{"id":2373,"date":"2025-06-18T23:15:18","date_gmt":"2025-06-18T21:15:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.talentdrama.cz\/?page_id=2373"},"modified":"2026-06-14T22:12:46","modified_gmt":"2026-06-14T20:12:46","slug":"dialogicke-jednani-je-specificky-zpusob-aktivni-imaginace","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.talentdrama.cz\/en\/dialogicke-jednani-je-specificky-zpusob-aktivni-imaginace\/","title":{"rendered":"Dialogical Acting is a specific form of active imagination."},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview with Vladim\u00edr Chrz, Ph.D., Associate Professor, from the Institute of Psychology of the Czech Academy of Sciences, educator, researcher, and psychologist.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I met Vladim\u00edr at the Department of Authorial Creativity and Pedagogy at DAMU. We attended Ivan Vysko\u010dil\u2019s Dialogical Acting classes together\u2014he as a psychologist, me as a theatre maker and educator. Later, we happened to keep crossing paths again during meditation sessions in Kol\u00edn or at lectures with Tom\u00e1\u0161 Hal\u00edk in the crypt of the Church of St. Salvator. It felt as if life kept guiding us along similar routes.\n\nAt 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\u2014its 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?\n\nPerhaps a human being simply experiences themselves as a creative and acting subject, with an infinite potential\u2014no longer a passive puppet of systems or a plaything of fate, but an active co-creator of the unfolding of the world.\n\nThis is why, in this June issue, we bring you an extended interview with psychologist, academic, educator, and a deeply curious and kind human being Vladim\u00edr Chrz, on the themes of images, dialogical acting, meditation, imagination, psychosomatics, and creation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My first question concerns meditation. I perceive meditation as an important part of dramaturgy, and perhaps in a broader sense also of pedagogy. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would first like to define the concept of meditation. In Czech, the traditional term corresponding to meditation is rozj\u00edm\u00e1n\u00ed (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.\n\nIn meditation, there are several principles. The first is concentration\u2014the ability to focus and direct attention, often on the breath or on a word.\n\nThe second principle is stepping back from oneself. It involves paying attention to one\u2019s own mind. Buddhists often refer to this as meditation\u2014for 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.\n\nAs 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 \u2018planning\u2019. When they notice they are remembering, they label it \u2018remembering\u2019. When they realize they are arguing in their mind with their boss again, they label it \u2018arguing with my boss\u2019.\n\nThis is a very important principle, because meditation should lead to a certain distance from oneself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cletting be.\u201d\n\nIt is not primarily about concentration, because when I concentrate, it is an act of will\u2014I 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.\n\nIn a sense, letting things be is the opposite of the voluntary act of concentration.\n\nI often heard this in Kol\u00edn (note: the Centre for Spirituality and Retreats at the Kol\u00edn monastery), where all three principles are taken into account. We were always taught to concentrate, to observe one\u2019s own mind, and\u2014what I liked most\u2014to allow everything and let everything go.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nIt is even one of the slogans of Alcoholics Anonymous. In English it is a kind of wordplay: \u201clet go \u2013 let God.\u201d Because from a spiritual perspective, whenever a person lets things go, they create space for something that transcends them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The same principle can be found in Dialogical Acting. Ivan Vysko\u010dil 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. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014to let themselves be, to give space to what is emerging.\n\nWe 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\u2014to allow oneself to enter the space and not manufacture the action.\n\nIvan Vysko\u010dil once commented on my attempt: \u2018It must not be manufactured; it must well up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What are the points of connection between meditation and Dialogical Acting?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The principles of meditation and Dialogical Acting are in many respects similar. Several diploma theses and dissertations have already been written on this topic.\n\nThe common denominator is listening. Meditation can be understood as listening to silence (where silence is sometimes considered the \u201cfirst language of God\u201d). And listening also means \u201chearing oneself,\u201d which leads toward Dialogical Acting.\n\nBut 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\u2014the person steps out of themselves through action and expression, and through feedback it returns to them.\n\nAnd then\u2014ideally\u2014the person hears themselves, perceives themselves. In other words, they experience themselves in expression. Which, however, is not at all obvious or easy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It can also be said that what is involved here is a kind of interplay between the \u201cI\u201d and the \u201cIt.\u201d On the one hand, \u201cIt\u201d is happening to me, \u201cIt\u201d is playing with me. And on the other hand, I am responding to it, or provoking it.\n\nSo both must be present\u2014the \u201cI\u201d and the \u201cIt.\u201d When I speak here about the \u201cI,\u201d I mean a small \u201ci\u201d\u2014our acting ego, which is a kind of organ of intentional action, control, and direction. I do not mean the capital \u201cI,\u201d which is Jung\u2019s notion of the Self, which paradoxically is closer to the \u201cIt\u201d I am speaking about here.\n\nOver time, we may discover that even the \u201cIt\u201d is actually us\u2014that it is something, or someone, deeper within us. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I have slightly digressed.\n\nIn Dialogical Acting, what is important is the coordination between the \u201cI,\u201d meaning the acting agent, and the \u201cIt,\u201d which this acting agent is not yet, because it is largely unconscious. That is precisely why we speak of it in the neuter form.\n\nThe ideal state is a kind of interplay, a cooperation between our \u201cI\u201d and our \u201cIt.\u201d When there is only the \u201cI,\u201d I stubbornly produce and construct. And if there were only the unconscious \u201cIt\u201d on its own, it would be something automatic, like a \u201ctic.\u201d\n\nIn Dialogical Acting, we aim for a third possibility: a mutual, partner-like coordination and a living dialogue. For the \u201cIt\u201d to be able to play with us, we also need to be present in it in a consciously active and mindful way.\n\nAnd it is precisely mindfulness that is the common element between meditation and Dialogical Acting\u2014mindfulness and listening. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.\n\nThen there are people who come onto the space and slowly search. They wait for an impulse, and gradually the action emerges.\n\nThe risk of the first type is that they may end up manufacturing things\u2014having 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.\n\nBecause 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 \u201cIt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is it important to work with this principle?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is about the unconscious\u2014we 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.\n\nAccording to it, there is much more in us than just our ego. Our personality consists of the ego\u2014that is more or less the small \u2018I\u2019 I spoke about earlier. On the surface of this \u2018I\u2019 there is something Jung calls the Persona, meaning a mask\u2014a kind of organ of social adaptation, how a person wishes to appear outwardly.\n\nBut 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 \u201cIt.\u201d\n\nSo our complexes can manifest, and occasionally also what Jung calls the Self. I think the aim is to reach this essential Self\u2014not only in Dialogical Acting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is the essential Self outside the \u2018I\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is outside the small \u2018i\u2019\u2014outside 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\u2014an interplay, a coordination.\n\nThe Self is sometimes translated as \u2018being oneself\u2019 or \u2018self-being.\u2019 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.\n\nAt 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imagination is one of the foundations of dramaturgy\u2014fantasy, imagination, image-making. If you were to compare meditation and imagination, where do they meet and where do they diverge?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

If meditation is understood in the sense practiced in Kol\u00edn (Kol\u00edn Monastery \u2013 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.\n\nIn this case, between non-objective meditation\u2014or contemplation\u2014on the one hand, and imagination on the other, there are almost no points of contact.\n\nBut 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\u2014one form of such practice is called Lectio divina. Or Jesuit meditation, for instance in the tradition of Anthony de Mello.\n\nIn 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.\n\nCarl 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.\n\nSo in object-based meditation\u2014if the object is a word or an image\u2014we are already within imagination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Where can the origins of imagination and meditation be traced?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am more familiar with it from the Christian tradition. The already mentioned method of meditation, Lectio divina, which was adopted by the Benedictines\u2014though by no means only by them\u2014has its source in a short 12th-century text called Scala Paradisi (something like \u2018the ladder or steps to paradise\u2019).\n\nIt 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).\n\nIn the first phase, the text is read aloud and bodily, so that the person is with the text\u2014it sounds, is savoured, and passes through the body.\n\nIn the second phase, meditatio, the person reflects on the text, meaning not only thinking about it, but also vividly imagining it.\n\nIn 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.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nIn English, this sequence of phases is sometimes captured by four words all beginning with \u2018re\u2019: reading, reflecting, responding, and resting\u2014resting in silence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is as if, through those four \u2018re\u2019 stages\u2014grounded in imagination, bodily sensations, and emotions\u2014we are gaining our own lived experience. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Somewhere I read\u2014I\u2019m unfortunately not able to find the source\u2014that 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\u2019t dramaturgy and acting training based on imagination work in the same way?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such things connected with the imagination of movement have long been known in psychology. For example, when we think\u2014especially when we think verbally\u2014our 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.\n\nAnd this is also true in acting and dramaturgy, but there is a certain pitfall. Ivan Vysko\u010dil 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.\n\nThat 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.\n\nThat is why Ivan Vysko\u010dil used to encourage us that when something comes to our mind, we should externalize it, make it public\u2014because something that remains unexpressed inside, that only happens internally, does not really \u2018count\u2019 in a dramatic context.\n\nOn 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.\n\nLet me explain it in another way. A good example is voice training. Do you remember Associate Professor V\u00e1lkov\u00e1, who always said that we do not hear ourselves properly? That we only hear ourselves from the inside?\n\nWe 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.\n\nIn 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.\n\nBut we need to know ourselves with an outer ear. We need to know ourselves through feedback\u2014by expressing ourselves through action and behavior, and being able to catch it back.\n\nTo truly hear oneself means to hear oneself from the outside, not from the inside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I can relate to myself internally, but that relationship can simply be illusory\u2014somewhat narcissistic. We all have an idealized image of ourselves, and that is precisely the image from within: an inner mirror.\n\nBut we need an external mirror\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It seems to me that we are constantly touching on imagination and Dialogical Acting. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have not yet really defined imagination. The example of imagination I gave\u2014such as contemplation of Scripture\u2014is 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.\n\nWhereas imagination that has an essential connection to Dialogical Acting is what Carl Jung called active imagination.\n\nJung developed active imagination when he wanted to replace, in psychotherapy, both free association\u2014where a person says everything that comes to mind\u2014and also the reliance on dreams, which therapists use to uncover the client\u2019s unconscious.\n\nBut 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.\n\nAnd through this personally specific form of expression, a person communicates with the unconscious.\n\nSimilarly, Dialogical Acting (which is a specific form of dramatic active imagination) is a dialogue between the \u2018I\u2019 and the \u2018It.\u2019 It is an interplay between activity and receptivity\u2014between doing and attentive listening.\n\nIt is a way of giving the unconscious an opportunity to express itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carl G. Jung says: let us begin with an emotion\u2014perhaps 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\u2014by \u2018image\u2019 is meant image in the broad sense, depending on the form of expression we use\u2014we are to follow how it develops.\n\nAnd we are to maintain a certain balance between allowing \u2018It\u2019 to unfold in its own way and actively responding to it. That is Jungian active imagination.\n\nIvan Vysko\u010dil\u2019s Dialogical Acting is a specific form of active imagination. In many respects it corresponds to Jung\u2019s conception, except that it takes place bodily and publicly, in front of others. That is the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is your view on acceptance? I consider acceptance to be one of the most important things in pedagogy. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Supportive attention\u2019\u2014a term used in Dialogical Acting\u2014speaks precisely about how important acceptance is on the part of those who are observing attentively. I believe it was Ivan Vysko\u010dil who also referred to John of the Cross and his term \u2018loving attention.\u2019\n\nIt is this kind of energy that is involved. Without it, it would not be possible.\n\nTo use a slightly exaggerated metaphor, one could say that Dialogical Acting\u2014when it works\u2014is 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.\n\nI do not understand acceptance only as a stance on the part of others. A person must also accept themselves\u2014truly accept themselves, even be able to acknowledge and appreciate themselves.\n\nAnd with children and young people, external acceptance\u2014from an authority figure\u2014is 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What specifically has Dialogical Acting given you?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first feedback I received from my wife, about two years after I started practicing Dialogical Acting\u2014which is already a very long time ago\u2014was: \u2018You know, it\u2019s strange, but lately we somehow argue better.\u2019\n\nConstructive 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.\n\nThat 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\u2014for example, that one can hear oneself.\n\nWhen someone is making a scene in an emotional outburst and cannot be stopped, we sometimes say: \u2018If only you could hear yourself.\u2019 Because in that moment, they are not hearing themselves.\n\nAnd through Dialogical Acting, a person learns to hear themselves\u2014to be attentive to situations and to themselves within them.\n\nIn 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\u2014that is, active and conscious\u2014way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I will give one more example from my own experience. I really dislike shopping in large supermarkets. I don\u2019t 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.\n\nOnce 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.\n\nA few years earlier, I would have been extremely angry\u2014I would have yelled at him, I would have entered into a destructive argument. But suddenly I hear myself saying to him: \u2018Well, this is a situation. You\u2019ll probably have to arrest me.\u2019\n\nAnd the man caught it, started laughing, and then we both ended up talking and parting in a very good mood.\n\nThat 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And then there is a clear benefit of Dialogical Acting for teachers. The pedagogical condition developed through Dialogical Acting is unmistakable.\n\nAfter a few years of practicing Dialogical Acting, a person may discover (as happened to me) that they teach with half the energy\u2014perhaps 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.\n\nThey are not afraid to deviate; they teach in a \u2018here and now\u2019 mode, more connected to the students, and they pick up feedback from them.\n\nBut 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: \u2018When I was performing, there was complete silence\u2014it was impossible to act.\u2019\n\nPeople who went through Ivan Vysko\u010dil\u2019s department sometimes say what he did to them\u2014that 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.\n\nSo when I return to school: when feedback is missing there, I feel it is wrong. I become irritated by it.\n\nIn any case, I see the greatest benefit of Dialogical Acting precisely in teaching and pedagogy. There, it is unmistakable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ivan Vysko\u010dil 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.\n\nIt is as if a child were playing and being a little mischievous.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This can also be very effectively transmitted to students. Their attention then becomes completely different.\n\nThere is a theory of attention by the American psychologist Edward B. Titchener, who says that during development we acquire three types of attention.\n\nThe first type we do not need to acquire\u2014it 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.\n\nThen 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\u2014they must push themselves.\n\nThe 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 \u2018pushed\u2019 (as in voluntary attention), but \u2018pulled\u2019 by interest. We are drawn by interest or curiosity.\n\nIt is something very different to force attention and tell children \u2018pay attention\u2019, and something completely different when I am interested, when I am curious.\n\nThis 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.\n\nIt 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014because then they can stop it and release it.\n\nThey can say to themselves: \u2018I\u2019ve been pushing unnecessarily here; I can ease off a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I would like to return once more to the maturity you spoke about. I am reminded of Marian spirituality and my favourite phrase: \u2018she kept all these things in her heart.\u2019 It feels to me like a guide to a mature approach\u2014silence, and leaving space for the \u2018It\u2019 you are talking about.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is exactly it. However, this is the meaning of the word \u2018heart\u2019 that we find in various older traditions.\n\nThe term \u2018heart\u2019 has since shifted toward more superficial or even kitsch meanings\u2014like \u2018I do it with my heart,\u2019 where it is often understood as sentimental emotion.\n\nBut 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 \u2018from the heart,\u2019 we act from our deepest center, spontaneously, without needing to push or force anything.\n\nI even came across an interview with Ivan Vysko\u010dil where he speaks about the \u2018pure heart\u2019 and refers to the Beatitudes from the teachings of Jesus.\n\nA psychosomatic condition, in this sense, means maintaining a certain readiness or disposition that consists in \u2018being in the heart. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you think psychosomatics can purify the heart or intentions? That this happens through feedback and listening?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sounds very strong. It is also necessary to be clear about what we mean by the word \u2018psychosomatics.\u2019 I understand that you mean the set of disciplines practiced at Vysko\u010dil\u2019s department, which you work with in your studio.\n\nIf we realize that feedback leads to listening and mindfulness, then I would not oppose the expression \u2018purification of the heart.\u2019 It is about feedback toward oneself (self-knowledge) and toward others.\n\nI 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\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like The Little Prince?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have to say it\u2019s not exactly my favourite book. Maybe it bothers me a little how often it is quoted. But I think yes\u2014it is that. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do meditation and Dialogical Acting lead to maturity\u2014the ability to stay standing, as Milena Jesensk\u00e1 wrote in her essay? The ability not to react immediately to everything, automatically?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 Vysko\u010dil\u2019s comments in Dialogical Acting consisted of telling people: slow down.\n\nPerhaps it is not even slowness in terms of time. It probably cannot be measured in time. Rather, it is a mental state\u2014like the saying: \u2018make haste slowly.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why is slowness important?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What does not listen\u2014what constantly pushes forward and wants to overpower everything\u2014is, 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.\n\nBy 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).\n\nWhen I am insecure, I feel I must control everything, or even overpower it. It feels dangerous to me to learn something from others\u2014or even to learn something essential about myself. And this applies both individually and collectively.\n\nThere are also self-centred, insecure communities. Often behind the aggression of individuals and groups, behind their inability to listen, there is insecurity and fear.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How can we work with it?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In principle it is simple, in practice difficult\u2014sometimes almost impossible. But there is hardly anything else to do than to bring the sides into dialogue. To create conditions for dialogue.\n\nWe 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\u2014even psychosomatically.\n\nThe solution is simply to meet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Do you see the future of education precisely in learning dialogue, communication, listening to oneself, and meeting others? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose so. I\u2019m 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How do images heal the human psyche? In Harry Potter, I liked the idea when Harry dreams something and asks Dumbledore: \u2018Is this happening in my head, or is it real?\u2019 And Dumbledore replies: \u2018Of course it is happening in your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean it is not real?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNotice the word \u2018reality\u2019\u2014what it is derived from. In Czech, it comes from the word \u2018deed\u2019 (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.\n\nThe word \u2018reality\u2019 thus seems to refer to what truly is.\n\nCarl Jung plays with the German word for reality, Wirklichkeit.<\/em><\/strong> He says: \u2018Wirklichkeit ist, was wirkt\u2019\u2014reality is what has an effect, what acts, what exerts influence.\n\nAnd 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.\n\nFor example, today we talk about disinformation and how to fight it. But perhaps the solution would look different if we spoke instead about \u2018influence\u2019 or \u2018impact.\u2019\n\nIt 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But back to reality. The word \u2018reality\u2019 refers to \u2018deed\u2019 or \u2018act\u2019 (skutek), at least in some languages. For example in Czech, in German, and also in Russian, where there is deyatelnost\u2014activity, doings.\n\nEnglish does not have this; it has \u2018reality,\u2019 from the Greek res (thing, matter).\n\nThe depth of this understanding of \u2018reality\u2019 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\u2014acts.\n\nSo reality is what God does, such as creation. In other words, the word \u2018reality\u2019 is a remnant of this tradition: something that happens, something connected with deeds, with action.\n\nThe modern world no longer thinks this way, but the trace of it remains in the word itself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So does that mean that imagination influences our behavior, action, and experience? And if so, is it therefore reality?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was almost about to say yes, of course. But it is actually more complicated. The answer could be: yes and no.\n\nWhen Carl Jung says \u2018Wirklichkeit ist, was wirkt\u2019\u2014reality is what has an effect\u2014he is saying that if an image or idea has a strong impact, then it is real.\n\nHowever, there is a major \u2018but\u2019 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.\n\nThis is the contemporary problem of populism, which is undermining some formerly democratic regimes. But that would take us too far from our topic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anselm <\/strong>Gr\u00fcn<\/strong><\/a> has a book about healing through images. How can images\u2014inner or outer\u2014heal a person? Do images really have an effect on our mental health?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course. I would even put it more strongly.\n\nWhen 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.\n\nThe soul creates images; it cannot do anything else. The world of the soul is a world of images.\n\nBoth 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.\n\nTherefore, 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.\n\nThe health of a culture can be judged by the images it produces\u2014by the images in which it lives. When you look at popular culture, you can almost diagnose our society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

You mention images, and earlier you also mentioned psychosomatics. Psychosomatics seems to me perhaps even more important. But first, to those images.\n\nIt is often said that we live in a culture of images, but of a rather specific kind\u2014visuality in a virtual environment. What kind of images are these? They are digital images, often created digitally.\n\nI don\u2019t 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\u2014created by human hands\u2014are images created by the human soul.\n\nWhen The Lion King appeared, whose images were created by a computer, everyone applauded this computer animation for how \u2018human\u2019 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\u2014even if imperfect\u2014and is replaced by a computer-calculated \u2018pseudo-humanity.\u2019\n\nSo perhaps rather than a return to images, I would see it as a return to human images.\n\nWe live in a culture that is to some extent image-based, but these images are increasingly no longer created by the human soul\u2014they are created by machines. And I am somewhat concerned that even our minds might become \u2018mechanized\u2019 as well. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.\n\nBecause 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.\n\nIf the word \u2018pedagogy\u2019 comes from \u2018to lead someone somewhere,\u2019 then I must unfortunately say that education often leads a person toward disconnection\u2014from both soul and body. Philip Zimbardo wrote a book called The Disconnected Man.\n\nThe way we educate people leads\u2014often, not always, and not in all respects\u2014to disconnection. We become disconnected from ourselves and from relationships with each other. And this is also because psychosomatics is not taken into account.\n\nThink of how Vysko\u010dil\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the fundamental difference?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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).\n\nEducation, however, is something else.\n\n(long pause)\n\nI 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.\n\nIn 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.\n\nIf pedagogy means, as I said, \u2018to lead someone somewhere,\u2019 then no one can lead another further than they themselves have gone. This should be taken into account in the preparation of future teachers\u2014where they are being led, and toward what.\n\nIn this context I like the word \u2018authorship.\u2019\n\nIvan Vysko\u010dil did not choose the name Department of Authorial Creativity and Pedagogy by coincidence. He also said that pedagogy is dramatics\u2014not in the sense of theatre, but in the sense of action.\n\nThe teacher is an \u2018actor\u2019\u2014a doer, a dialogical actor (which is related to the word \u2018actor\u2019). A pedagogical situation is a situation of action in the sense of an open dramatic play.\n\nAnd that is something completely different from the transmission of contents: \u2018Here are the contents, learn them.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We keep circling around one thing: psychosomatics. That without listening there is no feedback, and without feedback there is no learning.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is the essence of dramatics? Feedback. Pedagogy and dramatics are based on feedback. I must hear myself, I must hear others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What would you recommend to the younger generation for their mental health? <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

People should be given space to express themselves\u2014to 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.\n\nI genuinely believe that the old saying still holds true: \u2018He who plays does no harm.\u2019 And I would add: those who create suffer much less.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thank you for the interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Erika Merjav\u00e1<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Rozhovor s Doc. PhDr. Vladim\u00edrem Chrzem, Ph.D. z Psychologick\u00e9ho \u00fastavu Akademie v\u011bd \u010cR, pedagogem, v\u00fdzkumn\u00edkem a psychologem. S Vladim\u00edrem jsem se potkala na Kated\u0159e autorsk\u00e9 tvorby a pedagogiky DAMU. Chodili jsme spolu k Vysko\u010dilovi na Dialogick\u00e9 jedn\u00e1n\u00ed. On jako psycholog a j\u00e1 jako divadeln\u00edk a pedagog. Pak jsme se n\u00e1hodou za\u010dali potk\u00e1vat na meditac\u00edch v … Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2373","page","type-page","status-publish"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t