Lateral Intelligence or Zsa-Zsa's Transform

By Dalma Kalogjera-Sackellares

By analyzing films and fictional characters, this study explores improvisational styles in thinking and emotional adaptation. Building on her first book, Was Sherlock Holmes Left-Handed or Spatial Intelligence and Creativity, author Dalma Kalogjera-Sackellares introduces a model linking lateral reasoning with emotional intelligence.

Kalogjera-Sackellares, a clinical psychologist, uses a host of examples to demonstrate improvisation and imagination, as well as the studys focus on lateral reasoning and intelligence. She draws on scenes from movies such as Bedknobs and Broomsticks and A Beautiful Mind and characters such as Amelia Bedelia, Mrs. Douglas from Green Acres, and Lt. Drebin from the Naked Gun series. Through these examples, this study examines the ecologythat is, the natural relationshipof lateral reasoning, emotional intelligence, and creativity.

Through formal study, years of research, and practice in clinical psychology, Kalogjera-Sackellares captured significant features or markers of those processes as they have revealed themselves to her throughout the years.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Archway Publishing
• Release date: Jan 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781480804357

Dalma Kalogjera-Sackellares

Dalma Kalogjera-Sackellares, PhD, is a clinical psychologist with special expertise in neuropsychology, geropsychology, and sleep disorders. Original publications include works on the psychological effects of insomnia, cognitive and emotional effects of anticonvulsants, and psychogenic pseudoseizures. Her books on post-traumatic syndromes and spatial intelligence are highly acclaimed by experts in the field. She currently lives in Florida.

Book preview

Lateral Intelligence

or

Zsa-Zsa’s Transform

Dalma Kalogjera-Sackellares, PhD

54008.png

Copyright © 2014 Dalma Kalogjera-Sackellares, PhD.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Archway Publishing books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

Archway Publishing

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.archwaypublishing.com

1-(888)-242-5904

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0434-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0436-4 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4808-0435-7 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014930998

Archway Publishing rev. date: 01/22/2014

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgement

Artwork

IN THE REALM OF THE WIZARD ANARCHIST

Bedknobs And Broomsticks

Tango Bubble

The Soccer Match At Naboombu—

A True Test Of Democracy

Back In England…

Of Space And Spells…

And Other Suchlike Matters

Choreographing Reality

Eglantine’s Style As A Wizard

SACRED ACTS OF GOOFS

Miss Amelia Bedelia And Lateral Logic

Amelia Bedelia Goes Camping

Amelia’s Common Or Garden Variety Errors

The Fairest Of Them All!

Ordinary Errors Vs. Errors Less Ordinary

Further Explorations Of Amelia’s Logic And Cognitive Style

Model Linking Lateral Thinking And Emotional Intelligence

Zsa-Zsa’s Transform Model

Jean Piaget And Intellectual Development

The Easiest Of Rain-Time Companions

Growth Of Ideas

Formal Operations (12 And Onwards)

Professor Piaget And Miss Amelia B

The Guns Of August

Naked Gun (1988)

Lt. Drebin As A Secret—Not Really—Weapon

The Naked Gun 2 And ½ (1991)

Folly Al’ Fresco Or Critique Of Pure Folly Or Practical Folly

More Adventures Of Lisa And Oliver Douglas At The Poky Popsicle

Bringing Apples To The Market

The Notion Of Cognitive Dissonance Or How Lisa Beat It By A Mile

Poetic Wish-Fulfillment

A Note On Our Zany Friends

The Concept Of Merger

Our Keynote Speaker

Additional Note On Our Three Zanies Escaped From Sense Or What If The World Worked This Way? Or Paradigm Shifts

The Question Of Plato’s Oak

IMAGINATION AND THE LAUNCH OF THE SELF

His Excellency The Imaginary Friend

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

A Critical Review Of The Film And Its Themes

Foundations Of Identity—Theoretical Background

Merger With Strength And Calmness

Twinship

Colonel Parcher And The Mythic Entanglement

Dr. Freud With Respect To Everywhere And Nowhere

Freud’s Cases

Frau Emmy Von N.

Freulein Elisabeth Von R.

Col. Parcher And Dr. Freud—

Struggles With Coded Information

Self-Like Any Other Story—

Grows Around What Is Imagined

HOW ARE MATHEMATCS AND A BROOM ALIKE?

On A Sunny Day…

Canonical Vs. Incident Truth

COLONEL PARCHER AND INSPECTOR CLOUSEAU—SECURITY SUMMIT IN VIENNA

Bibliography

For my daughter Chiara

For Chris

PREFACE

This book, as well as its titles, has gone through many changes and many storms in Florida. Celestial Rovers, Three Zanies Escaped from Sense, Zsa-Zsa’s Transform… as well as some others. Eventually, it became clear to the author that some sensible and straightforward title would need to be chosen, hence the present title.

The slightly manic tone of the titles and the very straightforward one… which emerged eventually… probably best describe the disparate parts of the author’s mind and personality.

The author is a clinical psychologist and clinical investigator whose professional range spans from psychodynamic theory and therapy, through post-traumatic stress disorders… to neuropsychology and clinical trials with investigational anticonvulsants. She has also been a student of comparative literature, philosophy and logic. It is partly due to courses in formal logic that she owes her capacity to pursue esoteric questions with patience and dogged persistence.

This book is about the ecology of lateral reasoning and emotional intelligence and, also, creativity. Ecology means that these things exist in a natural relationship in our world. The book hopes to capture significant features or markers of those processes, as they revealed themselves to the author over the years.—Among other things, through books and films I love and have spent my life with.

The author has written an earlier work on spatial reasoning and creativity entitled Was Sherlock Holmes Left-Handed or Spatial Intelligence and Creativity (originally completed in 2004, copyright registered formally in 2008, published in 2011). Lateral Intelligence or Zsa-Zsa’s Transform builds on this earlier work, with particular emphasis on lateral reasoning.

The second title of this book Zsa-Zsa’s Transform , light-hearted though it may be , is not a frill, but a model which this author proposes in order to link together lateral reasoning with emotional intelligence, and some other elements.

This book—and if this is beginning to resemble a Thanksgiving dinner to the Reader, he or she is not far off—well, it is also about imagination. In particular, adaptive uses of imagination. And about improvisational styles in thinking and emotional adaptation.

The exploration of improvisational styles in this book rests on the analysis of films and fictional characters. Sort of linking science and fairy-tales…

Lateral Intelligence is divided into several major sections. The first section, entitled IN THE REALM OF THE WIZARD ANARCHIST, is organized around the film with a strange title Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971). This section consists of a description of this delightful film, and the exploration of the improvisational style of its heroine, portrayed by Miss Angela Lansbury. This film demonstrates a very sophisticated use of imagination to conquer fear.

The next section is entitled SACRED ACTS OF GOOFS. This part of our book is subdivided into three segments. The first segment, entitled Amelia Bedelia and Lateral Logic, is devoted to a fictional character from a children’s book. It introduces the role of nonsense (or the seemingly nonsensical)…and, also, lateral reasoning and emotional intelligence.

The second segment The Guns of August chronicles the adventures of Lt. .Drebin, the hilarious detective from the Naked Gun movie series. The third segment Folly al Fresco or Folly in the Fresh Air is devoted to Mrs. Douglas—a character from a classic US television series Green Acres. Mrs. Douglas is yet another choice in our gallery of improvisational styles—an elegant Goof, you might say… with a very high emotional IQ quotient.

In dealing with unconventional, improvisational and creative styles…a question naturally arises as to whether they can be understood in terms of classical theory of formal intelligence and cognitive development. So, we have included a section on Jean Piaget who pioneered these theories. A fresh approach to this question, emphasizing the intuitive and unconventional elements in Piaget’s thinking, is offered by this author.

Imagination—it feeds us and it delights us—it helps us be more… and be more flexible. But it also helps us to consolidate a sense of self. This is the topic of the section IMAGINATION AND THE LAUNCH OF SELF. The focal point of this section is the film A Beautiful Mind (2001) which deals with the US mathematician and Nobel Laureate John Nash. The Reader may wonder how the learned Professor wandered into the context of play… with Amelia Bedelia and Bedknobs and Broomsticks. We are using, for our purposes here, one particular aspect of this elegant film which has to do with adaptive, and even more so, empowering uses of imagination. Hence the title, "His Excellency, the Imaginary Friend". Indeed, we are taking this exploration one step further as an example of the experience of merger—a psychodynamic concept which is, in fact, one of the cornerstones of identity formation.

This book was also once entitled Hurricane Diaries, because it was written—quite literally—in a place of hurricanes, and it is, sort of a diary.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

J. Chris Sackellares, M. D., my colleague and husband is acknowledged here for his profound commitment to me in our personal and professional lives—over two decades. His leadership in our joint projects, for example clinical trials with investigational anticonvulsants, has enabled consistently excellent work to see the light of day with great benefit to patients. He has supported my radical mid-career shift to explore and write about spatial intelligence, lateral intelligence, and creativity. He is responsible for this book seeing the light of day.

ARTWORK

Drawings, that is, cartoons presented in this book were made by J Chris Sackellares. He is a notable neurologist, neurologic educator, investigator and inventor.

Drawings he made were done at my instigation, and for no better reason, than to pass time and because I like them. They were made on restaurant napkins to amuse our daughter.

I liked cartoons especially Disney cartoons my entire life. I believe that they reflect spatial creativity in those who possess the gift of being able to draw them.

The cover photograph also is by Dr. Sackellares

1.jpg

IN THE REALM OF THE WIZARD ANARCHIST

Bedknobs and Broomsticks

"With Macoites,

Trecorum

…and a little help from me"

T HE ABOVE TITLE IS NOT a metaphor, but the name of a film dating from the late and very much remembered 20 th century, of shall we say, infamous memory. The setting is England, just prior to the onset of the Second World War. The Reader will imagine a small town which rejoices in the name of Pepperinge Eye. No, the name is not a camouflage, although it certainly could be. The town is a very suitable—indeed, an idyllic setting for a fairy tale which this film certainly is.

Without false, or indeed, genuine modesty, this is one of the best films this moviegoer has ever seen. Everyone in it excels at their craft. These are performers who come prepared for every take, who know their lines and their business. Unlike a small knot of directors who think of the viewer as prey, and who run around photographing strip malls and gas stations, all the while shouting at the viewer Look at me, looks at me!—the ensemble of Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971) work solely for one aim—to win your favor.

Naturally, the viewer wants to stay with them!

This is not a film about which one can, or would ever even want to write a dissertation. It is simply too good for that!

Not to be missed—this film has qualified for the most serious standard of merit—to be on your family’s shelf (along with special jams… cream puffs, if you like).

Having introduced the film in the spirit of fairness and balance, there really is no excuse for any further delay. In particular, I feel that Miss Angela Lansbury who lent her considerable comic powers to the title role of Eglantine Price, Apprentice Witch, is looking at me sternly and saying "Will you get to the point? She says that, or something very like it, throughout much of the movie. This is her way of providing transition, linking different sections of the film. Never mind camera tricks, she simply says Move on!"

Her crisp style of pacing the movie (while others are perfectly happy just being happy) is motivated by her great fear of failing in her chief task…a task entrusted to her by The Ministry of Civil Defense…War Effort…very hush-hush, most SEE KRIT, you see.

With this, our film can properly begin.

Miss Price is the only daughter of an officer of some distinction (now gone) who resides in an attractive manor house her father left her in the above-mentioned Pepperinge Eye. She resides alone. It suits her purpose, she says. What be the purpose? She is studying to be a witch. This is made possible by special arrangements with Professor Emelius Browne, Headmaster, Correspondence College of Witchcraft. (You didn’t think it all started with Harry Potter, did you?)

Professor Browne is based in London and, from there, he sends her occasional packages which contain instructional materials for his course (a cat, poisoned dragon liver, etc.). On this most recent occasion, he sent her a long, nondescript object wrapped in brown paper. This object she collected from the small post office at Pepperinge Eye. The post mistress is consumed with curiosity and chases after the evasive Miss Price.

Is it what you expected? Is Professor Browne well? Are we to have the pleasure of meeting him?

Not feeling obliged to slow her brisk tempo for a single second for this very decent old lady, Miss Price, nonetheless, had to stop long enough to consider the request (i.e. a command) from The Ministry of Civil Defense. The old lady, who doubles as a rudimentary social worker, takes Miss Price to the Castle where her destiny awaits her in the form of three children—Charlie, Carrie and Paul Rawlins. They are there to escape from the bombing raids in London. And Miss Price is there to take them into her house and look after them.

This directive she received with cold compliance of subordinates in military settings. Not without capacity to issue commands of her own, she added a proviso that more suitable homes be found for them as soon as possible.

Then she got on her motorcycle, piled the kids into the side car, grasped the handles firmly with her hands (covered in huge gloves, up to her elbows) and huffed off.

Miss Price is a blond lady, fairly tall. On this occasion, aside from gear suitable for ‘bikers" (no, not black leather jackets, gold chains and raw sexual energy, not those bikers) she also wore a pale blue, capacious hat known as tam-o-shanter. And while this is not all that could be said of Miss Price, by any means, it gives the Reader enough to go on.

At her house, she assembles the children for a briefing which consists of dispensing rudimentary household rules—who is sleeping where, not to touch anything in her late father’s room. (How would you sleep in someone’s room without touching anything, astral projection, perhaps?) The bathroom is down the landing. The supper is at six, "wash thoroughly, or there will be no supper?"

She is not thrilled to have them there, you will say.

Sadly, no, and, as it so often happens, the feeling is mutual. The unloved parties line up for a showdown. Not quite a showdown, a little skirmish, perhaps.

At dinner, the kids plot to escape. Miss Price serves a warm mushy meal (perhaps oatmeal). It is true that she asks them what they like to eat. When they talk wistfully of sausages and mash, toad in a hole, fried fish… she summarizes coldly that there are to be no fried foods. Instead there will be elm bark, hyssop seed, rosehips and stewed nettles. Of this scary lineup, this author is only familiar with—and is very happy to share with the Reader—the fact that rosehips are delicious, not raw, but as tea. They also make wonderful marmalade, ideal for children’s sandwiches, likewise, filling in crepes (Don’t do unnatural things to plants, and they will be good to you!)

Stewed nettles…

This item deserves attention. Why? Is it toxic? A wicked hallucinogen? An aggressive purgative, like castor oil? (I hope that the European Union has outlawed it).

No, something much worse! I know it is a terrible thing, because Monsieur Poirot, Agatha Christie’s famous detective encountered nettles on his plate, one day, as part of the slimming down regime in a spa located on the pleasant English coast. Even with Captain Hastings sitting right next to him, and a dining room full of people, he looked forlorn—having encountered, in nettles, you see—for the first and last time in his career, an adversary mightier than himself (Poirot—Evil Under the Sun ,2003, DVD ).

Moving right along…

This being an orderly household, the children go to bed, and Miss Price repairs to her room where she unwraps the package she has received from Prof Browne, earlier that day. The package contains a broom which she embraces with open affection she is yet to show for another human being. This broom is nothing special, you understand, no Nimbus 2000, for example (a luxurious variant featured in Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone (2001).

But to Miss Eglantine Price, at this very tricky moment in her country’s history, this broom is a passage to magical possibilities, a code that will change her destiny from a modest apprentice to a master wizard who can summon armies with a spell!

Those who maintain that the matter before us is a simple one, should consider that broom-riding was taught as a special subject at Hogwarts School. Miss Price tries to follow directions. Take an easy, sideways, graceful position! This is no better than saying that you should take an easy, graceful, sideways position on a bronco in a rodeo. She fails immediately…the cat meows at her pathetic efforts… the broom is simply embarrassed and tries to distance itself from the proceedings. Miss Price, however, continues to try—not a firm grasp on the broom, by any means.—Eventually, she manages to get outside, not necessarily with the broom’s consent.

The kids, for their own part, are exiting the bedroom window better to escape the prospect (blessing?) of stewed nettles and other healthy food. Just as they are doing it, they are treated to the sight of a solitary figure on a broom, outlined against the night sky. As wild as her ride is, and wilder still, perhaps, than that of the bronco beginner, she has a few moments up there when she has the broom firmly in hand (you are not he boss of me!) and is sailing through the skies with a smile, in anticipation of great things to come. Before great things, alas, comes a bumpy landing which the children witness.

Charlie, not to waste any time, confronts her at breakfast—Lovely weather for flying last night? Miss Price is unable to bluff this out. He attempts to lobby for better living conditions: real food, dessert (an occasional sausage and a bit of strawberry jam), money and an end to unnatural cleanliness routines. They don’t reach an immediate agreement; the children even question if she is a witch. Miss Price responds to this open challenge by turning skeptical Charlie into a rabbit with one of Professor Browne’s spells. The cat, named Cosmic Creepers, corners Charlie on the landing. He is saved by a whisper of a second, the slimmest of margins of good luck (will teach him to be rude and skeptical!)

This evens, a bit, the playing field between the kids and Miss Price.

She eventually confides in them and explains that the work she is doing is terribly confidential, and part of the country’s defense. As a token of good will, she offers them an object of value (not her broom or Cosmic Creepers). This valuable item happens to be a spell which was included as a bonus with the instructional materials sent to her by Prof. Browne.

We are introduced here to "The