Bear in mind, early last semester I was toying with the idea of the moths serving as a metaphor for the behaviors I’ve developed as a result of my parents’ divorce. These behaviors closely resemble the symptoms of OCPD (obsessive-compulsive personality disorder), of which my dad suffers (anxieties, obsession of cleanliness and organization, perfectionism, rigid moral or ethical values and disinhibition).
While perusing through blogs this weekend I came across an interesting quote by German-American theologian Paul Tillich: “Neurosis is the way of avoiding non-being by avoiding being.” With the threat of non-being, the Neurotic is often creative in his attempts to deal with it by creating an “imaginary world” for himself. Honestly, I almost flew out of my pants. I hadn’t considered the possibility of reintroducing this idea into my work until I came across this quote; it perfectly supports my concept for this semester. I decided to do a quick Google search of Neurosis and came across this:
“Neurosis represents a variety of mental disorders in which emotional distress or unconscious conflict is expressed through various physical physiological and mental disturbances which may include physical symptoms like hysteria. The definitive symptom is anxieties. Neurotic tendencies are common and may manifest themselves as depression, acute or chronic anxiety, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, phobias, and even personality disorders such as borderline personality disorder or OCPD”
This is kind of sad and not something I would normally be excited about, but for the sake of my work, I am ecstatic. It goes on to explain that, as simply defined; Neurosis is a “poor ability to adapt to one’s environment and an inability to change one’s life patterns.”
After skimming through a few essays I found an essay titled Neurosis by Dr. Arthur Janov. The last paragraph reads: “Struggle is what keeps a child from feeling his hopelessness. It lies in overwork, in slaving for high grades, in being the performer. Struggle is the neurotic's hope of being loved. Instead of being himself, he struggles to become another version of himself. Sooner or later the child comes to believe that this version is the real him. The ‘act’ is no longer voluntary and conscious; it is automatic and unconscious. It is neurotic”
I’m mostly connecting with the ideas of being the performer and becoming versions of oneself. The way I see it, the person taking on these other personalities is so they can escape the life they belong to realistically and become a superior person; someone they wish to be, possessing things they’ve been denied as who they really are. In my attempts to protect myself from and escape the issues at home, I (Hayley), have physically and mentally removed myself from my home and who I am as a person. In a sense I suppose I am allowing myself to exist only in my own mind and in correlation with the ideas presented above about neurosis.
Neurosis by Dr. Arthur Janov
About OCPD
About Neurosis
Kerry,
ReplyDeleteI have been reading an Encylopedia of animal symbolism in art and I came across 'moth.' I thought I would relay what I found even if you already know all of it. Moths (and butterflies) are symbols of the human soul and life cycles, fragility, fertility, beauty, grace, the fleeting passage of time. Swarms may signify divine blessing or a good omen. Ex: The swarms of butterflies that surrounded Joan of Arc's standard during her triumph. They are also signs of becoming and transformation and can be associated with death. Their stylized body shape is much like the shape of a double-sided axe. In classical art and myth, butterflies/moths are symbols of the the Greek god Psyche. The Celts believed that pregnancy resulted when women swallowed creates of the soul: butterflies, moths, birds.
=)
Thanks Sarah, that's really thoughtful of you. I have heard most of that before but was unaware of it's connection to Greek god Psyche. I'm in the process of looking more into the moth and it's symbolism as I'm working on determining how the moth will function in my images this semester (I'd not like them to look like a silly fairytale). Hopefully researching further will give me better insight.
ReplyDeleteThank you again! You're so helpful this week :)