About a Boy and his Blog
Information about the author of this blog, his texts and his mental background.
(Title based on the book title by Nick Hornby: ‘About a Boy’)
A congregation is the funeral procession of its religion.
(Bô Yin Râ)
It seems to me that the leadership is more concerned with the following of the young people and the adults than with the truth.
(Max Horkheimer, Interview im „Spiegel“, 1973)
I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it is in between I freeze.
(Leonard Cohen, Recitation, Live in London)
HOST: Years ago, a lot of people started writing biographies, which became a trend. Now it’s websites.
MARC: I remember the derisive phrase: ‹Nowadays it’s harder not to write a biography than it is to write one›.
HOST: Yes, I think that phrase applies to websites and blogs today.
MARC: You could say that, and you can see that with ‹Yoda’s Couch›: I couldn’t resist the temptation! The Indian guru Ramana Maharshi would ask: ‹Who is writing this blog?
HOST: I’m going to remain profane and ask you directly: Why did you write this website?
MARC: There are very personal reasons: For one, it’s a way for me to put my thoughts and ideas into words and to explore topics in depth. I update my thoughts, it’s a ‹mind reset›. On the other hand, it’s also a curiosity to learn something new on the computer. In any case, it makes me use my brain. A song by the Swiss band Sisyphos comes to mind: ‹Jogging for the brain›. (Here is an excerpt from Sisyphos live concert at the Drahtschmidli, Zurich, 1986.
(By the way: At minute 4:45 you can see the author of this blog, a bit younger. 🙂
All this is also about vanity and the pleasure of showing my texts: ‹To whom it may concern› or better here: To whom it may be of interest.
HOST: Could it be that it’s also a kind of legacy?
MARC: Yes, a friend of mine put it that way; another friend said it was the fear of becoming irrelevant. I think it’s both! I also think of Yoda’s line: «Do or do not. There is no try».
HOST: Why a website and not a print product?
MARC: I work on a text for years, it’s always a process, I add, correct and add new thoughts. Printed is printed, with the website it’s very easy to update everything.
HOST: What do you want to achieve with the texts? Should it be life advice or life help for the reader? Isn’t there enough online for that?
MARC: That’s not my aim, that’s what I do for a living, and writing advice books is something that others can do much better than I can. If it makes the reader think as much as I do, and it’s entertaining to read, then I’ve achieved my goal. Suddenly the reader is sitting in the middle of the salon, taking part in the conversation.
The reader hopefully becomes part of the conversation.
In the spirit of Star Wars, I say: ‘May curiosity be with you’.
(Original quote: May the force be with you).
HOST: I understand that you want to address current topics and entertain readers at the same time. You also show film clips in the blog. Is that for entertainment purposes?
MARC: I do it for a variety of reasons. I want to lighten up the sometimes controversial topics and the sometimes very cognitive discussions. But above all, I want to draw attention to the following: our humanity and our coexistence are understood just as well in art and in popular culture (pop culture) as they are in science and in religion.
HOST: A good example of this can be found in the Text Il Bacio di Tosca. There you will find information from the field of psychology on the psychological term ‘patricide’, from an opera, from a film and a film clip from the TV series ‘Frasier’. (The Frasier clip)
MARC: Yes, ‘Frasier’ is a wonderful example of how precise psychological knowledge is presented in an original and parodic way. It’s a nice mix of expertise and entertainment in a series that has many such ingenious moments.
HOST: I see, so you want to look at things from different angles.
MARC: Yes! This creates a new, multidimensional image, a hologram. I’ve been a conceptual eclecticist since I was young, and the style of music that influenced me the most back then was fusion. In film, literature, and video games, this is called ‘cross-genre’. I’ve always enjoyed letting ideas and styles from different directions interact.
HOST: Eclecticism and fusion, you’ll have to explain that to us!
MARC: Eclectic thinking has a long tradition in the humanities. It refers to a way of thinking that takes parts from existing models and assembles them into a new concept. This thinking stands outside of closed schools of thought or schools and thus outside of a community. The term fusion comes from music. Fusion originally referred to a style of music that emerged in the mid-1960s from jazz and rock. Later, other music styles were added and new mixtures were created again and again. Today, so-called world music, which mixes styles from different cultures, is current. Such mixtures also exist in novels and films, where there is the term ‘cross-genre’.
HOST: You say eclectic: Outside of a community, the quote from Bô Yin Râ at the beginning of the text fits: ‘A congregation is the funeral procession of its religion’.
MARC: You can’t put it more succinctly! The more closed the thinking of a community is, the greater the danger: the underlying knowledge is denatured into dogma, and the community becomes a place where power-seeking, greed and vanity overgrow original thinking and believing.
HOST: Eclecticism was also repeatedly criticised and questioned.
MARC: The critics considered mixing to be dubious and undisciplined, unimaginative and lacking in fantasy. On the other hand, a closed doctrine carries the risk of dogmatism and ‘autistic-undisciplined-thinking’ (a term from E. Bleuler).
HOST: What about today?
MARC: Mistrust of eclecticism has changed a lot. Today, in a globalised culture, people mix, quote and paraphrase. The various cultures and their representatives are networked worldwide, communication is permanent and unstoppable. Schools of thought and art forms automatically confront each other. They collide, fight each other or enter into creative mixtures. That’s what I call it:
Mental composition or mental amalgam.
HOST: You could say that eclecticism and fusion have become socially acceptable.
MARC: Yes, and that fits well into our modern, networked world. Philosophy, art, music, architecture, entertainment culture and even psychotherapy have developed more and more in this direction. In modern medicine, too, we speak of ‘multimodal therapy’: different treatment concepts are coordinated and complement each other.
HOST: So fusion is not only present in music, but also in thinking?
MARC: That fits perfectly. I have always been interested in many different topics and different interpretations of current events. I have a classical university education in medicine and psychiatry and have also studied astrology and naturopathy. Zen has been with me since my youth. In the beginning, it was more of a ‘beat zen’, later also a ‘square zen’ (terms according to Alan Watts). Two books are exemplary for beat zen:
- Beat Zen (action-oriented Zen) was a mixture or better a fusion of the American Beat Generation (Beatniks) and Zen Buddhism. Best portrayed by Jack Kerouac in his books, especially in his main work ‘On The Road’ (1957).
- Robert M. Pirsig’s book ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’ (1974) was a fusion of biographical novel, philosophical treatise and beat zen.
These books left a lasting impression on me. Pirsig’s ‘metaphysics of quality’ has retained an important significance for my consciousness as a psychotherapist to this day.
HOST: According to Pirsig’s definition, quality arises in the relationship between subject and object. What does that have to do with psychotherapy?
MARC: In psychotherapy, the only proven effective factor is not method-dependent, but rather unspecific. This effective factor is the relationship between therapist and client. In short: it is the relationship that works, not the theory of the method. Therapy is a relational process: it requires relationship and time. This is reminiscent of Pirsig’s statement:
„ …. Quality couldn’t be related with either the subject or the object but could be found only in the relationship of the two with each other. It is the point in whichsubject and object meet.
Quality is not a thing. It is an event.»
“Quality is the event at wich the subject becomes aware of the object. And because without objects there can be no subject – because the objects create the subject’s awareness of himself – Wuality is the event at which awareness of both subjects and objects is made possible.»
Robert M. Pirsig: „Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance“
(© Harper Collins, 1974).
Copy of this page of my book from 1978 (German version):
HOST: That sounds pretty abstract and complicated.
MARC: Yes, that’s fusion of ‘Beat Zen’ and philosophy. I have to think long and hard to understand the meaning.
HOST: Pirsig and quality are important in the salon text: In search of the Lost Context. You talked about the impact of relationships in therapy in the interview about psychosomatics: Psychosomatics – the human being as an interface between polarities.
MARC: The subtitle of the article is: ‘The human being as an interface between polarities.’ It is human to move in a field of polarities.
We are fusion ourselves!
HOST: Bio-Psycho-Social ….
MARC: …. Body – mind. Memory of past – planning of future: an intersection of past and future.
(Pause) And much more.
But we are always part of a relationship in a course of time: we are an event.
That sounds a little esoteric. Would you like to write about esotericism?
MARC: When someone writes about esotericism on the Internet, they have not understood the meaning of the word. Anything on the Internet can no longer be esoteric (hidden knowledge). I’m not sure if esotericism in the original sense can still exist today. What we see today are rather secularised forms of classical esotericism. On the other hand, fortunately, there is also a scientific reappraisal and recognition of esotericism today.
HOST: And what do you think about spirituality?
MARC: Spirituality and holistic models are important to me, and you can certainly sense that in my texts. For me, psychotherapy without spirituality is limited. Being human creates a longing for something higher that expands our conscious thinking and being.
HOST: You can say that, all cultures have their religion and mythology.
MARC: Yes, and you can go even further: the religions and mythologies of different cultures have a common core. It is not so much a new mixture of parts from different models, as in eclecticism. It is more of a common denominator: at the inner core and in the deep foundations, there is a lot of common ground.
HOST: That’s a reference to the Axial Age – please tell us more about that!
MARC: It’s a historical-philosophical concept that fascinates me. The term originally came from Karl Jaspers. I know the term from Karen Armstrong, who wrote an exciting, insightful book about it. «Armstrong, Karen, The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions» In short, between the ninth and second centuries B.C., religious and philosophical traditions emerged simultaneously on different continents. These worldviews have retained their relevance to this day, and they provide similar answers to comparable questions.
HOST: And the mythologies of different cultures also share a common core and common images, as Joseph Campbell has shown.
MARC: Mythology is a universal context in which we can learn to understand our existence and our nature. Mythology is the merging of the inner and the outer. We have Campbell to thank for our understanding of the importance of mythology and the knowledge that similar patterns can be found in the mythology of all cultures. As with the Axial Age model of religion, Campbell showed the universal foundations of mythology.
HOST: Campbell was a professor of mythology and an author. He was well versed in the depth psychology of C.G. Jung. He also described what he called the hero’s journey. His books on the hero’s journey became the basis for many films. Adventure films and children’s films, the hero’s journey and the stages of transformation have a similar plot.
Joseph Campbell… Mythology and the hero’s journey… Transformation… Identity formation… Individuation… Film…
HOST: I think we’ve arrived at an important point for you: the film «Star Wars». This cinematic universe is a great example of eclectic fusion, crossing genres: all in one!
MARC: You could say that! Star Wars is my favourite example. Many things come together in Star Wars: Hollywood typology (film characters), digital technology (digital computer-generated images), Zen (Yoda, Shunryu Suzuki), depth psychology (C.G. Jung), traditional European thinking and heroic epics (Joseph Campbell). George Lucas, the creator of Star Wars, was influenced by Campbell and his work. As a result of this influence, the Star Wars films contain a great deal of mythology and depth psychology, all wrapped up and extrapolated into a fairy tale set in space. «The fusion of external and internal worlds of experience.» Quote from this lovely article: Joseph Campbell meets Georges Lucas.
HOST: That’s why you invited Yoda (the film character) to the Salon to talk about the psychological term ‹patricide›. (Salon: «Il Bacio di Tosca – Tosca’s Kiss»).
MARC: Here it has to be clarified, as you rightly say, that Yoda in the Tosca salon is the film character. You can tell by the special language. In the other salons it is a constructed character that represents Zen. I actually call this character Yoda 2.0, it is a mixture of Yoda and Shunryu Suzuki. Yoda 2.0 represents my understanding of Zen. I will describe this in more detail later in the article Yoda 2.0.
HOST: The opening image of this interview also symbolises a mixture similar to that in Star Wars: R2-D2, Freud, Yoda and in the background the computer world. I assume this is an intended analogy.
MARC: The symbols in the picture represent important parts of my life context and the basis of this blog. HTML, psychoanalysis, Zen.
Different languages revolve around the same realities.
HOST: Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a markup language that makes it possible to display a text on a website – how does that fit into a sentence with Zen and psychoanalysis?
MARC: It’s about getting a message across. Words are put into a context, they enter into a relationship with a certain context, and only in this way can they convey the content. This applies to psychology, to spirituality, to a text that is to be readable on different devices.
Putting words into context —- This is how information is created.
HOST: On the subject of context, I recommend the Text-Salon: In Search Of The Lost Context.
MARC: Thanks for the reference. It discusses the importance of context in the development of personality.
HOST: Staying on topic: We talked about eclectic thinking and fusion. This thinking and style seems to have a certain tradition. How do you see it today and in the future?
MARC: It has a tradition and it has a future! But it is also developing and something is being added to it that could be called postintegrative. (Term according to Toni Brühlmann).
HOST: Explain that.
MARC: First of all, I would like to quote Toni Brühlmann: «This postintegrative is a postmodern model in which – in contrast to modernism – it is no longer a matter of overall concepts and great narratives, but rather of a patchwork of autonomous and only loosely connected fragments. Daniel Hell uses the term postintegrative in connection with the modern treatment of psychiatric patients: It is largely up to the patient to decide when to go to which outpatient or inpatient treatment centre; it no longer has to be all in one (e.g. in the same place).
HOST: What do you mean by postintegrative?
MARC: I refer to the term. For me, postintegrative is an extension of eclectic: different ways of thinking should not come together and merge into an integrative model. The models remain independent, form a polarity and can thus come into conflict with each other. The conflict offers the opportunity for dialogue, through which the models can develop further and remain independent. This has always been the case in cultural history, and I am convinced that it will increasingly shape our future.
HOST: Please be more specific!
MARC: In cultural history, there have been and still are events in which opposing world views or art styles interact and enter into a creative dialogue instead of colliding. That’s quality! (Relationship – Event – Quality). In such moments, works are created that move our minds and hearts in equal measure. In these moments we become aware of our own polarity and feel the tension of our own mixed feelings. Polarity creates tension.
Culture is the translation of inner tension-fields into external events.
HOST: Music, film, theatre, entertainment television, politics: inner conflicts and tensions are staged.
MARC: Yes, exactly. Our involvement with these works encourages us to experience our inner conflicts and tensions. Over time, we come to feel that these tensions have a centre.
Now we’re getting to the centre. I’m curious.
MARC: We have difficulty with feelings, but we have even greater difficulty with mixed feelings, and we have the greatest difficulty when those feelings are contradictory, when they are controversial.
HOST: What does this have to do with the centre?
MARC: In the centre we have access to both sides of a contradiction and both poles of a polarity. The centre is the state in which we can resolve these conflicts and tensions. It is in the centre that awareness is best achieved, that both poles are most clearly discernible, and that the potential for development is greatest. The poles themselves have no power to change. Meditation and mindfulness lead us to this centre. But it is not that easy: there are many resistances on the way to the centre.
I’m good at love, I’m good at hate, it is in between I freeze.
(Leonard Cohen, Recitation, Live in London)
MARC: Leonard Cohen: Jewish thinker and Zen monk. Perfection of the word and sensuality. Vitality and melancholy. What a mixture, what a struggle for the centre!
HOST: What does he mean by ‹freezing›?
MARC: That is the centre! Paralysis with fear. Fear comes from angustus (confined, constricted) and angor (oppression, shortness of breath, suffocation). In the centre it is narrow, we are trapped, we are afraid. In the middle we have to learn to bear it. In the centre both poles are present at the same time, we have mixed ambivalent feelings, this is what causes fear.
In the centre first we suffer because that’s where the fear is.
HOST: What should we do with these conflicting feelings?
MARC: Yoda would say: awareness of mixed feelings, mindfulness in the middle, constant practice in everyday life and in contemplation – we have no time to lose!
HOST: That means practically applied….
MARC: … first of all, facing our fear of losing or missing out. There’s a trendy term for that: FOMO (fear of missing out).
In the centre, we are initially afraid of losing what lies in the clarity of the poles.
The middle always contains both poles: initially it is narrow and we become afraid. But the middle is also the place where judgement can dissolve: a value-neutral space of perception is created. The dialogue in the middle is ‹good enough› and better than the war of the poles.
It becomes our constant exercise to oscillate around this centre and to accept it as good enough.
In the middle we can learn to let both stand side by side. In the middle, judgements dissolve. Our systems of judgement disturb mindfulness and the perception of reality. The less judgement, the purer the mindfulness.
HOST: That’s what you describe in the coan: “Achtsamkeit – Mindfulness.»
MARC: The middle does not judge, and in that middle different perspectives and perceptions of our common world can complement and enrich each other without having to extinguish each other.
HOST: If I understand correctly, we are back to your post-integrative model.
MARC: What we can resolve internally with our feelings, we can also resolve with the thought patterns and interpretations of the outside world. The post-integrative model is not about integrating systems or reconciling explanatory models on a meta-level. In this middle ground, the models of thought remain true to themselves and coexist in mutual inspiration and exchange. The different manifestations of knowledge are unique and autonomous.
The centre is the bond that holds everything together.
HOST: I see, so eclecticism is expanded.
MARC: Yes, eclectic thinking integrates ideas from different teachings and ultimately leads to a model and remains a new possible way of describing reality. But also one among many. It is a great freedom to recognise that the models, whether closed or eclectic, must remain independent.
HOST: Remain independent and in dialogue with each other.
MARC: Exactly… that’s how I understood and used the term postintegrative! I think it is important that they remain in dialogue with each other, because that makes them more alive and useful to us, even in a new networked world where spaces are growing together.
This is how genuine dialogue can emerge: postintegrative dialogue.
The core, the immanent, the realities, they remain as they are, regardless of how we describe and define them. Reality does not care (equal validity) how it is described, it works either way.
HOST: We are constantly grasping and describing these things.
MARC: It is our freedom to think and describe in our own way what we can perceive. At the same time there is something that holds it all together and that is reality. Let’s take an analogy from the cosmos: individual, independent models revolve around the same reality:
Thoughts are free (centrifugal force), reality is binding (gravitational force).
HOST: Back to your blog and your writing. Why the name Salon?
MARC: I took the word ’salon› literally.
HOST: Salons have a tradition. They were and still are meeting places for discussions, readings or musical events. The most famous salons are those described by Marcel Proust. (For a detailed historical account of salons, see Wikipedia).
MARC: Yes, exactly. In his book In Search of Lost Time, he describes the salons of Paris around 1900. The title of the book inspired me to call the text-salon ‹In Search of Lost Context›.
HOST: And not to forget today’s PRISM salon, which you are participating in.
MARC: Of course it inspired me. A lot of the ideas in my writing come from the talks I’ve given at the salon.
HOST: And the salon on guilt in this blog is inspired by a real talk you gave at the Prim-Coop salon. You and a lawyer gave a lecture in the form of a dialogue.
MARC: Yes, and we got a lot of feedback at the time that the dialogue form was pleasant and helped people understand. That was one of the reasons why I write in dialogue form.
HOST: But your salon texts on this website are invented and fictional.
MARC: For me, the fictional salon is an optimal form to formulate the various ideas and ways of thinking that shape me in the form of a conversation. I want to celebrate this bazaar of ideas. In my salon, the ways of thinking are represented by these speakers and the different aspects are reflected in the discussion. The salon is a field of tension in which we can explore a subject better and more deeply. As in any relationship, there are joys and sorrows, and curiosity is the engine that keeps us going.
HOST: Who are the characters?
MARC: The characters are not real. They are made up of real people and film characters. These characters represent schools of thought or styles.
HOST: You’ve been inspired. I am thinking of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.
MARC: Yes, exactly. In Dostoyevsky there are three brothers, each representing a different principle, and two father figures, each representing a different type of father. (See also text-salon: ‹Tosca’s kiss›).
HOST: Also worth mentioning is the play and book ‹Four Jews on Parnassus› by Carl Djerassi. Djerassi was a chemist and writer, read more about him on Wikipedia.
MARC: That’s when I came up with the idea of putting stage directions in parentheses to make the characters a little more alive.
HOST: You look pensive?
MARC: There’s something else: the book by my friend, the late Henry Schoch, was also very important to me as a source of ideas. In his book ‹Butterflies in a Cold Universe›, different worlds of thought are reflected by people talking in a bar. As the novel progresses, it becomes increasingly clear that the bar, the characters, the dialogue, all take place in the mind of the novel’s protagonist, who is on a pilgrimage to India. The world of the mind and the events in the real world are synchronised. Unfortunately, this extraordinary book was never published.
HOST: So the characters and dialogue are also in your head?
MARC: Yes, with the exception of the salon with the lawyer and the therapist ‹Guilt, debt, guilty›: This salon actually took place in the real PRISM-salon. The interviews in the ‹Publications› menu are also real. In the other salons, everything is fiction: all in my head!
HOST: — Fictional! — Like this interview??
MARC: I can only quote Francis Urquhart:
„You might very well think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.
“Michael Dobbs, «House of Cards“. The Book is base of the television series BBC 1990.)
HOST:…. A selfie interview??….
MARC:….. I repeat: ‹You might very well think that. I couldn’t possibly comment.’…………….
HOST: Finally, I want to talk about the title of the website. Why the name ‹Yoda’s Couch›?
MARC: The name stands for the fusion of Zen and psychoanalysis. Yoda is Zen, the couch is psychoanalysis. That combination is my passion:
I like to swim around in the field of this polarity.
HOST: And the moral of the story?
MARC: I have studied various models and schools of thought and over the years have come more and more to the conclusion that none of these concepts is right and none is wrong.
- They capture us humans and our humanity from their respective perspectives.
- In dialogue, they create a context in which we can experience our SELF.
My salon wants to be such a context.
In this field of relation we oscillate around the centre – – until it speaks to us.
HOST: see the koan “centre».