Interview with Vladimír Chrz, Ph.D., Associate Professor, from the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, educator, researcher, and psychologist.
I met Vladimír at the Department of Authorial Creativity and Pedagogy at DAMU. We attended Ivan Vyskočil’s Dialogical Acting classes together—he as a psychologist, me as a theatre maker and educator. Later, we happened to keep crossing paths again during meditation sessions in Kolín or at lectures with Tomáš Halík in the crypt of the Church of St. Salvator. It felt as if life kept guiding us along similar routes. At one point, we even considered creating therapeutic groups focused on authorial creativity. We are both deeply interested in how creativity and artistic making can heal the human soul—its existential depth, the phenomenon of play and creation itself. What is it about play and creative action that is so essential and foundational that it awakens and transforms a person into a living, joyful, and creative being? Perhaps a human being simply experiences themselves as a creative and acting subject, with an infinite potential—no longer a passive puppet of systems or a plaything of fate, but an active co-creator of the unfolding of the world. This is why, in this June issue, we bring you an extended interview with psychologist, academic, educator, and a deeply curious and kind human being Vladimír Chrz, on the themes of images, dialogical acting, meditation, imagination, psychosomatics, and creation.
My first question concerns meditation. I perceive meditation as an important part of dramaturgy, and perhaps in a broader sense also of pedagogy.
I would first like to define the concept of meditation. In Czech, the traditional term corresponding to meditation is rozjímání (reflection or contemplation). In contrast, Buddhists usually use the term meditation to refer to what, in a Christian context, we would call contemplation. I will therefore try to characterize meditation from a more general perspective. In meditation, there are several principles. The first is concentration—the ability to focus and direct attention, often on the breath or on a word. The second principle is stepping back from oneself. It involves paying attention to one’s own mind. Buddhists often refer to this as meditation—for example in Vipassana practice. One becomes an observer, a witness: someone who steps away from themselves, sees themselves, hears themselves, and neutrally observes their own mind. As aids in this second principle, so-called mental labels are sometimes used. For example, when a person notices that they are planning again, they silently label it ‘planning’. When they notice they are remembering, they label it ‘remembering’. When they realize they are arguing in their mind with their boss again, they label it ‘arguing with my boss’. This is a very important principle, because meditation should lead to a certain distance from oneself.
But what I probably like the most is the third principle. This is emphasized, for example, in the approach of Thomas Keating (and his student Cynthia Bourgeault), which is based on the principle of “letting be.” It is not primarily about concentration, because when I concentrate, it is an act of will—I am slightly pushing things, exerting effort, I have to stay alert. This school, on the contrary, says something I find quite brilliant: let it be, let it go, release it. Let go. Let it be. In a sense, letting things be is the opposite of the voluntary act of concentration. I often heard this in Kolín (note: the Centre for Spirituality and Retreats at the Kolín monastery), where all three principles are taken into account. We were always taught to concentrate, to observe one’s own mind, and—what I liked most—to allow everything and let everything go. And that is, in meditation, the most useful thing: to be able to attentively observe everything that arises, to allow it, accept it, and also to let it go, release it. Let go. It is even one of the slogans of Alcoholics Anonymous. In English it is a kind of wordplay: “let go – let God.” Because from a spiritual perspective, whenever a person lets things go, they create space for something that transcends them.
The same principle can be found in Dialogical Acting. Ivan Vyskočil always emphasized that a person should let themselves be, switch off the head, simply exist in space and play, and only afterwards, through reflection, record their own experience.
Of course. And it is difficult to act without having things prepared in advance, as is required in Dialogical Acting. At the beginning, it is almost impossible for a person—to let themselves be, to give space to what is emerging. We usually assume that if we are going to act, we first have to figure things out in advance, formulate an intention: first think, and only then do. But in Dialogical Acting, one is asked to approach it from the opposite direction—to allow oneself to enter the space and not manufacture the action. Ivan Vyskočil once commented on my attempt: ‘It must not be manufactured; it must well up.
What are the points of connection between meditation and Dialogical Acting?
The principles of meditation and Dialogical Acting are in many respects similar. Several diploma theses and dissertations have already been written on this topic. The common denominator is listening. Meditation can be understood as listening to silence (where silence is sometimes considered the “first language of God”). And listening also means “hearing oneself,” which leads toward Dialogical Acting. But in Dialogical Acting, this listening to oneself carries something additional. It involves stepping outside oneself through various forms of expression, with vocal expression being especially important. And it is precisely in this expressive aspect that Dialogical Acting differs from meditation. In meditation, I do not step out of myself through expression in silence. But in Dialogical Acting I do—the person steps out of themselves through action and expression, and through feedback it returns to them. And then—ideally—the person hears themselves, perceives themselves. In other words, they experience themselves in expression. Which, however, is not at all obvious or easy.
It can also be said that what is involved here is a kind of interplay between the “I” and the “It.” On the one hand, “It” is happening to me, “It” is playing with me. And on the other hand, I am responding to it, or provoking it. So both must be present—the “I” and the “It.” When I speak here about the “I,” I mean a small “i”—our acting ego, which is a kind of organ of intentional action, control, and direction. I do not mean the capital “I,” which is Jung’s notion of the Self, which paradoxically is closer to the “It” I am speaking about here. Over time, we may discover that even the “It” is actually us—that it is something, or someone, deeper within us.
But I have slightly digressed. In Dialogical Acting, what is important is the coordination between the “I,” meaning the acting agent, and the “It,” which this acting agent is not yet, because it is largely unconscious. That is precisely why we speak of it in the neuter form. The ideal state is a kind of interplay, a cooperation between our “I” and our “It.” When there is only the “I,” I stubbornly produce and construct. And if there were only the unconscious “It” on its own, it would be something automatic, like a “tic.” In Dialogical Acting, we aim for a third possibility: a mutual, partner-like coordination and a living dialogue. For the “It” to be able to play with us, we also need to be present in it in a consciously active and mindful way. And it is precisely mindfulness that is the common element between meditation and Dialogical Acting—mindfulness and listening.
I often see two types of people in our work: those who are active and immediately go into everything, and those for whom it is difficult to enter into activity. These are probably the two poles you are referring to.
Yes. Because there are people who are skilled at jumping straight into the space and immediately doing something. And they do it well. They simply provoke themselves, create some form of expression, and then respond to it. Then there are people who come onto the space and slowly search. They wait for an impulse, and gradually the action emerges. The risk of the first type is that they may end up manufacturing things—having the action prepared in advance. And the risk of the second type is that the person can get lost in it, that they actually do not act at all. Because real action is always, in some form, intentional. What is important is that it is a deeper kind of intentionality, and that depth is connected to the aforementioned “It.
Why is it important to work with this principle?
It is about the unconscious—we can also say the subconscious. But everyone imagines the unconscious a little differently. A Freudian would say that the unconscious is a container of repressed material, whereas a Jungian would say that the unconscious is a creative primordial ground. I prefer the Jungian view. According to it, there is much more in us than just our ego. Our personality consists of the ego—that is more or less the small ‘I’ I spoke about earlier. On the surface of this ‘I’ there is something Jung calls the Persona, meaning a mask—a kind of organ of social adaptation, how a person wishes to appear outwardly. But then there is much more within us. There are our complexes, and then there is a vast, living unconscious, which Jung calls the collective unconscious. And all of this can speak up. All of this is what I mean by the “It.” So our complexes can manifest, and occasionally also what Jung calls the Self. I think the aim is to reach this essential Self—not only in Dialogical Acting.
Is the essential Self outside the ‘I’
It is outside the small ‘i’—outside the ego. But that applies to a state in which the ego and the Self are separated. The process of individuation, as Carl Jung individuation calls it, aims toward a state in which the relationship between the ego and the Self becomes more like a partnership—an interplay, a coordination. The Self is sometimes translated as ‘being oneself’ or ‘self-being.’ I like this term, because it suggests truly being oneself. When we are only ego, we are not really what we could or should become. At the same time, we cannot stop being ego. Without ego, there is either a very small child or a psychotic state. But even a saint is not without ego.
Imagination is one of the foundations of dramaturgy—fantasy, imagination, image-making. If you were to compare meditation and imagination, where do they meet and where do they diverge?
If meditation is understood in the sense practiced in Kolín (Kolín Monastery – Centre for Spirituality), then it is non-objective meditation. A person sits in silence. They do not focus on any object or on a quotation from Scripture, because in that case it would already be contemplation. In this case, between non-objective meditation—or contemplation—on the one hand, and imagination on the other, there are almost no points of contact. But once we understand meditation as contemplation, it becomes a different matter, and points of connection can easily be found. There are many types of contemplation. For example, contemplation of Scripture—one form of such practice is called Lectio divina. Or Jesuit meditation, for instance in the tradition of Anthony de Mello. In such forms of contemplation on Scripture, the practice involves entering the Gospel as if it were a drama. One enters the drama as an acting figure and encounters the characters of the Gospel stories. And at that point, we are already in imagination. Carl Jung even wrote a study on the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius of Loyola, in which he states that what is practiced in Ignatian exercises is analogous to active imagination. So in object-based meditation—if the object is a word or an image—we are already within imagination.
Where can the origins of imagination and meditation be traced?
I am more familiar with it from the Christian tradition. The already mentioned method of meditation, Lectio divina, which was adopted by the Benedictines—though by no means only by them—has its source in a short 12th-century text called Scala Paradisi (something like ‘the ladder or steps to paradise’). It describes the practice of Christian spiritual life as a sequence of four phases: lectio (reading), meditatio (reflection), oratio (prayer), and the final stage contemplatio (contemplation). In the first phase, the text is read aloud and bodily, so that the person is with the text—it sounds, is savoured, and passes through the body. In the second phase, meditatio, the person reflects on the text, meaning not only thinking about it, but also vividly imagining it. In the third phase, oratio, the person relates the text to themselves, lets it evoke emotions, lets it reach the body, and asks what it is calling for. It is an affective response to the text. And contemplatio is the phase in which the person simply sits in silence and lets the text resonate. There are no emotions, thoughts, or images anymore. In English, this sequence of phases is sometimes captured by four words all beginning with ‘re’: reading, reflecting, responding, and resting—resting in silence.
It is as if, through those four ‘re’ stages—grounded in imagination, bodily sensations, and emotions—we are gaining our own lived experience.
Yes, exactly. First there is something, so to speak, outside of us. Then it moves into the mind. Then it descends even deeper into the emotions, and finally it touches the deepest core of the human being.
Somewhere I read—I’m unfortunately not able to find the source—that there was a study in which one group of athletes trained through mental imagery, while the other trained through regular physical practice. Those who trained in imagination performed better in competitions. Couldn’t dramaturgy and acting training based on imagination work in the same way?
Such things connected with the imagination of movement have long been known in psychology. For example, when we think—especially when we think verbally—our muscles make subtle movements, as if we were articulating the thought. When something happens internally, it is potentially also happening externally. The inner and the outer are, in a certain way, interconnected. And this is also true in acting and dramaturgy, but there is a certain pitfall. Ivan Vyskočil repeatedly emphasized to us that if we only imagine something and it remains purely mental, it can become an illusion. The inner needs to go outward in order to be verified in some way and gain validity. That is why, for example, in Dialogical Acting it often does not work when a person comes onto the stage with something they have prepared in advance.
It is much more advantageous when we act in a mode of here and now, when things are born on the spot. Because the moment something has already taken place inside us in imagination, we lose spontaneity on stage. That is why Ivan Vyskočil used to encourage us that when something comes to our mind, we should externalize it, make it public—because something that remains unexpressed inside, that only happens internally, does not really ‘count’ in a dramatic context. On one hand, from psychotherapy and other disciplines, we know that inner work is very important. But in a dramatic or theatrical context, it can become an illusion. Things need to go into the body and then outward again. Let me explain it in another way. A good example is voice training. Do you remember Associate Professor Válková, who always said that we do not hear ourselves properly? That we only hear ourselves from the inside? We have an illusory idea of our own voice, because we hear it only with the inner ear. In order to truly know our voice, it must go outward and return to us through space as feedback. Only when it comes back in reflection do we actually hear our real voice. In the same way, we perceive ourselves in an illusory manner, because we only know ourselves from the inside, and our self-image is therefore often just an illusion. Metaphorically speaking, it is as if we only knew ourselves with an inner ear. But we need to know ourselves with an outer ear. We need to know ourselves through feedback—by expressing ourselves through action and behavior, and being able to catch it back. To truly hear oneself means to hear oneself from the outside, not from the inside.
Martin Buber writes about this in his book I and Thou. He says that it is only in relationship that a person discovers who they are and finds their identity.
I can relate to myself internally, but that relationship can simply be illusory—somewhat narcissistic. We all have an idealized image of ourselves, and that is precisely the image from within: an inner mirror. But we need an external mirror—the other. And the other can also be ourselves. But it is something different when I am my own other, my own partner, who has stepped outside of himself, and what he does then returns to him from the outside, from the other, in feedback.
It seems to me that we are constantly touching on imagination and Dialogical Acting.
I have not yet really defined imagination. The example of imagination I gave—such as contemplation of Scripture—is not entirely complete, because it is still an imagination that is guided from the outside, by a word or a text that comes to me. Whereas imagination that has an essential connection to Dialogical Acting is what Carl Jung called active imagination. Jung developed active imagination when he wanted to replace, in psychotherapy, both free association—where a person says everything that comes to mind—and also the reliance on dreams, which therapists use to uncover the client’s unconscious. But dreams are problematic in that they sometimes come and sometimes do not. Therefore Jung created the method of active imagination, which replaces the dream but is carried out in a waking state.
Active imagination is a specific matter that depends on psychological type. Each person has a form of expression that is uniquely their own. If a person is introverted, their imagination may take the form of an inner biographical cinema. For another person it may be writing, for another visual expression, for someone else ceramics or dance. And through this personally specific form of expression, a person communicates with the unconscious. Similarly, Dialogical Acting (which is a specific form of dramatic active imagination) is a dialogue between the ‘I’ and the ‘It.’ It is an interplay between activity and receptivity—between doing and attentive listening. It is a way of giving the unconscious an opportunity to express itself.
Carl G. Jung says: let us begin with an emotion—perhaps something that troubles or irritates us. If we honestly stay with that emotion, over time it will tend toward self-expression. When this emotion (or another inner impulse) leads to a certain image—by ‘image’ is meant image in the broad sense, depending on the form of expression we use—we are to follow how it develops. And we are to maintain a certain balance between allowing ‘It’ to unfold in its own way and actively responding to it. That is Jungian active imagination. Ivan Vyskočil’s Dialogical Acting is a specific form of active imagination. In many respects it corresponds to Jung’s conception, except that it takes place bodily and publicly, in front of others. That is the difference.
What is your view on acceptance? I consider acceptance to be one of the most important things in pedagogy.
‘Supportive attention’—a term used in Dialogical Acting—speaks precisely about how important acceptance is on the part of those who are observing attentively. I believe it was Ivan Vyskočil who also referred to John of the Cross and his term ‘loving attention.’ It is this kind of energy that is involved. Without it, it would not be possible. To use a slightly exaggerated metaphor, one could say that Dialogical Acting—when it works—is somewhat like walking on water. And a person can walk on water only when they are truly in relationship, when they are being held. Like in the Gospel, where the apostle Peter walks on water while he is in contact with Christ. But the moment he begins to doubt and loses that contact, he immediately sinks. I do not understand acceptance only as a stance on the part of others. A person must also accept themselves—truly accept themselves, even be able to acknowledge and appreciate themselves. And with children and young people, external acceptance—from an authority figure—is even more important. They have not yet developed self-acceptance, and therefore it is all the more essential that they are supported by a kind, loving energy.
What specifically has Dialogical Acting given you?
The first feedback I received from my wife, about two years after I started practicing Dialogical Acting—which is already a very long time ago—was: ‘You know, it’s strange, but lately we somehow argue better.’ Constructive arguing is a very good thing. It is the complete opposite of a bad relationship scene, after which both people feel awful and nothing has actually been resolved. That was the first thing I became aware of: that a person gains something like a dramatic conditioning for everyday interactions. That one becomes more attentive to what is happening in the present moment—for example, that one can hear oneself. When someone is making a scene in an emotional outburst and cannot be stopped, we sometimes say: ‘If only you could hear yourself.’ Because in that moment, they are not hearing themselves. And through Dialogical Acting, a person learns to hear themselves—to be attentive to situations and to themselves within them. In a way, the benefit of Dialogical Acting is similar to what is discussed in mindfulness therapy. Because an immature way of interacting is to respond impulsively and automatically to what comes toward me. A mature way is to notice what is happening, and not respond immediately to everything. It passes through me in some way, and I respond in a more attentive—that is, active and conscious—way.
I will give one more example from my own experience. I really dislike shopping in large supermarkets. I don’t like those orgies of consumerism. So I usually try to shop quickly and get out of there as fast as possible. And I often leave irritated anyway. Once I was shopping in Kaufland, I paid at the checkout, and just as I was leaving, a security guard approached me and asked for my receipt. I had already thrown it away. A few years earlier, I would have been extremely angry—I would have yelled at him, I would have entered into a destructive argument. But suddenly I hear myself saying to him: ‘Well, this is a situation. You’ll probably have to arrest me.’ And the man caught it, started laughing, and then we both ended up talking and parting in a very good mood. That is exactly it. A person stops reacting impulsively. They start to catch situations in terms of their possibilities. That is another gain of Dialogical Acting.
And then there is a clear benefit of Dialogical Acting for teachers. The pedagogical condition developed through Dialogical Acting is unmistakable. After a few years of practicing Dialogical Acting, a person may discover (as happened to me) that they teach with half the energy—perhaps even less. They teach in a way that sometimes leaves them energized rather than exhausted after class. They also rely less and less on the lesson plan they prepared in advance. They are not afraid to deviate; they teach in a ‘here and now’ mode, more connected to the students, and they pick up feedback from them. But there is also one disadvantage. A person becomes more sensitive to real feedback from students, and begins to miss it when it is not there. Like an actor who says: ‘When I was performing, there was complete silence—it was impossible to act.’ People who went through Ivan Vyskočil’s department sometimes say what he did to them—that they stopped enjoying conventional theatre, or situations where feedback is missing. They began to feel the need for situations to be more like a partnership, interactive, based on feedback. So when I return to school: when feedback is missing there, I feel it is wrong. I become irritated by it. In any case, I see the greatest benefit of Dialogical Acting precisely in teaching and pedagogy. There, it is unmistakable.
Ivan Vyskočil always said that a person must have interest, must be curious. That curiosity is a kind of mischievousness: what will happen, what will come to pass, what will happen if I make a mistake, and what will they do, how will they respond. It is as if a child were playing and being a little mischievous.
This can also be very effectively transmitted to students. Their attention then becomes completely different. There is a theory of attention by the American psychologist Edward B. Titchener, who says that during development we acquire three types of attention. The first type we do not need to acquire—it is innate. It is involuntary, and we share it with animals. We notice everything that rustles or moves. Like a dog or a cat: they are alert, they are watching, they are waiting. Then there is what is called voluntary attention. It is based on will. When a child starts school at the age of six, there is a turning point where involuntary natural attention is no longer sufficient, and the child must pay attention through effort—they must push themselves. The trick of a well-designed educational system is to work with a third type of attention, called post-voluntary attention. Titchener says that post-voluntary attention is not ‘pushed’ (as in voluntary attention), but ‘pulled’ by interest. We are drawn by interest or curiosity. It is something very different to force attention and tell children ‘pay attention’, and something completely different when I am interested, when I am curious. This is the kind of attention that exists in play. From first grade onwards, children can already be working with this type of attention. It saves them a lot of energy, because a child cannot sustain attention for very long. It is even found that in a teaching hour, even in twenty-year-old students, the capacity for sustained attention in purely frontal instruction is only around half an hour.
This is exactly what I realized during lessons: that I always feel bad when I start to push. And that the children then also have a bad feeling from the lesson.
The moment tension from pushing arises in the teacher, it arises in the students as well. It is good when the teacher is experienced enough to notice that pressure, to read it—because then they can stop it and release it. They can say to themselves: ‘I’ve been pushing unnecessarily here; I can ease off a bit.
I would like to return once more to the maturity you spoke about. I am reminded of Marian spirituality and my favourite phrase: ‘she kept all these things in her heart.’ It feels to me like a guide to a mature approach—silence, and leaving space for the ‘It’ you are talking about.
That is exactly it. However, this is the meaning of the word ‘heart’ that we find in various older traditions. The term ‘heart’ has since shifted toward more superficial or even kitsch meanings—like ‘I do it with my heart,’ where it is often understood as sentimental emotion. But in many traditions, the heart means something much deeper. It refers to our inner being, the essential core. The heart is also the center of our spontaneity. When we do something ‘from the heart,’ we act from our deepest center, spontaneously, without needing to push or force anything. I even came across an interview with Ivan Vyskočil where he speaks about the ‘pure heart’ and refers to the Beatitudes from the teachings of Jesus. A psychosomatic condition, in this sense, means maintaining a certain readiness or disposition that consists in ‘being in the heart.
Do you think psychosomatics can purify the heart or intentions? That this happens through feedback and listening?
That sounds very strong. It is also necessary to be clear about what we mean by the word ‘psychosomatics.’ I understand that you mean the set of disciplines practiced at Vyskočil’s department, which you work with in your studio. If we realize that feedback leads to listening and mindfulness, then I would not oppose the expression ‘purification of the heart.’ It is about feedback toward oneself (self-knowledge) and toward others. I would also return to what it means to be spontaneous. People interpret it in different ways. But spontaneity does not mean being completely free or unstructured. Spontaneity is being grounded in one’s heart.
Like The Little Prince?
I have to say it’s not exactly my favourite book. Maybe it bothers me a little how often it is quoted. But I think yes—it is that.
Do meditation and Dialogical Acting lead to maturity—the ability to stay standing, as Milena Jesenská wrote in her essay? The ability not to react immediately to everything, automatically?
Yes. To a certain extent, it is also an art of slowness. It may sound funny, but it really is. After all, you know how many of Ivan Vyskočil’s comments in Dialogical Acting consisted of telling people: slow down. Perhaps it is not even slowness in terms of time. It probably cannot be measured in time. Rather, it is a mental state—like the saying: ‘make haste slowly.’
Why is slowness important?
Because I notice. It gives things enough time to reach me. It is a state in which I wait for feedback, in which I hear myself.
Do you think that the inability to listen is the cause of tragedies in the world? Why do people not listen at all? Do they not want feedback? What do you think causes it?
What does not listen—what constantly pushes forward and wants to overpower everything—is, in psychological terms, the ego. Or rather, the immature ego, so as not to deny the possibility of a mature ego, because whether mature or immature, the ego is an inseparable part of us. By immature ego I mean something self-centred and at the same time somewhat insecure, carrying an inferiority feeling (this ego is described in the psychology of Alfred Adler). When I am insecure, I feel I must control everything, or even overpower it. It feels dangerous to me to learn something from others—or even to learn something essential about myself. And this applies both individually and collectively. There are also self-centred, insecure communities. Often behind the aggression of individuals and groups, behind their inability to listen, there is insecurity and fear.
How can we work with it?
In principle it is simple, in practice difficult—sometimes almost impossible. But there is hardly anything else to do than to bring the sides into dialogue. To create conditions for dialogue. We are often afraid of the unknown, of unknown people. The moment a person sees the being they previously feared as a human being of flesh and blood, something begins to happen—even psychosomatically. The solution is simply to meet.
Do you see the future of education precisely in learning dialogue, communication, listening to oneself, and meeting others?
I suppose so. I’m not that much of an optimist, but still the younger generation seems a little more hopeful. Already for the simple reason that they step outside their own backyard and discover that it is not inhabited only by devils.
How do images heal the human psyche? In Harry Potter, I liked the idea when Harry dreams something and asks Dumbledore: ‘Is this happening in my head, or is it real?’ And Dumbledore replies: ‘Of course it is happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?
“Notice the word ‘reality’—what it is derived from. In Czech, it comes from the word ‘deed’ (skutek). Reality is not something that simply stands in front of us like a loaf of bread on a shelf. Reality is something that happens. And when something happens, someone is doing it. A deed is something someone performs. The word ‘reality’ thus seems to refer to what truly is. Carl Jung plays with the German word for reality, Wirklichkeit. He says: ‘Wirklichkeit ist, was wirkt’—reality is what has an effect, what acts, what exerts influence. And then the question of whether something is real or whether it is only happening in my head begins to look a bit different. What is real is what acts upon us, what affects us. For example, today we talk about disinformation and how to fight it. But perhaps the solution would look different if we spoke instead about ‘influence’ or ‘impact.’ It is not enough to fight disinformation only with true information. We also need to counter it with something that actually has impact. A true piece of information, if it does not have effect, is extremely weak against a well-functioning lie.
But back to reality. The word ‘reality’ refers to ‘deed’ or ‘act’ (skutek), at least in some languages. For example in Czech, in German, and also in Russian, where there is deyatelnost—activity, doings. English does not have this; it has ‘reality,’ from the Greek res (thing, matter). The depth of this understanding of ‘reality’ comes from the Jewish and later Judeo-Christian tradition, in the sense that everything that truly exists is understood as the powerful deeds of God—acts. So reality is what God does, such as creation. In other words, the word ‘reality’ is a remnant of this tradition: something that happens, something connected with deeds, with action. The modern world no longer thinks this way, but the trace of it remains in the word itself.
So does that mean that imagination influences our behavior, action, and experience? And if so, is it therefore reality?
“I was almost about to say yes, of course. But it is actually more complicated. The answer could be: yes and no. When Carl Jung says ‘Wirklichkeit ist, was wirkt’—reality is what has an effect—he is saying that if an image or idea has a strong impact, then it is real. However, there is a major ‘but’ that must be added here. Not everything that has a strong effect is equally real or true. A powerfully acting falsehood or lie often overwhelms more truthful images. This is the contemporary problem of populism, which is undermining some formerly democratic regimes. But that would take us too far from our topic.
Anselm Grün has a book about healing through images. How can images—inner or outer—heal a person? Do images really have an effect on our mental health?
Of course. I would even put it more strongly. When Carl Jung defines the soul, he says that the soul is an image. But he does not mean a picture in the ordinary sense. He means that the soul lives in images. The soul cannot live in anything else. It translates words, events, everything into images. The medium of the soul is simply imagery, imagination. The soul is an image-making activity. It is the work of imagination. The soul creates images; it cannot do anything else. The world of the soul is a world of images. Both external and internal images have a powerful effect. The soul is at home in these images. Of course, it depends on what kind of images they are. Because we can live in images of threat and fear. We can construct an image of the world that is completely paranoid, where everyone is after us. Or the soul can create a deeply depressive world. Therefore, care for the soul is care for the images of the soul. The soul can be healed by images, but it can also become ill through other types of images. The health of a culture can be judged by the images it produces—by the images in which it lives. When you look at popular culture, you can almost diagnose our society.
Do you think that as a society, including our education system, we have somewhat forgotten our inner world? That we should return again to images and to dialogue?
You mention images, and earlier you also mentioned psychosomatics. Psychosomatics seems to me perhaps even more important. But first, to those images. It is often said that we live in a culture of images, but of a rather specific kind—visuality in a virtual environment. What kind of images are these? They are digital images, often created digitally. I don’t know if you have ever noticed the difference between animations that were still created by human hand and animations that are now generated by computers. I am not a fan of Disney films, but the old Disney animations—created by human hands—are images created by the human soul. When The Lion King appeared, whose images were created by a computer, everyone applauded this computer animation for how ‘human’ the expressions of the animals were. I did not applaud (and I was certainly not alone), because I perceived what happens to an image, to expression, when it loses its humanity—even if imperfect—and is replaced by a computer-calculated ‘pseudo-humanity.’ So perhaps rather than a return to images, I would see it as a return to human images. We live in a culture that is to some extent image-based, but these images are increasingly no longer created by the human soul—they are created by machines. And I am somewhat concerned that even our minds might become ‘mechanized’ as well.
In short, one needs to take care of the images of the soul, as I mentioned above. And this is perhaps fundamentally connected with psychosomatics, as we discussed. Because alongside the disconnection of images from the soul, there is also a disconnection from the body. This relates to psychosomatics, which is terribly missing in education. If the word ‘pedagogy’ comes from ‘to lead someone somewhere,’ then I must unfortunately say that education often leads a person toward disconnection—from both soul and body. Philip Zimbardo wrote a book called The Disconnected Man. The way we educate people leads—often, not always, and not in all respects—to disconnection. We become disconnected from ourselves and from relationships with each other. And this is also because psychosomatics is not taken into account. Think of how Vyskočil’s pedagogy and the pedagogy of the Department of Authorial Creativity and Pedagogy at DAMU are completely different from the mainstream of Czech schooling and teacher-training institutions.
What is the fundamental difference?
Contemporary education is based on the idea that I, as a teacher, transfer certain contents. There is a body of knowledge that I pass over to the other side. But this is a very misguided view (and I say this reluctantly, because I myself contributed years ago to a publication that understands education in this way). Education, however, is something else. (long pause) I hesitated now, because I named the negative possibility, and suddenly I realized that at this moment I am not able to formulate how it should actually be. In any case, a teacher should be educated much more as a personality. Truly educated as a personality, not merely trained as an arsenal of contents to be transmitted. If pedagogy means, as I said, ‘to lead someone somewhere,’ then no one can lead another further than they themselves have gone. This should be taken into account in the preparation of future teachers—where they are being led, and toward what. In this context I like the word ‘authorship.’ Ivan Vyskočil did not choose the name Department of Authorial Creativity and Pedagogy by coincidence. He also said that pedagogy is dramatics—not in the sense of theatre, but in the sense of action. The teacher is an ‘actor’—a doer, a dialogical actor (which is related to the word ‘actor’). A pedagogical situation is a situation of action in the sense of an open dramatic play. And that is something completely different from the transmission of contents: ‘Here are the contents, learn them.’”
We keep circling around one thing: psychosomatics. That without listening there is no feedback, and without feedback there is no learning.
What is the essence of dramatics? Feedback. Pedagogy and dramatics are based on feedback. I must hear myself, I must hear others.
What would you recommend to the younger generation for their mental health?
People should be given space to express themselves—to be creative, if I put it in a more elevated way. You know, because you deal with it yourself, what happens when a person is given the opportunity to create, to be an author, when you lead them toward an authorial existence. I genuinely believe that the old saying still holds true: ‘He who plays does no harm.’ And I would add: those who create suffer much less.
Thank you for the interview.
Erika Merjavá
