliberately, you "instantly recognize" the man as a "crazy person." Your accumulated, culturally approved knowledge tells you to not get involved with crazy people, so you take no notice of him and walk on. Without these immediate associations that enabled you to recognize the situation as threatening or unpleasant, you might have gotten "involved" with this "crazy man," and who knows what might have happened then?

This kind of association is so automatic that we do not usually notice it, and it takes a look at dissociation to make us realize the pervasiveness and importance of association. The child's mental state is similar to that of the deeply hypnotized subject whose CRO has faded into relative inactivity. He does not have very much other information to come automatically to mind, nor is the association process so automatized that it always brings a wider context to ongoing events, so the cultural hypnotist's suggestions operate in a dissociated, nonassociated state that increases their power.

Much of our early enculturation and conditioning occurs before we have acquired much language. I suspect that language vastly increases our ability to associate information, so this lack of language further contributes to the dissociated quality of the child's mind. When we try, as adults, as predominantly verbal thinkers, to understand our enculturation and conditioning, it is difficult to recall because it is not stored in verbal form. This further increases the power of early enculturation.

Instinctive Trust in Parents

A subject in a deep hypnotic state, especially if it is deep along the archaic regression dimension, has developed considerable trust in the hypnotist. Indeed this trust has a magical quality to it, for some amazing things have happened just because the hypnotist said they would happen. Children have a similar deep trust in their parents. As we noted earlier, the parent often seems omniscient and omnipotent to the child, so this deep trust has magical qualities, and further opens the subject/child to further suggestions.

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Expectations of Permanency

Finally, and most important, consensus trance is expected to be permanent rather than merely an interesting experience that is strictly time limited. The mental, emotional, and physical habits of a lifetime are laid down while we are especially vulnerable and suggestible as children. Many of these habits are not just learned but conditioned; that is, they have that compulsive quality that conditioning has. Because they are automatized habits, they do not need the support of a specially defined situation, such as formal hypnosis usually requires; they operate in almost all circumstances. You no longer have to work at maintaining consensus trance: it is automatic.

We can imagine an individual who could see that the things taught him as so important are merely the quaint notions of the particular tribe he was born into, not necessarily universal truths, but most of us cannot see that about the content of the consensus trance that was induced in us. In too many ways we are that trance.

INDUCTION OF CONSENSUS TRANCE

We begin the induction of consensus trance, then, with far more power, knowledge, resources, and sophistication on the part of the cultural hypnotist than the ordinary hypnotist can ever hope to have. The cultural hypnotist also possesses the "power of innocence": he is unconscious of the consensus trance he himself is in and simply sees himself as acting "naturally." The child, the subject, knows little and is genuinely dependent on the cultural hypnotists for survival, love, happiness, and validation. It is no wonder that the process induces a lifelong trance.

Cultural trance induction consists of several major groups of suggestions. Each group is repeated over and over, in a variety of forms. Punishment is given for failure to comply, as well as suggestions that you will be able to comply if you really try, if you are good. Love, pleasure, and validation are given as rewards for compliance.

Standards for "Goodness"

One major group of suggestions is concerned with developing potentials that the local culture considers good. "You can get along with the (respectable) neighbor's boy." "You can learn math; you should even try to enjoy it; you need it to get ahead in life." "Be nice to your uncle; he really does like you even if you don't think so." There are immediate rewards for developing potentials the culture values. The culture implicitly and explicitly promises that everything a person could want, all happiness, is attainable by developing these potentials, by becoming normal. Our most obvious example is the American Dream: anyone can become a millionaire with hard work.

Suppressing Deviant Thought and Behavior

A second major group of suggestions is focused on suppressing first the behavioral manifestation and then the internal experiencing of thoughts and feelings that the culture considers bad. "You must not get into shouting matches with your teacher!" "It's impolite (bad) to shout at people," for example. "Normal people talk rationally about their differences, they don't shout." "Your teacher isn't really picking on you, so you have no reason to get mad." "You're a good boy for learning to control your temper; you're so much

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nicer now." Many consensus trance suggestions are intended to suppress disapproved or unknown types of internal experiences from occurring at all. "You only dreamed you saw a funny man in your room last night, Johnny, no matter how real you think it was." "It was just your imagination." "Nice girls never think about..."

Creating a Sense of Duty

A third major group of suggestions is focused on creating a sense of duty to cultural norms. "We are proud to be Americans!" "What do you want to be when you grow up? A doctor?" "It must be fun to want to be a garbage man, but when you get older you might want to be someone really important, like a lawyer or a businessman." The culture gets credit for making life safe, meaningful, and worthwhile. In return you must come to believe and accept its positive values and its prejudices.

Our culture tends to think the universe is a cold, hostile place. Then culture becomes the thing that protects us from this hostile universe, our only hope. We then have a quite natural-seeming duty to protect the culture.

And we are taught, of course, that we are the best. When you are the best, other cultures may be dismissed as quaint at best and inhuman or evil at the worst, especially when their actions might make you question your cultural givens.

Everything Not Permitted Is Forbidden

There is a common saying that mocks authoritarian organizations and cultures: "Everything not permitted is forbidden! Everything permitted is compulsory!" Unfortunately this is true in multitudes of ways in all cultures. Luckily for us, there are possibilities the culture never thought of forbidding because it doesn't know about them, and there are both misfits and truly mature people who keep trying out alternative ways of living and experiencing in spite of the fact that they are forbidden. Essence, also, wants to live and grow, and will try to grow in spite of the constraints of culture. Add to this the fact that our culture is full of inconsistencies and contradictions in this time of rapid change, and there are many "cracks" for the prepared mind to find ways out.

PARALLELS: HYPNOTIC TRANCE PHENOMENA AND CONSENSUS TRANCE PHENOMENA

Let us look at some parallels between the hypnotic trance phenomena discussed in the previous chapter and phenomena of everyday consciousness, of consensus trance.

Automatized Body Movements

The hypnotic phenomena of eye closure, hand lowering, and hands apart are three examples of automatized body movements. The common denominator of these hypnotic phenomena is that a mental image of bodily movement is created by the hypnotist's suggestions, and the corresponding movements then take place automatically in the subject's body. The key word is automatically. The subject does not experience doing these things voluntarily. His eyes close or his hands move involuntarily, as if they had volition of their own, as if the subject were merely a passive spectator.

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At first glance these seem exotic phenomena: our bodies don't move by themselves in everyday life, but only when we will them to. Or do they?

Consider the behavioral phenomena of maintaining "personal space." Psychologist Robert Sommer at the University of California at Davis and others have shown that people have a semiconscious or unconscious sense of the space about them and get uncomfortable if others move into that space. People space themselves a certain distance apart for conversation, for instance. If one approaches, the other backs off. This behavior is usually completely unconscious, automatized, not requiring conscious attention. The body just maintains the proper distance without bothering to inform consciousness about it. The cultural hypnotist has, in effect, suggested, "Normal people stay X feet apart (unless the other is an intimate friend or loved one and the situation is defined as an embrace). You want to be normal."

It was probably not suggested so explicitly, of course. Children are natural imitators. We saw the spaces our parents kept (automatically) from others. We saw their retreats when people got too close. Perhaps we were punished for being too close when we got older. We imitated. Our imitation was probably conscious at first, but it quickly faded from consciousness and became automatized. Now we automatically stand at a "natural" distance from people. It feels "natural," but it's quite artificial, like so many consensus trance actions.

This is a minor example of automatized behavior, as, in most cases, personal space behavior can readily be made conscious by calling people's attention to it and asking them to observe themselves. When a conscious action becomes automatized, though, it may be difficult to make it conscious again, especially if there were unpleasant emotional experiences associated with the action. For example, suppose a boy was called a clingy wimp for frequently hugging and hanging around his father, and was pushed away by his father. There may be an unconscious equation that "Too close = unloved by Daddy."

An interesting situation results when members of different cultures whose definition of "proper" interpersonal distance differs interact. Typically, southern Europeans stand closer to others for conversations than Americans. A southern European talking to an American at a cocktail party may sometimes be seen slowly backing the American across the room. The American may feel pressured: he is trying to establish a "normal" distance. The European may feel rejected: he is also trying to establish a "normal" distance. The circumstances may force the cultural rules about proper distances into consciousness. If the unconscious equation "Too close = unloved by Daddy" is operative, though, the cultural rules about distance may not become conscious: they carry the danger of reminding the American about his fear that his father didn't love him. His mind may supply some convenient rationalization: "Europeans are pushy people. It's this man's personality that offends me."

This personal spacing behavior has characteristics like hypnotic suggestion. The stimulus of someone standing too close or too far activates the nonconscious, conditioned, automatized parts of the mind to correct the distance.

Gurdjieff stated that our movements are quite automatized. We have a fixed number of characteristic movements, gestures, postures, definitions of appropriate personal space, and the like, each keyed to certain situations and subpersonalities that bring them out. We

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will examine subpersonalities in later chapters.

Attitudes

The mosquito hallucination is an example of hypnotically creating an attitude, a perception of annoyance. The hypnotist suggested that a mosquito was buzzing around, then landing on the subject's neck, ready to bite him, emphasizing that the subject didn't like this mosquito and could slap it. Many hypnotized subjects will slap it in response to feeling annoyed. Some will actually hear the mosquito. We will focus on the suggested annoyance and muscular response, and leave the hallucination itself for later consideration. Our basic phenomenon is this; in response to a cue, someone expresses annoyance and reacts to a "danger" that isn't actually present.

How often does someone read a newspaper article about an unpleasant event that harmed someone else and then become upset? You read about a murder in another town, become frightened, and then worry about whether that could happen to you. Your worry can spoil the evening for you.

It is one of the greatest human talents (operational thinking) to be able to read about danger that happened elsewhere and then realistically think about any parallels in your own life that might put you in danger. You simulate your world on a mental level, change conditions, see what happens then in your internal simulation, and draw conclusions about what to do, all without risking your body in the physical world. You can then take appropriate action to reduce your risk. Perhaps you put better locks on your apartment door, or decide not to walk through a poorly lit street on your way home at night.

But in this case, why the feeling of fright? Especially since this is probably the thousandth time you've read about a murder in the newspaper. You long ago put your life in reasonable order so there were no clear unnecessary risks. Why do you continue to read stories about murders in distant towns anyway, when you know that they frighten you?

In some way the cultural hypnotist has suggested that dangerous and tragic distant events will frighten you. It is like posthypnotic suggestion. Perhaps it came about through simple childish imitation: your aunt read these kinds of stories and became frightened by them; you imitated her. Wasn't she an adult, one of those godlike creatures with superior knowledge? If it frightened her, it ought to frighten you! Did one of the cultural hypnotists, your mother, for example, comfort you whenever you were frightened this way? Now we have another of those unconscious equations: "Feeling frightened = Mommy loves me!" Too, fear was deliberately used to control most of us as children: "If you're bad, the bogeyman will get you!" This can lead to further unconscious equations: "I am frightened, and so being good = Mommy loves me."

This kind of automatized and conditioned reaction distorts and interferes with our genuine capacity for empathy with others. Similarly it is important to experience your own mortality and vulnerability, but in genuine rather than conditioned ways.

Secondary Gain

Psychotherapists have studied a phenomenon known as secondary gain, which arises when a feeling or behavior that is obviously unhappy on the overt level has a hidden,

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usually unconscious payoff. The hidden payoff often makes the apparently unpleasant or maladaptive experience quite worthwhile. Secondary gains can have very powerful influences on experience and behavior.

Gurdjieff observed that it was easy to make his students carry out frightening, unpleasant, demanding tasks, but almost impossible to make them give up their suffering. I have observed the same thing with my students. Work on something unpleasant in themselves? Yes. Be happy and nice to themselves for five minutes? No way!

The cultural hypnotist has linked many reactions and consequent behaviors to a variety of stimuli. Many of these are linkages that an objective observer would characterize as concern about imaginary dangers. We are annoyed by a lot of mosquitoes that aren't there. Why would the culture want you to be insecure in some ways? Because then you need the culture for protection and so will not be likely to question it or rebel against it in an effective way.

Distorted Perceptions

The mosquito hallucination, the sweet and sour taste effect, and the hallucinated voice are examples of hypnotic suggestions drastically altering the perception of the world, substituting a definite sensation for an absence of sensation. There is no mosquito, nothing was put in the subject's mouth, no one spoke over the intercom. Yet a mosquito was heard and felt, sweet and sour were tasted, a voice asked questions.

Psychologists distinguish between illusions and hallucinations. An illusion is a distorted perception of a real physical stimulus in your environment. A hallucination is a total creation of a perception when nothing is really present. If you walk into a dimly lit room and temporarily mistake a coat on a coat rack for a man lurking in the dark, that's an illusion. If the same nonexistent (as far as the rest of us are concerned) man walks out into the well- lit and empty hall with you, that's a hallucination. We can view illusions and hallucinations as extreme points on the continuum of simulation of the world. In illusion the simulation begins with sensory stimulation, but the simulation is a very poor representation. At the other extreme of hallucination, the simulation process produces a perception, an internal simulation, with no external stimulation involved.

The three hypnotic phenomena described are hallucinations. Hallucination can happen in consensus trance, but it's usually viewed (by other people in consensus trance) as so unusual as to be called crazy. Illusions, on the other hand, happen all the time and are not always recognized as illusions. If they are small distortions of the external world, or when others that you respect, who are also in consensus trance (important, "normal" people), have similar illusions, no one thinks it's an illusion; we all believe we're in touch with reality.

Consider the familiar newspaper story in which a seemingly pleasant, normal young man is suddenly revealed as a mass murderer. All the neighbors are shocked: he was such a nice young man. Was he that good at dissembling? No doubt he must have been fairly good at it, but there must have been numerous times he acted "strange," out of character. Our sensory, perceptual equipment is enormously sensitive when it functions properly. How could the neighbors have failed to detect any of those odd instances?

With hindsight, the neighbors will probably begin to remember odd things the young

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man said or did. They perceived these things at the time they happened, but they didn't "know" them. Since they didn't fit into expectations, they weren't perceived; that is, they weren't included at all in the simulations of external reality that our minds created. Our culture is a rather friendly one, and we like to perceive people as "nice." A few suspicious types might have noticed these odd things, but the majority went along with the polite, decent way of perceiving. Our perceptions are constructions: we select (or rather our automatic habits select) from the large mass of impressions about us just those that fit comfortably into our expectations.

Many people distort their perceptions in the opposite way, of course. They see sinister implications behind actions that are quite innocent. Their automatized simulations of reality highlight the negative instead of the positive aspects of the situation. Indeed, one of the fundamental types in Gurdjieff's system of false personality types sees such sinister possibilities in others' behavior all the time.

Dreams and Daydreams

In hypnosis, a subject will "dream" on suggestion. Often the hypnotist can specify the dream content. For many subjects the hypnotic dream is experienced as a vivid fantasy; for some it is just as vivid and real in many ways as a nocturnal dream. The reader who wants detailed information can see my review paper on hypnotic dreams.

Our Western culture makes little attempt to affect the content of nocturnal dreams, but it does teach many (but not all) people to treat them as trivia, hardly worth the trouble of recalling, certainly not worth taking seriously. Much more effort has gone into influencing the nature and content of our daydreams and fantasies.

When was the last time, for example, that you daydreamed about journeying through the spirit world? Most of us will have to reply that it was a long time ago, if ever. A few will say "Yesterday," but those few seldom discuss such things in public. They know that "normal" people are not supposed to daydream about such things. Money, sex, power, blood-and-guts adventure, travel in this world, all these things are suitable topics for Westerners to daydream about, but not weird stuff. The contents of our dreams and daydreams usually reflect the norms of consensus reality very well. Indeed, most of the "forbidden" things we dream and daydream about are known to the culture. A clever culture has built-in safety valves, officially forbidden things that are widely used to drain off tension. Being able to dismiss these as merely "daydreams" lowers our fear of using them.

Personality Changes

The age regression effect in hypnosis is closely paralleled in consensus trance by the phenomenon of multiple selves or subpersonalities. To be as you were when you were five years old is to be like a different personality from your current one. In a certain situation we not only act a certain role, we identify with that role, we reanimate that subpersonality. The changes are automatic, triggered by the appropriate situational demands. The phenomenon of multiple selves is so pervasive and important that I devote a later chapter to it.

Nonperception

The hypnotic phenomena of anosmia to ammonia and the three-boxes negative hallucination are extreme examples of nonperception. Something is physically present to your vision, but you don't perceive it. At its simplest, you just don't notice something; your

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simulation of the world is a little fuzzy. In its most developed form, you not only fail to perceive the blocked object, you positively hallucinate an appropriate approved object so that there's no gap in your perceptual field. A really good hypnotic subject, for example, perceives no gap or "blurry spot" where the third box is. He sees the grain of the tabletop where the third box is, just as he would if there were truly nothing covering that part of the tabletop.

In consensus trance we similarly fail to see all sorts of things the cultural hypnotist has suggested we don't see. An especially dramatic example reported in anthropological texts concerns the South Sea islanders, who had never seen a white man or a ship larger than a big canoe. When Captain Cook sailed into a bay of the island for the first time, the islanders gave not the slightest sign of seeing the ship, even though it was right in front of them. When a small boat set out from the ship to land, it was spotted immediately and the islanders were alarmed, as it seemed to have come from nowhere. The idea of a boat as big as Cook's ship was inconceivable to the islanders. Boats all fell within a certain size range, so they apparently had a negative hallucination of it at first.

It is difficult for us to apply this idea personally. How could something be right in front of our eyes but unperceived? Recall the mass murderer: with hindsight, weren't there a number of little actions that were strange, that could have alerted people to his dangerousness?

Insensitivity to smells, as in anosmia, is an interesting phenomenon. In our culture we believe that while animals have an excellent sense of smell, it is rather atrophied in people. Yet human smell is a very sensitive sense, far more so than we realize. Recent research has shown that humans emit pheromones, chemical compounds that have powerful effects. Women living together in a dormitory, for example, begin to have their menstrual periods synchronized after a few months. Mothers are able to distinguish the clothing of family members from that of strangers by the smell of small amounts of sweat in their dirty clothes.

Many people who have managed to break through this cultural taboo claim they can tell something about people's emotional states by their smell. Some psychiatrists, as a further example, have long claimed that they can diagnose schizophrenia because schizophrenics have a characteristic "funny smell." Insofar as this is true (and my own experience supports it), if we are actually interested in how other people feel ("Hi, how are you?"), why don't we sniff their armpits? Why do we routinely dose our armpits with chemicals that will disguise their smell?

As a culture, we are not particularly interested in the process of consensus trance induction per se. We are very concerned with "education" but have little awareness of how much of what is called education is primarily consensus trance induction. We are interested in producing "dependable, normal" people, culturally entranced subjects who automatically experience and do the right thing when the appropriate external-world situation presents itself. When normal people see A, they "naturally" feel B and do C. This is comparable to giving an ordinarily hypnotized subject a suggestion that when he hears or sees X, he will experience Y and do Z.

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THE INDUCTION CONTINUES

Although we have focused on early childhood as the most intensive time of consensus trance induction, we must not think the induction process is finished just because we are adults.

Consensus trance is constantly being reinforced and deepened. Some of this effort is conscious, as in television advertising to sell products or, what is much the same thing nowadays, political activity to sell candidates and programs. Advertising is based on the fact that our associations and conditionings are similar enough that the right messages will manipulate us into wanting the product. The appeal to rational thinking in some advertising is usually also manipulative: certain kinds of people need to believe they are rational, so the advertisers give them material to reinforce this belief, meanwhile manipulating them into buying the product.

Much of the effort aimed at reinforcing consensus trance is not deliberate or conscious; it just happens mechanically. Every time you react in an automatized, conditioned way and get by, or get rewarded, consensus trance is reinforced. Much of our social interaction has this effect. I act normal, you act normal, our habits of being normal get a little stronger. Unpleasant consequences of our normal actions can be a great blessing if we are trying to awaken, but we can't depend on accidentally running into just the right combination of unpleasant circumstances to awaken us. Besides, the culture conditions us not to question things too deeply even when life is going poorly, because it offers us hope that everything will be better later. As we shall touch on later, continual effort is required to neutralize the continuing suggestions to sleep comfortably in consensus trance, as well as the effort needed to understand how this trance developed and to wake up from it.

Each of us is in a profound trance, consensus consciousness, a state of partly suspended animation, of stupor, of inability to function at our maximum level. Automatized and conditioned patterns of perception, thinking, feeling, and behaving dominate our lives. For too much of life, we are like the evolved crane/sorter: we appear to be intelligent and conscious, but it is all automatized programs. Many of these automatized and conditioned patterns may have been adaptive once upon a time, but they don't work well anymore: indeed, they may destroy us. We live in and contribute to mass insanity.

"But," you might well say, "I don't feel like I'm in a trance!" Of course not. We think of trance as something unusual, and our ordinary state as usual. We can only realize we are in a trance state by reasoning about it, as we have done in this chapter, and/or by experiencing what it is like to be out of trance, awake. We shall continue examining psychological data about consensus consciousness in the next few chapters, but eventually we'll discuss ways of producing the moments of greater wakefulness that give the concept of consensus trance a direct, experiential reality.

Excerpted from: Waking Up, Overcoming the Obstacles to Human Potential, by Charles T. Tart New Science Library, Shambhala 1986

7.

Multiple Selves:

Expanding Our Notion of Identity

by Valerie Andrews

Taken from Intuition Magazine A Magazine for Higher Potential of the Mind Issue 20, February 1998

In The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, comedian Lily Tomlin portrays an astonishing range of characters, including a gossipy hairdresser, a weathered cowboy, a conservative businessman, a rebellious

teenager, and a tart-tongued bag lady. We are entranced by performers like Tomlin, Dana Carvey, and Robin Williams because we, too, have the urge to cast off our routine identities and try on different selves.

Actors, storytellers, and novelists draw on their alternate selves to flesh out their characters. But psychologists point out that we all harbor multiple personalities-for example, there’s the kindergarten teacher, wife, and mother who has a bohemian wild woman buried within her, or the administrator whose conventional nine-to-five self hides a globe-trotting adventurer with no use for a pension plan. We occasionally catch glimpses of these alternate selves, but for the most part our dominant personality—the one we present to the world—keeps the others in check. In the last few years, however, a number of therapists and artists have begun giving workshops to help individuals explore their alternate identities.

Hal and Sidra Stone, a husband-and-wife team of clinical psychologists who have studied multiple selves for the last 25 years, are creators of an interactive process called Voice Dialogue. Participants learn to identify and “interview” their inner characters—a process, the Stones say, that helps people access their intuition and gain a broader understanding of their relationship.

Most of us may be aware of only one personality—the one that behaves rationally and responsibly and faces the world each day, explain the Stones, authors of the book Embracing Ourselves. Yet with practice, they say, we can learn to uncover and talk to other “hidden selves.” Eventually, we may discover a cast of 40 or 50 sub-personalities within, although the majority of us begin with a repertoire of perhaps five or six.That prospect may seem frightening, given that many books, movies, and TV shows depict multiple personalities as manifestations of mental illness in which an unsuspecting character switches back and forth between a “good” and an “evil” persona. But as Sidra Stone explains, “Psychotics have a full amnesiac barrier between the different selves, and none of them connect. Healthy individuals have a strong ego that allows them to communicate with all these personalities and come away with new experiences and new insights.”

At the Delos Institute in Mendocino, California, Sidra, age 60, and Hal, age 70, hold weeklong workshops to help people make such alter ego connections. Five facilitators work one-on-one with participants, who meet in intimate groups of 12 to 14. “In these seminars, we treat these selves just like real people,” Sidra says. “We ask for their concerns and opinions. That’s the essence of Voice Dialogue.”

Much of their inspiration, say the Stones, comes from the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung, who 50 years ago put forth his theory of “archetypes.” It was Jung’s goal to help people understand the main characters or forces at work within

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the human psyche. His dramatis personae included the Great Mother and the Devouring Mother, the Good Father and the Tyrant, the Wise Old Woman and the Wise Old Man. Jung believed we could communicate with them though a technique called active imagination. That means sitting down in a quiet place, then holding an imaginary conversation with them, just as in childhood, one might talk to an imaginary friend.

The whole purpose is to get a dialogue going, to express one’s fear or discomfort, or even to ask for wisdom and advice.

Voice Dialogue differs from Jung’s technique in that it asks us to roll up our sleeves, take a deep breath, and actually embody all these different personae. A workshop facilitator interviews the various selves; if the personalities get too pushy or too powerful, the facilitator can intervene. “We ask each participant to actually get up and move around the room, until she finds the place that personality wants to speak from,” Sidra explains. “The Vulnerable Child may curl up on the floor, and the Mother may sit very upright in her chair. The first thing we try to do is identify that self and observe its physical energy.

“As people enter different selves,” she adds, “their blood pressure changes, and so does the color of their skin. When you talk to the vulnerable child, the brow will flatten out and wrinkles often disappear. Some selves stutter because they’re insecure. After a while, you get adept at identifying the selves and their different energy fields.”

Modern psychology has a tendency to look at all these selves as splinters or unrelated fragments of the psyche, but Voice Dialogue shows us how they come together and work as a system. The key to controlling and integrating such a system is cultivation of an aware ego. That gives us a neutral ground, a way to listen to the different voices in others and in ourselves. “Every time we identify and interview a different self,” says Sidra, “we then request that the person step back into the aware ego and process the information. We ask, ‘What did you think about what the Artist had to say?’ Or, ‘How do you feel about the demands you’ve just heard from your Inner Critic?’”

“The Aware Ego,” adds Hal, “can listen to all sides and embrace the opposites. It can hold the tension between the part of you that wants to be committed and the part that needs independence, between the part of you that loves your job and the part that wants to quit and take a flier. “

Once you become comfortable with these personalities, you can draw on them for greater awareness in everyday life. “You can play these different selves like an orchestra,” explains Sidra. “But the aware ego is the master conductor: It can pull in different selves and tune them up or tune them down.”

The Stones discovered the different selves early in their own relationship. One day Hat said to Sidra, ‘You know, there’s a vulnerable little girl in you. Will you let me talk to her?” Sidra agreed, and soon curled up in the posture of a tiny child. “We were both astonished that this quiet person had emerged,” Sidra recalls. “Most of the time I’m very extroverted and rational. This creature was in touch with the magic of the world, saw colors more intensely, and was highly intuitive.”

Over time, Hal and Sidra got to know the Vulnerable Child in each other.

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“These inner characters helped us dive beneath our fancy psychological terms and go directly to our feelings,” Sidra notes. The Vulnerable Child, the Stones believe, is the core self, but is so shy and sensitive that we develop one or two other “dominant personalities” to deal with other people’s demands and “make it in the world.” Here are some dominant personalities most of us utilize from time to time:

The Protector wants to be sure we are well fed and financially secure. The Pleaser wants us to “be nice” so others will love and accept us. The Pusher wants us to put our nose to the grindstone and “live up to our

responsibilities.” The Perfectionist says, “If you do everything right, then you will be loved.” The Caretaker says, “Be responsible. Everybody else’s needs come first.” The Rational Thinker says”Don’t be flaky. Stick to the facts.” The Inner Critic is that voice that censors us and says, “You’re not good

enough. You’ll never make it. You’re not original.” The dominant self is concerned with our need for love and protection,

but when it takes control, Sidra says, it can end up boxing us in. “It is like an overprotective parent. It takes over because it doesn’t want to see us hurt. It wants to make us socially acceptable, and in doing so, it can hamper our creativity and growth.”

Because it acts as the gatekeeper nothing happens psychologically without its permission—the Stones make sure to validate the dominant self, to thank it for the contribution it makes to the participant’s daily life. Then they try to find out more about its main concerns. They interview each person in the group to identify the dominant personality, then begin asking simple questions, such as, “How’s your week been? How’s your relationship with your spouse? Is there anything you’d like to talk about today?”

“The first thing I told the Stones about myself was that I’m a single working mother,” says participant Laura Holmes. “But I didn’t realize how much time I spent in mother mode until I got to the workshop. It was clear in that initial interview that I was obsessed with being a Caretaker. This was the self that was running my daily life.”

Laura’s Caretaker, she recalls, was a no-nonsense personality who felt she was an authority on parenthood: “I was there for Laura when she was pregnant. I took her to the library and had her read everything about early childhood development. I make sure she takes good care of her son and doesn’t neglect him. And I make sure she takes cares of a lot of other people, too.”

The Stones asked the Caretaker, “is there anything you’d like Laura to pay more attention to?” “You bet,” came the reply. “I’d like her to pay more attention to me and forget that singer. How can she be a good mother if she auditions for the opera and wants to be an artist?”

“This is how one personality leads us to another,” Sidra explains. “in that moment, we identified a disowned self, one that Laura had been taught to repress or ignore.” Whereas the dominant self tends to be overprotective and controlling, the disowned selves are often playful, humorous, and freewheeling, with the risk-taking and unconventional tendencies so often frowned on by a

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culture that overemphasizes responsibility and achievement. “The disowned selves are the parts of us we were taught are unacceptable,

inefficient, or downright unworthy,” Sidra emphasizes. “They might include the Beach Bum, the Risk Taker, the Rebel, and the Drop-out. They may also include the more inspired roles of the Artist, the Dreamer, and the Visionary. We abandon these inner selves because society labels them unproductive or frivolous. Yet when we start to honor them, we discover a whole new range of creative possibilities.”

In the workshop, Laura got to enter the world of the Artist and listen to the singer’s point of view. “When I became the singer,” Laura notes, “I gave out a completely different energy. I crossed my legs, moved my chair forward, and was immediately more theatrical.”

Laura learned that the Caretaker and the Artist both had long lists of things they wanted her to accomplish. She suddenly understood why she always felt as though she “had too much to do and was always running out of time.”

Talking to the different selves can be like running a family meeting or mediating between two heavily armed opponents, Sidra observes. The dominant selves are terrified by their opposites and can put up a good deal of resistance when they start to emerge. The Pusher, for example, fears the Beach Bum. The Protector is unnerved by the Risk Taker. The Pleaser finds the Rebel dangerous and out of line. The Perfectionist looks with horror at the Drop-out who doesn’t care about an ordered life. The Caretaker fears the Artist who might run out on her responsibilities. The Rational Thinker tries to quash the Dreamer. The Inner Critic wants to disarm the Visionary.

The Voice Dialogue technique, say the Stones, can be especially useful in times o transition, such as when you’re starting a new job or relationship. First you need to identify the conflicting voices that are present and feel the tension as they begin to pull against each other. The next step is to ask someone you trust to talk to the conflicting parts of you: the part that wants to get married and the part that wants to keep your independence, or the you who wants to get that next promotion and the you who wants to forget about the rat race and go off on a Buddhist retreat.

“You may have to repeat this process a number of times, until the selves finish giving you their information,” Sidra observes. “in the end, however, you should be able to make a mote conscious decision based on all the data you’ve received.”

In their second book, Embracing Each Other, the Stones focus on the role alternate selves play in our relationships. “The people we are attracted to-or end up in conflict with over and over again -- carry the selves we need to learn from,” says Sidra. Often a woman who plays the “martyr’ may end up with a self- centered man to learn how to get her needs met. Or a computer specialist, who works in a cool, technical atmosphere, picks an emotional mate to make contact with his passion. It’s the old saw—we choose our opposites-and then sign up for a long and sometimes arduous apprenticeship.

But when one person in the relationship integrates a disowned self, the whole dynamic changes. “I once worked with a couple who owned a business together,” Sidra recalls. “He was a relaxed, laid-back guy. One of his primary selves was a

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Beach Bum, a real loose character who never worried about anything. The wife was stuck with the Perfectionist. She took the books home, watched the inventory and was so obsessed she couldn’t sleep at night. The harder she worked, the more relaxed he got. When I showed the woman how to stand up to her Perfectionist, she started being less responsible, and the husband had to pick up his load. Finally they sold the business because they both wanted a less stressful life.”

Miriam Dyak and her husband, Richard Berger, have been going to Voice Dialogue workshops since 1985. “We run a gallery in Seattle,” says Miriam, “and we have different styles of dealing with finances. When it’s time to take a risk, I often go into the frightened, vulnerable self. Then Richard feels I’m being negative. He wants to be the creative entrepreneur and my fear is stopping him. We take time out to explore these different points of view and then we make our critical decisions. Over time, the Voice Dialogue process has deeply enriched our partnership.”

John and Leanne Dougherty, of Knoxville, Tennessee, found that the Voice Dialogue workshops gave them a common language. “Now we have a real communication system,” says Leanne, a therapist. “We can look at each other and see who’s talking, and know which self is present. We know when to step back and let that personality have its say.”

The Doughertys, who have attended Voice Dialogue workshops for the last 15 years, are about to teach its techniques in a new couples group. Leanne already uses it in her counseling practice and John, a doctor, sometimes uses Voice Dialogue to interview his patients.

“If someone has chronic headaches, I will ask them to speak from the self that has the worst time with this pain.”This information comes in handy when he makes a diagnosis.

Laura Holmes sums up her experience in the workshop: “In the course of the seminar, I worked with my Caretaker, my Artist, my Pusher, my Vulnerable Child, and my Inner Critic. I explored the ‘to-do lists’ each one of these selves had for me. And I found a place to stand, in the aware ego, and began to mediate. After the Voice Dialogue work, I feel a lot more relaxed. The sense of need and urgency that underlaid my life is gone.”

Says Miriam Dyak, “After doing Voice Dialogue, you learn not to take your problems so seriously. You are aware that you’ve got all these competing voices, so you lighten up and learn how to go easy on yourself.”

Self-Images

Since many people find it easier to access their various personalities through images, the Stones have called upon artist Suzanne Perot, 48, who is an expert in the medium of collage, to do a special afternoon session at Voice Dialogue workshops. “Collage allows us to project our different selves onto a piece of paper,” observes Perot. “We get the picture first. The name for it comes later. And since this is primarily an intuitive way of working, there are some surprises. Often a new self comes forth with valuable information about our relationships or our creative work.”

Participants select random images from magazines, calendars, and fine art

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reproductions. Perot gives them a long sheet of paper and asks them to create a “time line.” The idea is to chronicle the personalities that emerge at different junctures of their lives. “The collage will contain images of the Vulnerable Child,” she explains, “but it will also show the selves we take on later, in order to be validated by the family and the culture.

“Men who are burdened with a lot of responsibility invariably choose images of the Provider, but somewhere in the collage we’ll find the Beach Bum who wants to get away from the daily struggle. Women usually pick images of the Caretaker, but the opposite personality also shows up. The Power Self, who wants recognition in the world, comes out in images of high fashion, diamonds, or dollar signs.”

The “time line” exercise also indicates how the different personalities work together. In a section of a collage Perot made for herself, there is a sixties Flower Child, barefoot, with long straight hair, love beads, and no makeup. “I played this role for a while,” she notes, “but inside me there was also a CEO who made sure I took care of business and was a good mother.”

It’s useful to look at how we’ve been helped, in the past, by our more spontaneous and intuitive selves, adds Perot. “This encourages us to trust them and call on them to solve whatever problems we are facing now.”

Perot has also developed a three dimensional collage called the Self Box that helps people to differentiate between the selves they show the world and the ones they tend to keep locked away. “We start with a plain white box, then begin to paste images inside and out. The selection of the pictures and their placement is unconscious, but after a while, a pattern forms. On the outside of the box,

we see the dominant selves, like the Provider, the Caretaker, the Pusher, or the Perfectionist. Inside, we find images of the Vulnerable Self, as well as pictures of the Dreamer, the Visionary, or the Artist. Most people hide those personalities that give voice to their intuition, their creativity and their spiritual nature.”

The collage workshop gave Kathleen Downes, a former university teacher and researcher, a glimpse of an emerging self. “I was surprised by the images I chose. My collage showed an adventurer and traveler, and that personality became dominant in the next few months. I’m in the process of reshaping and reinventing my career, and I’ve been attending professional conferences in Bali, Hawaii, and New Zealand. I used to think there was only one right way to do things. But the workshop helped me to realize there are many different selves living inside me. It gave me permission to include them and to live in a more creative way.”

Writing the Selves

Writing is another way to connect with our alternative identities. “A human being is a very complex system,” observes poet and novelist Deena Metzger, who leads writing workshops in her home in Topanga Canyon, California, and nationwide. Participants in her seminars create characters, write their histories, and get to know them intimately. “Each one of us is a little universe, filled with many different selves,” says Metzger, author of Writing for Your Life. Yet we rarely get a chance to explore what it might be like

to stand in the shoes of another person-say, a midwife or a healer, a peace

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worker, a tribal elder, a teenage mother, a gang member, an Inca chief. “We are vessels in which many selves and values coexist. The problem is that we are taught to choose and develop only one.”

Metzger, 60, whose recent books Tree and Intimate Nature focus on the richness and diversity of the natural world, urges her students “to take a risk, delve into new realities, go into the unknown. Writing works only when you move beyond the limits of your routine personality. A story gets exciting when you have the courage to explore what it’s like to be somebody else.”

Workshop participant Karen Gottlieb grew up in a suburban house in Queens, New York, with loving and protective parents. Yet she “happened upon” a character named Johnny Stiletto. “He’s slim-hipped, sharp, and doesn’t take crap from anybody. He can get around in a tough urban environment and he lives in the shadows. He’s the street kid that I never was and he helps balance out my polite exterior. He lives in the recesses of my psyche, but he also has a place—a geographic location in the world.”

Metzger’s students don’t dialogue with their characters. Instead they get to know these “selves” as they tell their stories. When Metzger once asked class members to write about someone they wouldn’t ordinarily meet, L.A. psychotherapist Jane Plotkin was afraid she wouldn’t come up with anything at all. Suddenly she got an image of a nine year-old black girl wearing a plaid dress. “She just popped into my mind and at first, I was afraid I wouldn’t know how to relate to her,” she recalls. “But I watched and listened to her, and slowly her story unfolded. I saw that she was in prison, sitting on a cot with her mother who had been arrested for shoplifting. I saw that her mother’s spirit had been broken, but this child had a plumb line to the spiritual roots of the black tradition. She was an old soul in a little girl’s body. She remembered how to draw sustenance from the world, even from the ground of slavery.

“This is a profound creative process and it’s bound to spill over into other areas of your life,” says Plotkin. “On one level, I have a new sensitivity to myself and others. As I learned how to participate in the world-view of this little girl, I discovered a quality of innocence and openness. And I learned about a strength that goes back through the generations and whose roots are deeper than our family of origin.”

Over the last 25 years of helping students evoke their different selves, Metzger has developed techniques for jump-starting the imagination. “I like timed exercises, because they force people to move past the inner critic and draw upon their intuition. I ask my students to do the impossible—to pick a character and write his or her life history in ten minutes. When you have to work fast, there’s no time to be self-conscious. You have to write down the first thing that comes into your head.”

Metzger also works with lists and free association. “Right now, I’m teaching women who have breast cancer. I give them ten minutes to list all their memories and associations with that illness. This sounds difficult, but its astonishing how well it works.” Participants write a paragraph or two on each image or association. Finally, they write a fictional story of a woman who has breast cancer, incorporating their own memories and life experiences.

8

In this workshop, Metzger also asks participants to create a character who has learned how to heal herself. To get them started, she requests that they make a list of all the moments in their lives when they felt whole and empowered—for example, the time I stood up to my boss, the day my son was born, or the long- awaited vacation I finally gave myself. The women expand upon this list until they can tell the story of a character who has survived her diagnosis and gone on to renew her life. By the end of the class, Metzger says, “We have explored two different selves—the one who suffers and the one who learns how to nourish and cure. The profound lesson is that both these selves are intertwined. One could not exist without the other. There is a direct link between our own health and well-being and our ability to validate these different selves.”

The Medium and the Message

Which method is best for exploring the various and numerous inner selves? That’s a matter of personal preference, everyone agrees. For people who feel comfortable being interviewed and acting out, Voice Dialogue has great appeal. “It’s an excellent tool for business executives because it honors the rational mind,” John Dougherty adds. “And it’s an easy process for men to relate to, because we tend to be systematic thinkers. It helps us to make a bridge to the more emotional and intuitive aspects of our lives.”

More visually oriented people may prefer Perot’s collage workshop, but it’s also surprisingly effective for overly articulate types. “It can help people go deeper than words and get to a place that’s more visionary and intuitive,” Perot explains.

Deena Metzger’s writing seminars attract people who like to create complex worlds and follow their characters into dark and unfamiliar territory. “I’m a very private person, so I prefer working in my notebooks,” explains one workshop participant.

But whatever the medium, these methods all achieve the same end enabling participants to uncover hidden parts of themselves and integrate them into the kind of person they’d really like to be.

© 1998

Valerie Andrews, a writer living in Sonoma, California, is also the director of Sacred Words: The Center for Healing Stories. Please visit: www.themediamuse.com

This article was found at: www.voicedialogue.org. Please visit us for more articles and other resources.

Valerie Andrews | Multiple Selves

8.

From the book about Voice Dialogue

by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone

The Psychology of Selves

This chapter summarizes our way of looking at the development of personality. It introduces our concept of selves and of bonding patterns in relationship and presents our particular view of the consciousness process. This is the basic theoretical framework into which the remaining chapters fit. for those readers familiar with our work, this can be used as an update as well as a review, because we have expanded our thinking about bonding patterns considerably. Most of this material, however, is given a more comprehensive treatment in our book, Embracing Our Selves, published by Nataraj Publishing. It is intended as a companion to this book. It not only presents a thorough picture of the different selves that inhabit our psyche, it also provides a definitive description of Voice Dialogue, the process we developed that has been the main tool used in our explorations of relationship.

The Development of the Selves

Most of us are familiar with the outer family into which we were born. We have parents and grandparents, brothers, sisters and cousins, aunts and uncles. We may also have close friends who function as family members and who, at times, are closer to us than our actual families. Learning about our families and how we fit into them is a very important part of the growing-up process.

What is fascinating to consider, and what is a new idea for most people, is that we have an inner family as well as an outer one. This inner family is influenced, first of all, by those closest to us. It consists, at first, of selves that resemble the personality patterns of our family members, friends and teachers, or anyone who has had any kind of influence over us, or conversely, it consists of the personality characteristics (or selves) that represent the exact opposite patterns.

Learning about this inner family is a very important part of personal growth and absolutely necessary for the understanding of our relationships, since the members of this inner family, or "selves," as we like to call them, are often in control of our behavior. If we do not understand the pressures they exert, then we are really not in charge of our lives.

How does this inner family develop? As we grow in a particular family and culture, each of us is indoctrinated with certain ideas about the kind of person we should be. Since we are very vulnerable as infants and children, it is important that we be the "kind of person we should be," and we behave in a way that keeps us safe and loved and cared for. This need to protect our basic vulnerability results in the development of our personality - the development of the primary "selves" that define us to ourselves and to the world.

We each are born into this world in an extremely vulnerable condition. This initial self remains as a vulnerable child, a child of the utmost sensitivity, who carries with it the ability to relate intimately to others. This child can be seen as the doorway to our most profound states of being, to our souls, if you wish. It is this child who essentially carries our psychic fingerprint, and it is this child that we spend our lives protecting at all costs. Other selves develop within us early in life to stand between this child and other people so that nobody will ever be able to harm it. This is both natural and necessary, but by the time we are adults and are functioning well in the world, the selves that were developed earlier have a tendency to be overly protective.

These selves have usually decided that the best way to protect the vulnerable inner child is to keep it well-hidden, fully out of the reach of any other human being (though it may be acceptable for the child to interact with a pet). Unfortunately, this also keeps the vulnerable child out of relationships and deprives it of what it so dearly wishes - a deep and honest connection with other human beings. This keeps many of us from the intimacy we seek in relationship, since intimacy requires the presence of the vulnerable child. It is only with access to this child that we can truly know ourselves and others.

The first of the protective selves to develop is called the protector/controller because it protects the vulnerable child and controls both our behavior and that of the people around us. This protector/controller emerges surprisingly early in life. It looks about, notices what behavior is rewarded and what is punished, makes sense of the rules of the world it sees around it, and sets up a code of behavior for us. It is constantly looking for more information and will change its rules to accommodate it. This basically rational self explains the world, and ourselves, to us and provides us with the frame of reference within which we will view our surroundings.

When the protector/controller is in complete charge of our lives, as it so often is, no input is permitted that might upset the status quo or lead us to question cherished beliefs and characteristic ways of being. The role of this self is to protect the child and, in doing so, it usually keeps the child from real contact with others.

The protector/controller has as its major ally, the pusher. This self is ever-alert to what must be done next. The pusher makes lists, prompts us to complete tasks, keeps us busy and productive so that our vulnerable child will feel that we are good and that people will admire us. It is less than helpful, however, when we are trying to relax. It also tends to interfere with intimacy. If we are never in a relationship, the pusher can continue to run our lives; there is nobody to question its pre-eminence. We are prodigiously productive and greatly admired, but have not learned how to stand still long enough to make meaningful contact with someone.

Another major ally of the protector/controller is the perfectionist. Just as its name implies, this part of us sets goals of perfection, usually on all fronts. We must look perfect, be perfect, have the perfect relationship, work flawlessly, produce perfect children, so that nobody will ever criticize us and the vulnerable child will remain safe. The perfectionist has no tolerance for human frailty, little appreciation of reality, and can be pretty harsh in its view of relationship.

This self is greatly rewarded by our society and usually encouraged by our families, since it makes their internal perfectionists feel successful. The perfectionist has its place, of course. We certainly need it to set standards in some areas, such as performing surgery or designing earthquake-proof buildings, but it can be a tragically inappropriate taskmaster in our personal lives. A deeply committed relationship will lessen the power of the perfectionist and allow us to explore ourselves and others in a more forgiving fashion.

The inner critic works along with the perfectionist to protect the vulnerable child. If the critic catches all of our mistakes and inadequacies before anyone else does, or so the reasoning goes, there will be nothing about us to displease anyone, and our vulnerable child will be safe from criticism.

Unfortunately, by the time the average inner critic is finished with us, our self-esteem is shot to pieces and we feel totally unlovable. We must then go back to our old friends, the pusher and the perfectionist, and work even harder to make ourselves acceptable.

Another self that helps to make us acceptable is the pleaser. The pleaser is exquisitely sensitive to the needs and feelings of others and gently guides us in the delicate task of meeting those needs, so that others will think highly of us and be similarly understanding of our needs. This, too, is designed to protect the vulnerable child. Unfortunately, if we listen to the pleaser all the time, we tend to forget our own needs and to totally neglect our inner child. In a committed relationship we are required to look past the pleaser within ourselves and see what it is that is truly important to us. This often results in the greatest spurts of growth for both people concerned.

When these selves, and the many others whose job it is to protect our vulnerable child, are used in a constructive fashion, they can aid us on the journey of self discovery. However, when they take over completely, they can prevent us from experimentation and can keep us from bringing the totality of our imperfect, complex, contradictory and exciting selves into our relationships. They may prevent us from realizing the possibilities that exist beyond the known and the familiar.

The Primary Selves:

The Development of Personality

By the time we are adults, we have an amazing family operating inside of ourselves, generally much larger than our outer family. We usually are identified with the value structure of our original protector/controller and the parts that he or she has helped bring into the world in order to protect us. These represent our primary selves.

There are also the parts that represent the opposite value structure, that which had to be rejected in the growing-up process. We call these parts the disowned selves.1 Each of us has a surprising array of disowned selves. Learning about these selves is an important part of personal growth.

Let us look at how the protector/controller operates in the life of the child. Tommy is two years old. He is playing with his building blocks in his room, when his one-year-old brother Jerry comes into the room and wants to play with Tommy's toys. Tommy does not want him there, so he pushes him away and Jerry starts to cry. Their mother comes upstairs and tells Tommy he must learn to play with his brother, whether or not he likes it.

Tommy's basic feeling is that he'd like to punch his brother in the nose, but his protector/controller takes in the information from his mother and translates it into a formula for behavior. It now says to Tommy something like this: "Tommy, whatever your feelings about your brother, it's clear to me that your mother is going to give us a lot of trouble if we're not nice to him. It hurts too much to have your mother angry with us; it feels better when she loves us. So let's be nice to Jerry. You can hate him on the inside, but don't show your feelings directly anymore."

The protector/controller does not speak literally in this way at very young ages, but by the time we are adults, the voices of the selves are quite well defined and it is relatively easy to talk directly to them. Such formulations are fairly typical of them.

We want to make clear that the development of this protector/controller is a major part of the development of personality. It becomes what we call the acting ego. It encourages other selves to develop and support its aims and aspirations. It sets the tone and the value structure of the personality. In the case of Tommy, it would encourage the self that has to do with "pleasing." Later, its emphasis would change and it would encourage the self that had to do with becoming ambitious and being successful and making large sums of money. This ambitious self grew in response to Tommy's father, who encouraged his son to be the best in everything. Tommy's father was fond of saying, "There are winners and losers in this world, Tommy, and I'm proud to see that you are one of the winners."

The protector/controller is a major part of the primary self system. Tommy grows up to be an aggressive and quite successful lawyer. His primary selves are associated with success, ambition, money, and rationality. These selves regulate his life and determine the way in which he sees himself. Tommy behaves well toward people - his pleaser sees to that - but he needs to be in charge and to control people. He may know that he is this kind of person, or, more likely, he may be unconscious of the fact.

The Disowned Selves

Each of the primary selves has a complementary disowned self that is equal and opposite in content and power. Tommy has identified with being an aggressive and ambitious type of person. In the service of power, he has disowned his vulnerability and his ability to communicate his neediness because, to the power sides of his personality, this is a sign of weakness. The opposite of his ambition is a disowned beach bum self that loves to be lazy and not do anything. Because this is so disowned in him, he often speaks proudly about his inability to unwind when he is on vacation and notices that when he does finally unwind, it is about time to return home. We will see shortly how important the understanding of these primary and disowned selves are in understanding our relationships.

Projection

Throughout the course of this book we shall see many examples of the relationship between primary selves and disowned selves. For the moment, it is important only to become aware of the fact that there lives within each of us a multitude of disowned selves, rejected parts of our inner family that most of us know nothing about. These selves remain in our unconscious, waiting for a chance to emerge and have their needs and feelings considered. Although they are unknown to us, they often have a surprisingly powerful impact upon our lives.

Those selves that are unconscious in us are automatically projected onto another person or another thing; our inner pictures are literally projected upon the other person as though the other person were a screen. These projections act like a bridge that extends out from us to meet that other person. It is one of the significant ways in which we make contact with other people in the world. Let us look at how this works.

John is an engineer who is successful in his work and who lives very much identified with primary selves associated with rationality, adventure, and travel. In the growing-up process he shunned the softer and more vulnerable parts of himself. His father was a strong, rational type, and the softness and femininity of his mother became increasingly alien to John, in large measure because he saw her as such a victim to his father. John is surprised to find that he is constantly falling in love with women who are very feeling-oriented, very feminine, and, as he would describe them, very soft.

Falling in love is, to a large extent, the projection of our unconscious selves onto another person. All of the softness and sensitivity that lie within John as disowned selves are projected onto these women. Sally, his latest love, has an additional feature; she is spiritual, an area of life that John has never touched and about which he has considerably negative feelings. Although John finds himself arguing with Sally for hours at a time about her spiritual viewpoint, he loves her deeply and is at some level fascinated by her unfamiliar way of looking at life. It is his own unconscious, then, that draws him into the relationship to Sally, via the mechanism of projection. By projecting these unconscious contents onto Sally, John has the chance to realize them in himself, if he uses their relationship as an opportunity to grow.

Sally grew up in a family where she was raised to be a loving daughter; all intellectual pursuit and personal achievement were discouraged. Finding the proper husband and raising a family were all her family encouraged. She got the message from her parents, over and over again, that she was very special and some man would be truly lucky to have her.

Sally's primary selves were loving and pleasing and caring. Her disowned selves were her rational and analytic mind, and her drive for professional achievement. We can easily see how these qualities in her unconscious would be projected onto John, while his opposite selves would be projected onto her. This kind of mutual projection is the natural start of many relationships, but it can become damaging when we do not understand how it works.

These mutual projections can bring with them much richness when we see that they represent a natural tendency toward growth, a direct and exciting path for our evolution of consciousness, a chance to integrate unconscious material into our own lives.

Sandy worships his boss. He sees him as wise, fair, powerful, intuitive, sensitive, and godlike, the father he always wanted and never had. Then Sandy and his wife are invited to the boss's home for dinner. Sandy is horrified to find that his boss in henpecked, ridiculed, and seemingly ineffectual in the home situation. His idol has crumbled. The strong father he always wanted is no longer there for him.

This crumbling of our heroes generally happens when we have projected to much power and authority onto them. But this kind of projection is a natural act, occurring constantly in our relationships. It is an integral part of our own personal development because it is through this projection that we can gain back our own power, the power that resides in our disowned selves. If we understand something about disowned selves and projection, then we can learn much from these projections and we have a better chance of reclaiming these selves.

Projection Onto Objects

Projection can occur in relationship to a person or it can occur in relationship to an object. Ralph bought an old army jeep for a considerable sum of money. He spent a fortune fixing it up and when he drove it, which was quite infrequently, something invariably went wrong. In addition, it was an extremely uncomfortable car in which to sit. His attachment to the jeep felt unnatural; one might almost say he felt possessed.

This is a feeling that often is experienced by people who are experiencing strong projections onto a person or an object. A few years before he bought the jeep, Ralph had accepted a major position with an international manufacturing firm. He worked very long hours, and his job was with him constantly. His primary selves had always had more to do with work and power. Playfulness and fun had always been a more disowned system of selves; with the responsibility of his new position, they became totally disowned.

What happened next? The part of him that knew how to be playful and adventurous had been projected onto the jeep. The extent of his possession by this vehicle is directly proportional to how strong the playful and adventurous selves are in him and how strongly they are disowned. The moment that he experienced these disowned selves within himself, through Voice Dialogue, the fascination with the jeep dissipated.

Whenever someone feels "possessed" by another person or thing we know automatically that the person or thing is carrying projected disowned selves. Much of the buying that people do is based on projections. All kinds of disowned energies are seen in bracelets, necklaces, dresses, cars, and boats. Used with awareness, such purchases can open us to new experiences and new possibilities.

Disowned Selves and Our Judgments

If we have grown up more identified with those selves that are associated with personal power, it would be most natural that we would disown the selves associated with vulnerability and neediness. Our acting ego would be identified with power. This means that in the course of growing up we have learned that vulnerability is something bad, something to be mastered. The power side judges vulnerability as something negative and, with time, an automatic shut-off valve comes into operation whenever vulnerability is experienced. When we meet someone who is more identified with vulnerability, our power side (which is our acting ego) tends to judge or react negatively to that person although at the same time we might feel a strong attraction to the person. The basic rule of the psyche can be expressed as follows:

The people in the world whom we hate, judge, or have strong negative reactions towardare direct representations of our disowned selves.

Conversely, the people in the worldwhom we overvalue emotionally are also direct representations of our disowned selves.

This psychic law has immense consequences in the realm of human relationships. Let us look at some examples to see how it operates in a more specific way.

Jane has grown up in a family where her natural sensuality had to be disowned. When she was a little girl, her mother was extremely critical of her whenever she danced in a sensual way, and especially when she acted sensually in relationship to her father, with whom she had a particularly strong bond.

Jane eventually married, but she had no awareness of the degree to which her own sensual nature was locked away. One evening she and her husband went to a party. There she saw a woman close to her own age who was a pure "Aphrodite" type (in Greek mythology, Aphrodite was the goddess of love and sensuality). This woman had had several drinks and was flirting outrageously with several men, who were happily flirting back.

Jane was revolted by this display and said to her husband: "That is the most disgusting sight I have ever seen!" What had happened? Watching this woman activated those selves in Jane that are related to her sensuality. Once those impulses began to emerge from within Jane, another self, based on her mother's rejection of sensuality, came into operation to suppress them. The name we give to this inner voice of the mother is the "introjected mother." The introjected mother blocks these impulses within by judging or attacking the person outside who carries the impulses.

The more powerful the affective reaction we have toward the other person, the stronger is the power of the disowned self. In this example, Jane's strong reaction indicated the presence of a powerful disowned sensual self. If Jane understood the basis of her strong negative reaction, what a marvelous opportunity she would have to reclaim this very basic part of herself.

Sherry works in an office, and she hates her boss. She describes her as domineering, power hungry, and unfeeling. Sherry had a mother who fit this same description. Very early in life, Sherry vowed she would never be this way, and she began disowning the part of herself that had to do with power and domination. In their place as primary selves appeared her very caring and loving nature. Now, whenever she was around anyone who carried her disowned attributes, Sherry became unbearably irritable and critical.

If Sherry understood the issue of disowned selves, she could have realized she was reacting, not to a person, but to a part of herself buried deep within; she could have used the opportunity presented by her boss as a challenge for her own personal development.

Disowned Selves in Relationship

Thus far, we have been discussing a number of very basic psychic laws.

1. For every primary self with which we are identified, there are one or more disowned selves of equal and opposite energy.

2. Each disowned self is projected onto some person or some thing.

3. The people and things of the world that we reject, hate, and judge, or conversely, those we overvalue, are direct representations of our disowned selves.

4. As a corollary to the third law, each person we judge, hate, reject, or each person we overvalue, is a potential teacher for us, if we can step back and see how the basis of our reaction is a disowned self of our own.

5. So long as a self is disowned within us, we will continue to repeatedly attract that particular energy in our life. The universe will bring us the people we judge, hate, and resent over and over again until we finally get the message that they are reflections of that which is disowned in us. Or, in contrast to this, the universe will bring us people whom we find marvelous and irresistible, people who make us feel inadequate, inferior, and unworthy. This will continue until we realize that these people are merely showing us aspects of ourselves that we have disowned.

Some Examples of Disowned Selves in Relationship

George saw himself as a scrupulously honest businessman, but he had a strong dishonest streak in him that he had always denied. This disowned dishonesty led him to become involved in a business venture with a man who was fundamentally dishonest and cheated George out of a good deal of money. His denial of his own inner psychopath (and we all possess such "selves") made it very difficult to acknowledge the reality of this behavior in his business partner.

Even after it happened, George had a difficult time accepting the reality that he had been cheated. This disowning of one's own dishonest self is one of the reasons why so many people get cheated so easily.

Steve was a lawyer who was committed to being a loving human being at all times. He totally rejected the idea that any form of darkness existed in the world. In his business life, he got involved with strong criminal elements that almost destroyed his career.

The denial of the dishonest and criminal parts of themselves led both Steve and George into destructive situations. That is the paradox of disowned selves: we are drawn to the very people who carry these "unacceptable" qualities for us. This holds true whether the "unacceptable" qualities are good or bad; it applies to the persons we overvalue as well as those we despise. Life will constantly bring us face to face with people who represent our disowned selves, until we begin to reclaim these selves.

Bonding Patterns in Relationships

If two people in an ongoing relationship understand something about their primary and disowned selves, there is a much greater possibility of working out difficult and repetitive conflicts that arise between them. Let us look at some examples of how this works.

Larry and Janice have been married for five years. Larry is a meticulous, rational, ordered, and controlled person. His disowned selves are the opposite of each of these systems.

Janice carries most of his disowned energies. She is easygoing and does not care if the house is messy. She does not make up lists of things to do. She is feeling-oriented, with a very strong sensuality and sexuality.

Larry and Janice were passionately drawn to each other, but now they are beginning to have some difficulties. They have two young children, and Larry does not like to come home to a messy house. He begins to pick at Janice. Why can't she be organized and neater? He feels irritable and is beginning to sound more like a critical father than a husband and partner.

Janice is defensive. She begins to feel like she is back in her parental home, where her father carped at her constantly about her lack of order. Since she could never please him, no matter how hard she tried, she had stopped trying.

A new pattern has begun to emerge between Larry and Janice, particularly with the advent of their second child. Many of the selves that he saw as cute and sweet before have now become annoying to him. He begins to think about having an affair. Neither knows what is happening; they feel miserable and disappointed and seem unable to deal with each other in any kind of creative fashion.

If we approach this from the standpoint of the disowned selves, we begin to get a partial picture of what is happening. Larry and Janice have both married their disowned selves, without knowing or understanding the real implications of this act. This is, in our experience, fairly typical. It is strange, in a way, because couples like Larry and Janice will often talk to each other and to other people about how different, how opposite they are in so many ways. So long as the bonding patterns remain positive, there is generally not too much difficulty. Once they become negative, it is no longer fun and the bonding wars begin in earnest. Let us look at what this looks like in a diagrammatic form.

The Woman

Mother Daughter

Son Father

The Male-Female Interaction

In this diagram we see the basic male-female bonding pattern. The mother side of the woman is bonded to the son side of the man (the M-S axis), and the father side of the man is bonded to the daughter side of the woman (the F-D axis). This diagram illustrates the basic bonding pattern that exists in all male and female relationships before the development of any kind of awareness. It is a normal and natural process. It cannot be eliminated, nor would eliminating it be desirable; these bonding patterns contain much life and vitality. They often provide warmth and nurturing. The problem is that without awareness they are very likely to turn negative. In addition, the two people miss what is possible in the interaction of two aware egos.

In the early years of the relationship between Larry and Janice, these differences did not matter. Their bonding patterns remained essentially positive. With children, something began to change. Janice and Larry both felt somewhat overwhelmed and vulnerable, but neither of them was aware of these feelings. Janice let herself go a little more than she had before and, as the pressure grew her inattention to details became even more pronounced. Larry, in turn, was more anxious with the added responsibility of a second child. He began to work harder as a way of balancing his sense of vulnerability. He needed order even more strongly as a way of handling his anxieties about money and the responsibility of a larger family. As he contracted more and more he went into a role more aligned with "negative father" than "husband." Janice reacted to her sense of being overwhelmed by resorting to her primary selves as well. She became less and less concerned with what was happening. Thus, they began to push one another more deeply into their primary selves, making it more and more difficult to embrace one another's way of being. This is fairly typical of what happens in relationships when such conflicts begin. Both individuals tend to become more extreme in their identification with their primary selves.

To summarize what we have so far discussed, we refer to this way of being locked into each other in a relationship as a negative bonding pattern. The term "bonding patterns" in relationship refers specifically to the activation of parent/child patterns of interaction between two people. These are normal and natural configurations that exist in all relationships. This bonding can develop between any two people, whether they be male/female, male/male, or female/female. The catalyst for all negative bonding patterns is the activation of the disowned vulnerability in the two people. In this case, the arrival of the children made both Larry and Janice feel a bit overwhelmed and, therefore, vulnerable. The fuel for these bonding patterns can generally be found in the mutuality of the disowned selves that exists between two people. This keeps the bonding pattern burning bright and strong.

To analyze a negative bonding pattern in a relationship, one looks for the following:

1. What was the ignition point or catalyst? How was the vulnerability of the two people activated? Where are they feeling insecure, overwhelmed, or otherwise vulnerable?

2. What are the disowned selves that each carries for the other? What is the fuel that keeps the fires burning?

3. What are the actual selves that are involved in the bonding, i.e., the mother daughter selves in the woman, and the father and son selves in the man?

With Janice and Larry, we have seen that the catalyst was the vulnerability cued off by the arrival of the children and the pressures this brought with it. The disowned selves then provided the fuel to keep the negative bonding pattern alive. Larry and Janice were opposites in many ways, as we have seen. He identified with his rational mind and his need for control of all details in his life. Since he disowned his own feelings and more "laid back" selves, and Janice carried them, her "laid back" behavior became one of the fuels for their bonding pattern. It became the substantive content for the judgmental father that was alive in him and waiting to be activated by the right circumstances. On the other hand, his anxious son, which had initially been activated by the demands of fatherhood, now felt even more panicked by the appearance of Janice's judgmental mother.

On her part, Janice disowned her more rational and orderly self and prided herself on her "laid back" approach to life. Earlier in their relationship, Larry's orientation to details was charming. Now, however, her judgmental mother began to feel critical of this behavior. Larry's need for control became the substantive content for her judgmental mother and it fueled her part of the bonding pattern. Janice also began to feel less sexual toward Larry. As his judgmental father emerged, Janice became increasingly angry and rebellious, moving into her rebellious daughter self, much as she had with her own demanding father. So we see with Janice how her disowned selves became the fuel for the mother/daughter aspect of herself that was waiting to be activated in the relationship.

It is interesting to note that our bonding patterns are very similar to the kinds of patterns that have existed in the past with our own parents or siblings. We literally re-create our past. We re-create what we had with our parents and/or siblings and what they had with us, or we go to the opposite extreme and rebel against the way they were with us. In this example, Larry had begun to criticize and judge Janice in the way his father had criticized and judged his mother. Janice responded as a hurt and then a rebellious daughter, just as she had with her own father. The bonding pattern then was between the judgmental father in him and the rebellious daughter in her. At some level we always have the reverse pattern in operation, even if it does not show itself at first glance. In this instance, it was Janice's judgmental mother that was bonded into Larry's anxious son, much as Larry's real father (who had been extremely judgmental) had bonded into this anxious son in Larry when he had lived at home. Diagrammatically it would look something like this:

Larry

F Critical Father Anxious Son S

D Hurt Daughter Judgmental M

Rebellious Daughter Mother

Janice

Larry and Janice - Negative Bonding

We would like to point out that bonding patterns of this kind that exist without awareness can cause all kinds of misery and mischief, but there is something that can be done about them. These bonding patterns represent the primary reason for the disintegration of the romance and the feelings of love in relationship and often are responsible for the destruction of a positive sexual experience as well. It is our view that they represent a primary reason for many of the misunderstandings and disturbances in relationships and friendships.

This book is basically about the understanding of these bonding patterns. These patterns operate in many of our interactions with people, but they are of particular significance in our most important ongoing relationships. In these long-term situations they tend to become much more ingrained and uncomfortable, motivating us to figure out what is happening to us. As we learn about these bonding patterns and develop an awareness of how they operate, we often find that we can use this information to move ahead and into a period of accelerated personal growth. As for the bonding patterns themselves, although they do not disappear, they become less deadly, and there is an introduction of greater humor and understanding into the relationship.

The Consciousness Process

When we talk about personal growth, we like to describe it as the consciousness process; sometimes we talk about the evolution of consciousness. The idea of process is a very important part of our understanding and thinking. Consciousness is not a static thing; one never becomes "conscious." One is always in the process of becoming more conscious. What, then, are the elements that constitute this process? We see three different levels of activity that are essential to our way of thinking about consciousness. In listing them in the order of levels 1, 2, and 3 we are not implying that one is better than the other. The levels are for purposes of clarification only.

Level 1: Awareness

The awareness level of consciousness is what many people have in mind when they talk about consciousness. It is often referred to as the "witness." Awareness gives one the ability to step back from one's mind, one's emotions, one's body, and one's spiritual nature and to simply view them in a totally dispassionate way. In the awareness level there is no attachment to the outcome of things. It is not an emotional state, nor is it a rational state. It has nothing to do with control.

For instance, if the awareness level is operating within us (Sidra and Hal) at the present moment, we do not have to be identified with the ideas that we are expressing, because our awareness is separate from these ideas and our feelings about them. It frees us from the necessity of forcing our ideas upon you and allows us to focus on the clarity of the presentation rather than being concerned with how the ideas will be received. This automatically frees us from the negative aspects of our inner critics, perfectionists, and pleasers and we are able to write. You can see from this example what a wonderful gift awareness is and you can well understand why it has been the basic goal of so many spiritual and meditative systems.

The awareness level of consciousness allows each of us to step into a certain moment of time and witness what is there. We must realize, however, that this awareness level is not an action level. Since it is not attached to the outcome of things, but is simply there as an observing point of reference, some other part of us must deal with the information made available to us through our awareness.

Level 2: The Experience of the Different Selves

The second consideration in our definition of consciousness has to do with experience. Awareness, we have seen, is a point of reference; there is no intellectual or emotional involvement. A full definition of consciousness must also include the experience of the different parts of ourselves and their experience of the world around us. Without experience, we would lose our sense of who we are as human beings in the world and would lose the excitement and intensity of life.

For example, we might have an experience of our anger or our jealousy, or love, or pride, or religious ecstasy, or any of a host of possible emotional reactions. If we only become aware of things, then we lose our relationship to the amazing variety of experience that is available to us. If we only experience, without awareness, then we remain forever identified with our experiences and cannot separate from them. We could drown in our feelings.

For example, let us say that John feels very jealous of his girlfriend when they are at a party together. If John tries to become aware as a way of transcending the experience of jealousy, then he loses the reality of the experience of jealousy. If, however, he remains jealous and angry without awareness, then he remains locked into the experience of jealousy with no possibility of behaving in a different way. If he goes into an awareness level and transcends the anger, or tries to, then he loses the power and vitality of this very significant emotion. What he does with this anger and how he handles it is something that John has to deal with. Each of us must learn to embrace all of the selves. As we continue to learn from our experiences and to embrace our many selves, we find that life has more options than we had ever imagined possible.

Awareness and experience, therefore, are two inseparable partners in the way we look at the consciousness process. Each has its job to do and, together, they bring us much richness. Even together, however, they are not sufficient. Another partner is needed in this business consortium. Who or what is going to evaluate all this information and experience? Who or what is going to take advantage of all this awareness and experience and decide what to do with it? This brings us to level 3 of our definition of the consciousness process.

Level 3: The Aware Ego

The concept of the ego has been around for a considerable period of time. Historically speaking, the ego has always been defined as the executive function of the psyche; it is the decision-maker. From the standpoint of an individual who is oriented more toward the rational self, the idea of the ego as making choices and executing decisions is very appealing. A person's life must have someone in charge. Otherwise it is like driving in a car with a vast multitude of selves fighting with one another about who gets the wheel. Historically speaking, it is the job of the ego to be in charge, to drive the psychological car.

What we discover about the ego when we first work with the different selves in people is that it is really an operating ego, an ego that is basically the self or selves that the people happen to be identified with at that particular time. So, to go back to the example we have been using, if you have been raised in a family in which rationality has been emphasized, and you are identified with this self, then what you will think of as your ego is basically your rational self. Without an awareness of this, you may feel, quite contentedly, that all your decisions come out of clear choice and free will when, in reality, your rational self is making all your choices under the guise of an ego. To repeat, we call this kind of ego an operating ego.

What we propose, then, is the idea of an ego that is constantly in process. It is forever taking in the information provided by the awareness level of consciousness. It is forever dealing with the experience of the different selves within and how these selves are reacting to, and experiencing, the world without. We call this the aware ego. It is very important to understand that when we use this term, we always are referring to a process and not an entity. There is no such thing as an aware ego. There is only an individual ego that is attempting to evaluate the constant input of awareness and experience and thus be in a better position to make more effective choices in the world. Thus, an ego that is becoming increasingly aware helps us to stay young and alive, allows us to continue to grow, and keeps our options in life open.

The aware ego has another quality that is very important. It has the ability to embrace and to hold the tension between totally different selves. As a matter of fact, it is only an aware ego that has this capability. Let us see how this works. Mary is a 33-year-old mother of three children. She is happily married and enjoys her family life and children. The problem is that she has begun to suffer from migraine headaches. Her nights have become increasingly restless and she recalls dreams of being chased by dark figures. She finally seeks professional help to alter this pattern.

In her earlier life, Mary was a bright student and had already begun graduate school when she and her husband met. They fell in love and were married, though she had some misgivings about the possibility of losing her career. Her mother strongly influenced her to get married and have a family. This fit in well with the part of Mary that really feared the challenge of a graduate program and all that would entail. The part of her that wanted the career went underground. She was no longer carrying the tension of opposites. It is not the decision of what to do in life that is an issue from our perspective. The issue of whether we can carry the tension of the opposites no matter which way we go. In Mary's case, it would have meant that she maintains a connection to the voice in her that wanted a career. Instead, getting married was no longer just a question of marrying the man she loved. It was also a solution to her conflict about a professional life, and so it became a way out for her.

Since both Mary and her husband wanted children, it was not long before the children came and now, ten years later, she had three of them. Mary was a good mother, and her sense of who she was as a person became increasingly identified with her role as mother. The selves that had been operating in graduate school, that wanted to become a clinical social worker, gradually disappeared from her awareness. They became, in effect, disowned selves. Mary's ego was now fully identified with those selves that we related to being a mother. These selves, in fact, had become her operating ego.

Another cluster of selves seemed to disappear at this time as well. Mary reported that the sexual relationship in the marriage had all but vanished, although she was quick to point out this was no problem for either her husband or herself. It just did not seem to matter. They were very happy with their family, which gave them much comfort and joy. They were leading just the kind of life that they had always dreamed about.

Mary was bright, and she was able to see the extent to which the non-mother selves in her had been eliminated or disowned. As an awareness level began to develop, she began to see the extent to which her ego was identified with the mother role. As her ego separated from the mother role, she also began to be aware of, and to experience, a whole new group of feelings and thoughts that were quite contrary to what she had known before. She became aware of the part of her that wanted to forget everything and just go to Greece for a year. She began to feel how dead the marriage had become, and suddenly sexuality became a serious issue for her. She became aware of the part of her that wanted a professional life, that was tired of spending her days at home and driving carpools and cooking meals.

Mary had indeed begun to develop an aware ego, and now she was able to begin to embrace two very contradictory and powerful systems of selves within her. One system of selves wanted her to remain home and raise her children and give them the fullest possible mothering they could get. This part said to her: "Too many women choose career over children and the children always have to pay the piper. Your father left you when you were quite young and your mother had to go out to work, so you know the trauma of a motherless home." On the other side of the conflict were the selves that spoke as follows: "We are bored out of our minds with this stultifying life that you are leading. You have 'put in' eight full-time years of mothering and it is time for a change. We are not telling you to get rid of the children, but just to begin to take our voices seriously and start to think about our feelings and needs. Otherwise we are going to make you good and sick and you'll be forced to deal with us from a hospital bed. We cannot stand this anymore."

What does Mary do with this conflict? She learns to carry it. She learns to live with opposites. She needs to disengage from both sides and learn to use both kinds of energy in her life. She has two totally opposite people living inside of her and she has to be able to stretch out her arms to embrace both of them. She has to learn how to live with discomfort, how to sweat. When one embraces opposites, one sweats. The greater the power of the aware ego, the more the sweat. It is only an aware ego that can learn to live with seemingly irreconcilable opposites.

Let us return to the three levels of our definition of consciousness. We have awareness, the experience of the different energies and selves, and an ego that is in an ongoing process of becoming more aware and is constantly evaluating experience so that it can make more effective choices. If we believe in this definition, then it has far-reaching consequences. It means, for example, that we are all just fine the way we are, so long as these conditions are met. It means that if Mary gets angry at her children, and she has awareness and an ego that is taking advantage of the experience, then that is the process of consciousness.

Many people who are interested in the consciousness process and who strive toward personal development have a concept in their minds about the way that they should be in life. Their goal is usually a state of tranquillity and awareness. It is often the case that when they experience strong affective states like jealousy or anger, guilt is experienced because these are not tranquil or aware feelings. An inner voice then criticizes them for feeling this way. If, however, there is no need for this kind of perfection, as in our way of viewing the consciousness process, then this inner critic is remarkable stilled and everything is fine just as it is.

More About the Aware Ego and the Issue of Surrender

For people on a spiritual path, the concept of the ego is a distasteful one. "Ego" is seen as worldly, prideful, rational, arrogant, power-oriented, and most certainly not surrendered to any kind of spiritual power. So it has happened in many spiritual traditions that people are taught to eradicate their egos because only then can they be truly on a spiritual path.

From our perspective, the ego to which they are referring is not the "process of the aware ego," but rather the operating ego. It is what is commonly called ego but which is, in fact, the primary selves with which the ego has been identified. Since these primary selves have been largely identified with rationality for many centuries, it is no wonder that an ego that has been identified with these selves rejects the non-rational aspects of reality and would be a hindrance to anyone on a spiritual path. It is, therefore, perfectly understandable why spiritually oriented people reject the concept of ego as too limiting.

Furthermore, for those dedicated to the eradication of the ego, there is a feeling that the identification with ego leads one down a blind path that removes one from one's spiritual origins. This argument conveys the idea that the ego must give way to a deeper part of oneself that is less concerned with worldly things. It sees the ego as interfering with the ability to experience divinity or to surrender to a spiritual path. This deeper self, they feel, needs to gradually become the prime mover in life and as this process takes place, the ego gradually relinquishes its role and fades into oblivion.

What we are talking about in our view of the consciousness process is the aware ego. It is the task of this aware ego to embrace all of the different selves without being identified with any of them. It is only an aware ego that can do this. An aware ego is surrendered to the process of the evolution of consciousness. It accepts the sacred task of becoming aligned with all of the various energy configurations that constitute who we are as human beings. Since this is a process and, so far as we can determine, there is no ultimate final condition of consciousness, the surrender is the process itself.

Since the aware ego is surrendered to the process of consciousness, it is open to the total range of possible experiences. It embraces them all, positive and negative, "acceptable" and "unacceptable," without being married to any of them.

This surrender of the aware ego to the process of the evolution of consciousness has certain consequences. It means that we cannot be selective in what we embrace of do not embrace. An aware ego can be selective in what it does ultimately with the different energies. It cannot be selective about its willingness to embrace all of them. The choice lies in the subsequent action taken, not in the embrace itself. Embracing a part does not mean becoming it. Instead, it means honoring the part, as one would honor a god or goddess. In our viewpoint, the aware ego seeks to honor all the different selves and energies exactly as though they were gods and goddesses.

We then might try to give a name to this new kind of surrender, and we believe quite profoundly that it is a new kind of surrender, one that leads to a new kind of renaissance person. We might say that this surrender to the process itself, and the requirement that we gradually learn to embrace all the selves, is a surrender to Spirit with a capital S rather than a small s. We might even say that it is a surrender to a much wider and more comprehensive vision of Spirit than anything we have known before. We might see it as the surrender to an intelligence that lives within the unconscious itself, an intelligence that has as its goal the evolution of consciousness in the human species. We might say that it is all of the above.

If we wish to surrender to the process of consciousness, we must surrender to it in all its complexities and contradictions. If we want to be loving human beings, we must learn to love our own wolves and jaguars and snakes and dragons, our stupidity and irritability and weakness and vulnerability and darkness as much as we love our loving and rational, competent, caring, and light-oriented selves. To have as a goal the honoring of all the energy systems that exist within us is a highly devotional act. By whatever name we call it, it is indeed a new kind of surrender and this kind of process that opens us to relationship as one of the most powerful teachers on the planet. Now let us turn to the most basic aspect of this teaching, the introduction to the vulnerable inner child who we see as the doorway to our unique and, at the same time, universal soul.

9.

Intro To Archetype Work

by Jason Bennett, revised May, 2007

Using Archetype Work:

• You can rapidly access specific physical, vocal and emotional states-of-being -- from a calculating, sex-crazed, killer -- to a playful, extremely sensitive child the next.

• You will explore a diverse library of "characters" for use in your work – with different ages, philosophies, emotional realities, voices and body language.

• You will "connect" with all kinds of new characters and understand their relationships on entirely new levels. This means you may be castable in many more roles and your work will be more dimensional and unpredictable.

Archetype: An archetype is a basic "unit" of the human psyche. Archetypes are universal "ways of being" or looking at the world programmed into your psyche. There are dozens of archetypes that make-up your personality. Archetypes have very unique thoughts, values, abilities, emotions, voices, energies and physicalizations. The internal manifestation of archetypes are images and fantasies. As an adult, you are able to access many kinds of archetypes, but many you have deeply repressed since childhood.

Archetype Facilitation: An Archetype Facilitation is the process of directly accessing archetypes in you -- including the ones you have repressed -- so you can use them for your acting. The more you do this, the more you develop a library of "character traits" for use in your work. But they are not "characters," they are real parts of your psyche.

Introduction

Ever hear of multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder?

The fact is everyone has multiple personalities, or parts of their psyche. The disorder usually occurs in people who have suffered terrible and repeated abuse at a very young age.

As a result, their personality fragments into various parts (subpersonalities) who do not know about each other. They do this to survive the abuse they are unable to physically escape, by "escaping" into different parts of their psyche. While they are being abused, they are in one subpersonality who knows about and experiences the abuse. When they are not being abused, they are in other subpersonalities that don't even know the person has been abused.

When you understand this "disorder" this way, you see that the mind is capable of remarkable adaptations to cope with terrible life circumstances.

All "normal" people experience varying degrees of personality fragmentation -- it's a normal part of development. Actors take advantage of this, often without consciously realizing it, to craft characterizations and shape a story.

As you grow up, some archetypes are validated by your experiences in life and others are rejected and repressed. The ones that are validated and rewarded by your environment eventually become your basic personality. These "primary selves" or subpersonalities are how most people experience you when they meet you.

For example, as you grew up, you may have been rewarded for smiling a lot and thinking very scientifically. As an adult, you have a "primary self" that is a happy smiler, and a primary self that is rational. This would be part of how you would describe yourself -- "I'm happy and like to use my brain." Or maybe you were raised to be extremely religious, humble and against any kind of sex for pleasure. You would describe yourself in another way.

But consider this, in both these examples another set of parents might have rewarded the exact opposite archetypes in you as you grew up!

Many people walk around thinking they simply are who they are, "that's just who I am," not consciously aware that their psyche contains the archetypal potential to be any kind of person --- and that who they think they are is in large part a result of habit, reward and punishment. We might say they are asleep, or unconscious of, most of who they have the potential to be!

Actors not only know about the fact that we are more than who we think we are, great actors Master the ability to choose who to be.

So, for every primary archetype you have easy access to, there is an equally powerful opposite archetype that you have disowned – meaning you no longer have access to that way of perceiving and experiencing the world. You are less conscious of, or completely unaware of, archetypes you disown. In the extreme, archetypes you totally disown are personality traits you literally can't even imagine having. But your disowned archetypes never go away. In fact, your disowned archetypes present themselves to you in your dreams while you sleep.

To illustrate how this primary/disowning process occurs, consider this: Susan is cold, detached and quite the perfectionist workaholic. She has access to archetypes that are logical, perfectionistic and impersonal. These are her primary selves.

Buried in Susan's unconscious are real and alive opposite ways of being -- warm, personal, empathic archetypes, a beach-bum archetype, an intuitive archetype, and archetypes that are intensely vulnerable. These are Susan's disowned selves. If Susan were an actor, it would likely be very difficult for Susan to play a character that was anything like her disowned selves.

This primary/disowning process takes place in us our whole lives, whether or not we are consciously aware of it. To some extent, our personalities re-align continually as we encounter changing real life circumstances. But an actor needs to have the archetypal freedom to intuitively re-align their psyche based on imaginary circumstances, not just real ones. This is one of the primary ingredients of talent and is a primary goal of professional actor training.

Reclaiming the Disowned Parts of You for Your Acting

Archetype Work helps you develop consciousness of, and access to, the vast world of archetypes in you -- instead of being powerless over and unaware of this process, like most people live their entire lives. It allows you to reclaim the archetypes you have disowned, so they are available to "bubble up" when you act. Archetype Work can solve many acting problems traditional acting methods can't, liberating you from blocks and allowing you to access new kinds of "characters" and "points of view" that you didn't think you were capable of or could even imagine.

Archetype Work is not therapy. A facilitator helps introduce you to the archetypes in you, "interviewing" them and exploring with you how they manifest.

As you do this work, you will begin to understand that the causes of dramatic conflict in the characters you play can be traced back to characters in opposite archetypes from one another. The following "psychological axioms" have amazing ramifications for script analysis:

Each person you hate or judge is mirroring for you the "bad side" of the archetypes you disown. Conversely, the people you are highly attracted to or feel inadequate around also manifest your disowned archetypes – they are mirroring for you the "good side" of the archetypes you disown.

Here is a helpful little secret about life: you attract people into your life who manifest your disowned archetypes over and over. The universe has a funny way of doing that. Because these kinds of interactions trigger intense vulnerability, these relationships either go extremely well or extremely poorly. But when disowned archetypes are involved, they are always memorable and energetically charged!

Opposites really do attract in life, and sometimes result in cataclysmic archetypal battles. Archetypal opposites, and the associated vulnerability, are what cause all dramatic conflict. Think about Stanley and Blanche in A Streetcar Named Desire, or Felix and Oscar in The Odd Couple. Think about any conflict in your life - either internally or between you and someone else. It arises from competing opposite impulses, or archetypes. Think about the current clash between the West and Islam, what opposite archetypes and impulses play a role in this global conflict?

Archetype Work and the Psychology of Selves are powerful "plug-ins" to any kind of acting process. This tool does not result in you being focused on yourself and your feelings while acting. Rather, Archetype Work is a tool to effortlessly access more of you in your life – many more "points of view" – so that in the imaginary circumstances of the play you are free to relate to the other actors and pursue your actions/objectives from an internal reality specific and "truthful" to the "character" you are playing.

And we are absolutely not suggesting that you can develop characters by simply doing this work. Acting is much more complicated than an archetype analysis or this Archetype Work. Again, this work is a "plug-in" to the traditional acting methods we teach.

But on the other hand, your acting cannot succeed unless, going into a role, you have intuitive access to a whole range of archetypes. That part is not negotiable, no matter what acting methods you use.

Developing an Awareness of Archetypes

Below are some examples of universal archetypes within your psyche. These archetypes can be easily available to you or lie deeply disowned in your unconscious – but they are there. You can think of these archetypes as generic, but powerful traits of a multi-dimensional character. Characters are unique combinations of many archetypes shaped by their unique life experiences, just like people in real life.

These groups of archetypes overlap. These archetypes do not fit into nice categories and are not literally people living in your head. But these labels are useful in terms of helping you to develop awareness of what is going on inside you and for your use as an actor:

The power selves: The protector. The warrior. The killer. The leader. The aristocrat. The boss. The star. The rational mind. The survivor. The optimist. The rebel. The patriarch. The Joker. The manipulator. The liar. The sadist. The judge. The matriarch. The hero. The messiah. The old soul The special self. The traditionalist. The "I'm God" self. The exercise self. Sexuality. Joy. The partier. The victim. The controller.

The vulnerable and child selves: The vulnerable child (the core of who you are). The magical child. The silly/playful child. The lonely child. The insecure child. The lover. The playful child. The abandoned child. The hopeless child. The sad child. The victim. The shy/embarrassed child. The silly/goofy child. The rebellious child. Spontaneous. What will people think self?

The parent selves: Good father. Negative father. Critical father. Good mother. Critical mother. Negative mother. Nurturing mother or father. The controlling mother or father. Withdrawn mother or father. Responsible mother or father. Tyrannical mother or father. Punishing mother or father. The psychological mother or father.

The being selves: The Beach bum. The new age self. The transcendent. The old soul. The Meditator. The Relaxation self. The "who cares"/irresponsible self. The slob. The "just want to escape" self. Sensuality.

The personal selves: The pleaser. The lover. The feminine selves. The "bleeding heart" self. The empathic self. Most of the children selves. The submitter. The Joker.

The impersonal selves: The rational/logical selves. The power selves. The "who cares" self. The judge. Masculine selves. The rebel. The finance self. The killer. The messianic doctor.

The inner critic: a very powerful self in most of us, always criticizing us whenever we don't follow the rules of all the other selves.

The perfectionist: a very powerful self in most of us in Western culture.

The pusher: a mega-doing self, very large in the United States. The self that says "let's go, do this, do that, do more, do more."

There are many, many more. Can you think of some of your own?

Most any self can be sexual. Some of us disown our sexual instincts, while some of us are very identified with our sexual impulses and are trashy sluts.

That was a joke.

And by the way, jokes are usually your disowned archetypes expressing themselves in a socially acceptable way. For instance in the above joke, there is a moralistic archetype in me that believes that sleeping with many people is an awful thing to do. Can you see how that archetype was expressed in the joke?

Characterization and The Archetype Spectrum

Although it is wonderful, using Archetype Work to craft characters once you have already gotten a role is not the only or perhaps even the best use of this work.

Archetype Work is even more useful practiced regularly as "instrumental actor preparation" because you will develop easy access to the extremely diverse archetypes (characters) in you for use in your acting. Access to the depths of who you really are is thought to be vital by most Master acting teachers.

You will probably not be cast in a role if the character you are auditioning for is comprised of archetypes you actively disown. If you cannot access the archetypes in you that are needed for that "character," you will feel no connection to the "character" and you will not see their "point of view." You will have no real "impulse" for the role and your audition will not work.

The more archetypes you have access to, the more castable you will be in all kinds of roles. This is a major part of what "character acting" is all about, having the ability to alter your archetype structure.

The below is an example of how this work might plug-in to your acting process. Please note: WE ARE NOT SUGGESTING THIS IS AN ENTIRE APPROACH TO ACTING. It is not our entire approach to acting. The below sequence is meant to compliment an already developed, traditional acting process.

1. Read the play.

2. Read the play many, many more times. Nothing is more effective than letting your unconscious/imagination create a fantasy world as you read the play over and over. You don't have to "do" anything in this phase, the play is doing your unconscious.

3. Plug-in your own traditional acting tools. Use your process (assuming you have one at this point).

4. Create your character's archetype structure.

How many adjectives can you think of to describe her personality? Let's pretend she is: detached from vulnerable feelings, authoritarian, believes in tradition, believes in spanking, always votes Republican, is a stay-at-home mom who goes to Republican country clubs and political fundraisers. She wears fur, she has sex with her husband only in missionary position and frankly hates sex and any other physical intimacy. She goes to church every week and believes strongly in an angry, vengeful God. Her husband is a very powerful corporate lawyer with Enron, but when he is around her, she runs him like a dictator. He seems like a child around her. He probably hires young hookers (female? let's face it, probably male) to satisfy his instinctual archetypes since he can't get any satisfaction from her.

5. Decide which archetypes will help you identify with (or "be") this character.

Here are some possibilities of her primary self system, and thus the archetypes in you you must have access to: The Patriarch (yes, even though she's a woman), traditionalist, controlling mother, analytical mind self, the pleaser, a primary self which hates sex (was she raped?), religious zealot self. So these archetypes could represent her primary archetype structure. And if the play is well written, chances are the opposites of these primary selves (the disowned selves) emerge in her behavior and words throughout the play—that is what makes for interesting, multi-dimensional performances.

So the next step would be to determine the archetypes she disowns, perhaps they are: Vulnerable Child, Sexuality/Dionysus, Needy Child, Helpless Child, Rebellious Child, Beach bum, Compassionate mother, Playful Child, Being self.

Throughout the play, her disowned selves will be in conflict with her primary selves. And her entire self-system will be conflicting and/or bonding with the archetypes of all the other characters she meets.

Plays are essentially always about internal archetype conflicts and/or the conflicts between the archetypes of one person with another – because that is what life is about.

This is all very simplified for the purpose of introducing you to this work in this article and may be a little confusing at this point for you – that's ok, it takes awhile to get the hang of it. There is much more to learn about these archetype bonding patterns and struggles.

6. Do Archetype Work to experience the disowned archetypes within you that you need for this role.

You must embrace these disowned archetypes because if you do not have access to the archetypes of the character you are playing, you are going to have a very difficult time being "truthful" in the role.

There are a great number of ways to access different archetypes on the job, without having a facilitator present. You will learn these techniques in the acting classes and at the Archetype Workshops.

The Character's Relationships and Dreams

The Psychology of Selves, which is the modern system of psychology Archetype Work arises from, is an in-depth explanation of the dynamics of human relationships and personality development. Check out the books, Embracing Our Selves and Embracing Each Other, by Drs. Hal and Sidra Stone. The work of these psychologists has profound implications for acting. All the Master acting teachers of the last century had relationships with the psychologists of their time.

In the Archetype Intensive, you will learn about relationship bonding patterns, the predictable ways your archetypes bond to the archetypes in others. Opposites do attract. And these rather predictable bonding patterns play a powerful role in determining our experience of life.

Character Relationships (and life relationships) can be seen as an elaborate dance of archetypes – your archetypes with the archetypes of those you interact with. Learning specifically how and why this works will cause you to realize more depth and "truth" in your imaginary character relationships.

A brief note on dreams: Dreams are a direct path into your unconscious world of images, thoughts, memories, feelings and associations -- and this is where 98% of your talent is. Your disowned archetypes speak to you in your dreams even if they are deeply repressed. Start paying attention to your dreams -- write them down.

Dreams can be harnessed for use in your acting in profound ways. Read the article "Using Dreams for Your Acting." We work with dreams in the advanced workshops taught by our diverse faculty. The results can be amazing.