Healing with Words: A Psychologist’S Experiments in Poetry Therapy

By George Kaliaden

How do our words acquire healing powers?

How do words make changes in each others brains?

How do special uses of words, poetic or therapeutic, modify our thoughts, alter our feelings and transform our lives?

This book introduces helping professionals to the practice of poetry therapy, highlighting the prophetic role of poets and healing professionals in our everyday life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris AU
• Release date: Feb 27, 2017
• ISBN: 9781524520663

George Kaliaden

The author is a psychologist, poet, and motivational trainer whose educational background includes research/studies at the University of Pennsylvania, University of Texas at Arlington, and IIT Bombay. He is a licensed psychologist/therapist and has been practicing in Dubai for two decades; he is also a member of the American Psychological Association, Society of Clinical Psychology (USA), Indian Academy of Applied Psychology, and the Poetry Society (India).

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Copyright © 2017 by George Kaliaden.

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All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

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Cover Design: © Ritu George Kaliaden

Scripture quotations marked GNT are taken from the Good News Translation — Second Edition. Copyright © 1992 by American Bible Society. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

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

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Rev. date: 02/27/2017

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CONTENTS

Prologue

Acknowledgements

Part I: Reflections On Poetry Therapy

1. Introduction

2. Life Is A Poem

3. Poetry For Healing

4. Psychotherapy: The Art Of Changing The Mind

5. Poetry To Inspire

6. Poetry: Prophetic And Priestly

7. ‘Sacramentation’ Of Words

8. Poetry: Healing By Counter-Conditioning

9. Poetry To Change Your Thoughts And Beliefs

10. Poetry To Change Your Feeling States

11. Love Is The Ultimate Healer

Part II: The Practice Of Poetry Therapy

12. Self-Therapy: Rescripting The Poem Of Life

13. Conducting A Poetry Therapy Session

14. Poetry Therapy In Community Mental Health

Part III: Experiments In Poetry Therapy

15. Selected Poems And Case Studies

16. Poetry For Youth Guidance

17. Be Here Now

17. Be Here Now!

18. Coming Home

18. Coming Home

19. Wheels Aligned

19. Wheels Aligned

20. Poetry For Couple Therapy

21. Pros

21. Pros

22. Happening

22. Happening

23. Sweet Holy Night Asleep

23. Sweet Holy Night Asleep

24. Parenting And Poetry Therapy

25. Grow Up, Dad, Be A Father!

25. Grow Up, Dad, Be A Father!

26. Standing Lines/Sleeping Lines

26. Standing Lines/Sleeping Lines

27. Transformation: The Will To Meaning

28. U-Turn

28. U-Turn

29. Gloria Finalis

29. Gloria Finalis

30. Eschatos

30. Eschatos

31. Life And Afterlife: Poetry In ‘Deathing’ And Grieving

32. We Feel Sorry For The Dead

32. We Feel Sorry For The Dead

33. This Holy Body We Carry

33. This Holy Body We Carry

34. Reflections On Godliness

35. On A Pair Of Pelvic Bones

35. On A Pair Of Pelvic Bones

36. This Strange Tree And Its Fruit

36. This Strange Tree And Its Fruit

37. A Walk With Him This Easter Morning

37. A Walk With Him This Easter Morning

38. Dream The One-Aum-Aalaaha!

38. Dream The One-Aum-Aalaaha!

39. Wanted! Barefoot Poetry Therapists

References

Appendix 1: Poetry Therapy Resources

Appendix 2: Poetry Therapy Institutes And Organisations

Dedicated with love to

His Holiness Pope Francis

and to the memory of

Swamy Vivekananda and

Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

Dedicated to

all poet-prophets of our time

who are gifted with the power of the word,

and anointed by the spirit of love

to heal, inspire, and transform lives!

George Kaliaden

PROLOGUE

E very life is a poem—a poetic script of how one experiences and expresses one’s being in the world. This poem, this stream of consciousness, is alterable. Poetry therapy is a process by which we attempt to alter the script of life and change the unique ways in which each one of us responds to our life situations.

Poetry, being a spontaneous expression of powerful emotions, it is the poet’s own inner self that it moves first. It is the poet himself that it heals and transforms first. Reading and reliving my own poems has always been a cathartic experience for me. It helped me retrace my steps through the hills and valleys of my life’s landscape. It felt like being alive on a long canvass filled with images of different hues and shades, a canvass that unfolded around me, concave and circumspacious. Memories and complex emotions aroused by these poems reminded me who I was. It helped me define who I am now, and who I want to be in what is left of my time. In a way, therefore, I am sharing with you my own self-therapy—a long, arduous struggle for personal growth.

Poetic self-therapy helps us integrate the conflicting and paradoxical aspects within us. Besides, it provides us a unified experience of the self along our own timeline. Poetry is not merely a depository of our past experience. It is the way we script our own life.

The poem that I am, the subconscious script of life, therefore, chronicles my life experience in a way that is unique to me. It continues to guide my everyday life. It is my signature in the universe. Each one of us, therefore, is, by design, a poet whose life gets organized, experienced, and expressed by these deep, unique, personal conversations of the soul.

We are a Shared Poem: A Collective Reconstruction of Reality

Poetry also represents our shared experience. Our individual experiences merge to form our collective experience of reality. Every culture is a shared poem of life. The archetypal feature of poetic images and expressions is what makes poetry an effective medium of therapeutic communication. Poetry not only makes us aware of our collective unconscious, it makes us participate in the commonality of our shared perceptions, beliefs, and emotions. We learn to share the same language, the same images, symbols, and thought processes. We also share, to some extent, the same emotional responses shaped by our shared sociocultural environment.

Poetry helps us in directing our attention to the commonality of our problems rather than to the intimately private and personal aspect of our life situations. Moreover, the poetic medium helps us project our own thoughts and feelings onto the verses and the characters therein. This happens because images and symbols of poems are shared not only within a culture, but to some extent, universally. Creative modes of communication like poetry and psychotherapy, therefore, are personal expressions as well as social acts. Moreover, consciously or subconsciously, they reflect our own social condition and the seeds of our social evolution.

Poetry: Conversing Beyond Reason

In my practice as a psychologist, therapist, and personal coach, I have been able to experiment with some of my poems and test their value in the therapeutic process. I could subjectively assess the validity and reliability of ‘therapeutic poems’ by testing their ability to arouse the intended emotions, thoughts, and insights as defined by the goals of therapy. Developing a reasonable level of insight in the client is one of the challenges in the practice of psychotherapy. This is often the central issue in the treatment of some conditions like personality disorders where the patient lacks insight and persists in a state of denial or stiff resistance. In such critical situations, unconventional communicative approaches, like poetry and humor, often helped me achieve a breakthrough in terms of rapport and insight.

The Three Sections of the Book

The book Healing with Words is organized in three sections. Section 1 introduces the concept of life as a poem—a uniquely personal way in which we organize the stream of our experience. We reflect on the various elements that contribute to the making of this poem of life. An attempt to understand these elements leads us naturally to the psycho-history of poetry therapy as a healing practice. Power of the word, especially the psychological impact of special uses of language, is explored in this section in order to better understand the natural linkage between poets, prophets, psychotherapists, counselors, pastors, preachers, and numerous other professionals who are engaged in the art of changing the mind.

Section 2 discusses the practice of poetry therapy. The book is written with two kinds of audience in mind: those who wish to use it personally for self-therapy, and those who wish to explore more professional use of poetry therapy in their practice of psychotherapy, group therapy, personal growth training, preaching, counseling, yoga therapy, and religious discourses. The idea of training and developing barefoot poetry therapists as (paraprofessional) mental health service providers is discussed in the concluding chapter.

Section 3 demonstrates the use of poetry for achieving different goals of therapy. It explores a few areas like youth guidance, parenting, couple therapy, grieving, self-actualization, etc., and ends with poetry on ‘godliness’. The final poem, Dream the One: Aum Aalaaha, is a deliberate attempt to suggest that spirituality is essentially and invariably a response of love and a response of reverence to the divinely human—the one who is behind the amazing system of the universe. True spirituality—every true religion of the world only reflects the culturally diverse ways in which we (human beings) learn to come out of our original sin of narcissistic self-love and learn ‘true love’ and reverence for the other. The opposite response of defiance, ‘dis-alignment’, and hatred, even in the name of religion, is perilously evil and potentially damaging for the self and for the world.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

T hank you, Ritu and Hans, for the excitement you show about my work, my poems.

I consider it a rare honor and privilege that my children could act as my editing consultants. They helped restructure my thoughts. Ritu, a gifted architect-planner, went through the several drafts, each time challenging me to do better. She designed the beautiful cover and gave ideas to make it reader-friendly. Hans, a student at the Indian Institute of Science, helped me with ideas to make it appealing to the general audience. Copy-editing and proofreading were done jointly by Ritu and Hans. My wife, Dr Rani, has always remained as a source of inspiration and support to me. She learned to handle her lonely moments, as I wandered in the world of poetry and wordcraft. Thank you, Rani.

I am greatly indebted to my friend, Rev Dr Paul Thelakkat, editor of Sathyadeepam, Cochin, who helped me sustain my motivation right from the time I showed him the first draft of the book. His Eminence Cardinal Mar George Alencherry has been my revered friend and a constant source of inspiration. Thank you, Your Eminence, for your blessings and good wishes!

Mr Joseph Ponmala, author of several books and a columnist, has taken pains to read the entire manuscript and suggest ways to improve the content and the presentation. Thank you, Sabu Thomas (ASL Computers), and my brother, John, for the help you extended so patiently. Thank you my colleagues, friends, and well-wishers in Dubai, India, Germany, and USA who have been fascinated by the idea and have motivated me at every stage of my work. Thank you, Rev Fr William Kaliyadan (USA) for insisting that I am still young and, therefore, should continue to write and do good work. Glad to believe you, my friend! The Xlibris team, especially the author’s representatives, have been sustaining my motivation by reminding, coaxing, and encouraging me from time to time. Thank you. I have made it finally!

TABLE OF CASES (Not the real names)

PART I

REFLECTIONS ON POETRY THERAPY

1

INTRODUCTION

‘Good psychiatry is a blend of science and story.’

- Jeremy Holmes

T he old soulmates—art, spirituality, religion, and medicine—are now rediscovering one another and beginning to cooperate in many areas of common interest. The scientific community all over the world is beginning to recognize emotional, psychological, and spiritual health as an essential component of human well-being. Behavioral medicine has come of age. Extending beyond the realm of anatomy and physiology, health is being redefined to include human attitudes, emotions, values, beliefs, behavior, and (all-encompassing) lifestyle as its essential components. This reunion of ‘healing professions’ is creating a new convergence after a long period of separation in course of history.

The medical profession now is more receptive to input from healing traditions of religion and a variety of art forms like music, dance, and theatre. Far from being treated as mere follies of the pre–scientific era, they are now accepted by the medical profession either as viable alternatives to drug therapy, or as valuable adjuncts to physical and psychological therapies. The scientific community all over the world is beginning to recognize emotional, psychological, and spiritual health as essential components of human well-being.

Healing: A Multidisciplinary Endeavor

This new approach to health and healing may seem like a journey back through history toward ancient philosophies of health (e.g., Ayurveda) where health is defined not merely as the elimination of disease-causing elements from the body, but as the healthy behavior and the application of the ‘know-how’ for sustaining life (ayus=life; veda=know-how). It includes a set of positive attitudes and behavior leading to sustainable physical, mental, and spiritual well-being.

Healing and health facilitation is no more a multi-specialty team work of medical professionals. It has become a multidisciplinary endeavor in which psychology, art, spirituality, and philosophy have reinvented their roles. The Harvard Medical School’s annual conference on ‘Spirituality and Healing in Medicine’ attracts more than 2000 professionals every year. A survey conducted in the USA in 1997 (Yankelovich Partners) showed that more than 90 per cent of family physicians now agree that personal prayer, meditation, or other spiritual and religious practices can enhance medical treatment (Myers, 2004).

Psychotherapy and the Medical Community

It was only two centuries ago that mental health began to be recognized as a part of the medical practice. In fact, psychotherapy (psychoanalysis) became accepted as a healing profession only after a long struggle with the medical community by Sigmund Freud and his associates in the last century. Since then, the general public, as well as the medical community, have maintained a certain curiosity and fascination for the workings of the mind, especially the unconscious mind.

For the past few decades, the professional field of psychotherapy has been experimenting with many art forms. Poetry, music, and drama have drawn wider attention from the community of healing professionals. It was in 1925 that Robert Haven Schauffler wrote his book, Poetry Cure: A Pocket Medicine Chest of Verse, which was recommended for dealing with mood disorders. Psychiatrists and medical professionals like Eli Griefer, Milton Berger, Smiley Blanton, Jack Leedy, Nicholas Mazza, and G. A. Schloss; clinical psychologists like Kenneth Edgar; and professors of English like S. I. Hayakawa and Richard Hazley are some of the names associated with the early experiments with poetry therapy. The first two groups of poetry therapists used to meet in the Postgraduate Center of Mental Health in New York and in the Institute of Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia (Leedy, 1969). These groups actively researched on the use of poetry and other art forms as valuable adjuncts to psychiatric treatment.

Language: A Medium Shared by Poetry and Psychotherapy

Modern poetry therapy believes that poetry and psychotherapy share the same spirit and the same medium. Both the poet and the psychotherapist use the medium of language as their primary tool. They both share the fundamental belief in the power of words to change and transform individuals and groups. One of the important functions of poetry and other art forms is to bring about change in the audient client. The psychotherapist functions as an agent of intra–psychic and behavioral change, and his medium

Reviews for Healing with Words

[Ritu George Kaliaden · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful read! Perfect for anyone interested in the intersection of psychology and poetry.