(July 19, 2022 at 2:55 am)Belacqua Wrote:(July 18, 2022 at 7:14 pm)emjay Wrote: Basically, how you interpret something is how you frame it, and different ways of framing the same information can result in different insights, so in the case of something like therapy, it makes sense to have something that resonates with the individual, like you say, to help unpack and make sense of the mind. Doesn't really matter if it's the truth or just a useful perspective, because if nothing else, the journey itself will probably lead to insights its own.
I think this is the key point. When I talk here about poetry or talk therapy -- or even tarot -- as providing insight, I'm not talking about science-type data. It may be best to avoid the word "truth" and just go with "best interpretation." Or "insight" or "wisdom."
Here I'm talking about what the phenomenologists call the "life-world." This is not the world of science, but the inner world we experience. It's where we live. And this world is formed from the very beginning by our interaction with culture, and all the symbols that culture requires. All our meanings, values, and desires are here.
So deepening our understanding of ourselves and this lived experience occurs through further interaction with culture and symbols.
Yeah, I think we're probably talking about different things here. What I was mainly thinking of was that for any subject, beit psychology or anything else, there can be multiple schools of thought, and not any of them in particular is necessarily the definitive, objective truth, but collectively or individually they may still represent some partial truth, an approximation of the truth, or even just a useful personal truth.
But clearly you're talking about something else. I have to admit I often find it quite confusing exactly what you're trying to get at with your talk of symbolism etc, but ultimately I think that comes down to the difference between our personalities... you seem to describe a very rich inner world of seeking experience for the sake of experience... of basically mindful experience. For example, when I was younger I used to write obsessively and religiously, journalling basically, but always with a view of analysis, so I'd analyze my experiences and my mind and that's where I then and now mostly found/find my joy. Whether any of those theories was a definitive, objective truth, or even partial truth, is anybody's guess, but what they certainly were were useful personal truths, formative... part of the journey.
But of all that writing, the proportion dedicated to experience for experience's sake...ie literally or figuratively stopping and smelling the roses... was very small. In fact all I can really remember on that score was writing about a Blackbird that I happened to observe once. Whereas for you I'm guessing you spend a lot of time smelling the roses, immersing yourself in experience for experience's sake, no questions asked, no analysis undertaken. That seems to be the main difference between us.
