Talking as Walking

[Triton]

Talking as Walking by James Hillman

"It seemed it might be useful to say something about why our Institute
puts so much weight on psychology, why so many of us are
psychologists, even psychoanalysts. How does psychology fit in with
the tasks of the institute and the life of the city.

Psychologists are engaged in the business of consciousness. People
come to see us about this or that problem, symptom or trouble in order
to become more conscious. WE take things apart, that is, analyze
problems, feelings, dreams, so that they become more conscious.

Now what is this consciousness? What actually goes on in becoming more
conscious? Actually, what goes on is conversation. If you listened to
a tape of an analysis hour, and hour of becoming conscious in therapy,
you would hear a conversation. That's all it is; conversation. You
become more conversant with your dreams, about your relationships,
your fears and needs. Consciousness is really nothing more than
maintaining conversation, and unconsciousness is really nothing more
than letting things fall out of conversation, no longer talking about
something-or what Freud called repression.

Now it seems to me that is precisely the job of the Institue; keeping
a conversation going and not letting things remain unsaid, unspoken,
repressed.

You see, we aren't really a think tank. We don't take on problems in
order to come up with specific answers, recommendations. Answers
anyway don't really keep conversations going as well as questions do.
Answers are stoppers. It seems, at the Institute, we spend more time
coming up with new questions than with answers.

And we aren't really a cultural center either, with a program of adult
education-except when we initiate something on architecture, or
manners, or education, or economics, or the media, so as to initiate
conversation. Now conversation isnt' easy. You know how hard it is in
a family, what an art it is to keep a covnersation going. You know the
tortures of the family dinner table, how more and more is left unsaid-
so, of course, Freud found repression mainly in the family. It's a
place where coversation often has a hard time.

Or, at a dinner party. Striking up a conversation and keeping it
flowing-not a monologue, not only opinions and sounding off, not only
firing questions but conversation as an exploration, a little risky
adventure, discovery, an interesting happening. Parties are terribly
important in a city for keeping its conversation going, keeping the
consciousness of the city at a certain intensity, moving its mind
adventurously toward deeper discoveries.

What doesn't work, we also pretty well know; Personalism; just talking
out loud about what we feel. Complaints. Opinions. Information doesn't
work; simply reporting what's new, where you've been, what you've
heard. And lullabies don't help either; singing charming little
stories to prevent anything from entering the heart or the mind. And
boosterism isn't conversation either; broadcasting, self-advertising
what we are doing, have done, going to do. You can't converse with a
sales pitch of postivitve preaching. All these kinds of talk have to
be cured in therapy; they interfere with conversation.

So, not just any talk is convesation, not any talk raises
consciousness. A subject can be talked to death, a person talked to
sleep. Good convesation has an edge; it opens your eyes to something,
quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates; it keeps on
talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself
still talking with what was said. That reverberation afterwards is the
very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at
another level with your reflections. So, what helps conversation?

Here we need to look again at what conversation is. The word means
turning around with, going back, like reversing, and it comes
supposedly from walking back and forth with someone or something,
turning and going over the same ground from the reverser direction. A
conversation turns things around. There are versions in a
conversation; various turns to it. And there is a 'verso' to every
conversation, a reverse back side.

It is this verso, this exposition of the reverse version, that is, I
think, the work of the institute-and also what the Forum is about.

What we expect from these lunches is not information, facts, personal
opinions, and boosterism, not even education, but rather whatever
keeps us walking together with something and turns things around,
upside down, converts what we already feel and think into something
unexpected, the unconscious becomes conscious.

And to keep turning means that it's no use having fixed stands,
definite positions,. That stops convesation dead in its tracks. Our
aim is not to take a "stand" on this or that issure, but to examine
the stands themselves so they can be loosened, and we can go on
walking back and forth.

And that is why the style of our conversation here has to be somewhat
upsetting, turning around the first expected directions of a thought
or a feeling. And that is why we have to speak with irony-even
ridicule and cutting sarcasm. Shocking even; because consciousness
comes with a little shock of awareness, keeping us on edge, actute,
awake, and a little awary. Psychotherapy doesn't use electroshock, but
psych shock-that little twinge or flash that makes a situation
suddenly seem altoghter new.

One small institue, one small lunch each month among a few friends and
acuaintance, can hardly turn the city around, raise the level of its
self-awareness, its reflection and insight into its unconscious
repressions. Or might these Forum conversations already be at the
cutting edge of raising consciousness. For if we here are working at
curing our talk and less at talking of cures (for this to that
problems) we would be engaged in true conversations, the very activity
that does turn all things around."