“I Am”

Inform through poetry: “I Am”

I’m going with a change of pace and style for this post. Most of the time, I focus on what the philosopher Jacques Derrida called “deconstruction.” Every concept, moral, or perspective has one or more starting assumptions. When thinking within those assumptions, everything that follows may feel like truth. All the evidence can align a certain way within this story, and you can dig deeper and deeper until you have a whole, logical world constructed around these assumptions that feels true.

Deconstructionism examples

For instance, if I start off with the assumption that I am shy, a whole bunch of evidence-based story-telling will follow. I will recall the thousands of times I chose not to speak up when hurt or angry. The times I missed out on trying to build a friendship, or when I left gatherings feeling worn out and sapped of my drive. In each new situation, I will enter in a way to protect my energy and feelings. I will conserve my strength for what are most clearly important actions to take, and intentionally miss out on others, with the belief that I have no other choice. I can go on.

With the shy assumption, I am selectively ignoring the times I had rich conversations with friends and felt energized. Or the exhilaration I felt when I pushed and gave a presentation and really connected with the attendees. These get excluded, because my self-view holds this core assumption.

A similar example is Ptolemy’s geocentric worldview. It was simply assumed that the Earth was the center of the universe. And physics was constructed around this idea. He and other physicists came up with quite good theories and gathered supporting evidence of the paths of planets and stars, all of which seemed like fact. Until Copernicus came along, and questioned this geocentric assumption. Without overcoming this assumption, most modern technology as we know it would not exist.

Constructionism

Instead of deconstructing by bringing light to psychology’s and society’s assumptions, in this post I’m going to construct. I aim to share some of my understanding of what I do in my work. Remember, there will be assumptions underlying my perspective, too. There have to be. Including the assumption of “I”. Descartes may have famously said, “I think, therefore I am,” but he did not question whether the thoughts themselves can be assumed to be individual. (Though perhaps he did – I haven’t actually read his essay.)

This poem, then, is a statement of one story of what clinical psychology can be. Feel free to dig and call out assumptions. Enjoy.

I am

I speak and I listen
Sounds of joy, sounds of pain
Secret fear hidden in plain sight
Furious words weak with exhaustion,
A curse in search of a caress.

I reach out and I hold back,
Sketching visions I cannot see
Revealing doors I cannot open
Conjuring a borrowed harmony
Entangled touch that holds without embrace.

I give and I take
Empty gifts teeming with life
A sticky knowing pried from a dmz between
Unpriced value evaluated of each other
Of meaning engendered of me of you.

I guide and I follow
Flat vistas and gray sunsets
Shepherding through an unknowable valley,
My script composed in foreign tongue
A Moses of myriad Israels.

I hope and I despair
The shadow of denigration and derision cast as truth,
Endless snow-globe Atlases shelved and desperate,
Daisy-chains of objectification and dehumanization
Yet to rise up and strive for more.

Welcomed in cautiously and always outside,
I am nothing pulsing the heart of everything.