“What is human transformation but a form of improvisation?”
There is a piece of clay in your hand. A minuscule lump from a vast shared terrain. It is earth, and it has been here for a long time before you. In one form or another, it will also remain here long after you’re gone. You begin to mold the clay and make it your own. Now it is held in two places: in your hand and in your imagination. Is that clay destined to become a mug? A toy elephant? A full-bellied moon? How about a moon/elephant mug with a cratered trunk to form the handle? Whatever the end result will be, it will be a creation; something that didn’t exist before you came onto the scene that now exists in a world that will go on with or without you in it. It might now be held by others, shaken by the trembles of the earth, filled with coffee, revered as a piece of art or perhaps thrown in the trash—who knows?
I prefer the view of playlessness shared by the Talking Heads: “same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was….”
As you shape the wet earth, you feel a sense of life coursing through you; your soul stirs a little. The clay feels more alive in your hand than before you began to mold it, and, as you encounter the life inherent in clay, the world around you feels a little more alive, too. Something miraculous has occurred: You’ve brought life to life, and by doing so, you’ve engaged in an ancient conjuring performed by humans ever since they first burnt earth in order to make pigment to paint the walls of caves. This ability to conjure life is not wizardry. In fact, it’s a process that is central to your humanity, and something that you’ve been practicing for a very long time.
It's play.
For most of my adult life, I’ve been preoccupied with questions about play and the way in which it enlivens us and the world around us. At the same time, I’ve been preoccupied with the opposition of play: the deadening things, like conformity, the treatment of other livings beings as inanimate, a “just-following-orders” approach to authority and the terror of a “groundhog-day” existence, that can happen when we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to play. Celebrated French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre had a great term for a playless existence; he called it the “spirit of seriousness.” Fellow existentialist Søren Kierkegaard had another, “tranquilizing with the trivial.” Personally, I prefer the view of playlessness shared by the Talking Heads: “same as it ever was, same as it ever was, same as it ever was….”
Life and growth are meant to be improvisational, adaptive and unpredictable, and when we try to make everything the same, we do violence to them.
I’m trained as a psychotherapist, but my Ph.D. is in sociology, so I clearly have a proclivity to try and understand humans. I find our species fascinating, and I think a lot of what makes us distinctly so is our particular kind of play, which relies on and produces culture. That being said, humans can also be devastatingly destructive, and what often makes us this way is our tendency to run from our native gift of playfulness into the arms of uniformity, homogeneity, standardization and routine. Life and growth are meant to be improvisational, adaptive and unpredictable, and when we try to make everything the same, we do violence to them. That violence can go deep; authoritarianism, genocide, racial and gender superiority, and the avarice destruction of nature are all the result of a march toward uniformity and our inability to see the life in living things.
I do not, however, consider “play” and “fun” to be the same thing, even though fun is definitely something we do that is playful. No, play, and the lack thereof, is serious business. In one way or another, my work has always been about holding play sacred, while, at the same time, warning of the problems that can occur when we don’t. I’ve spent a long time in the field we now call “behavioral health,” and the majority of my focus has been upon the oppression of uniform structures and the liberating effects of serious play. Now that may seem like purely the sociologist in me, but it’s really not. I believe that good therapy occurs when we are able to create a space for play, while containing a lot (but not all) of the “fun” parts of it. I mean, what is human transformation but a form of improvisation?
I think “normal” may be our greatest pathology.
After three decades spent working to help people who have experienced extreme events of mind and mood, I have to admit something: I don’t quite “get” this “thing” or state of being that people refer to as “normal.” To be honest, this current lodestar in my field sounds a little scary to me. I look around and I see masses of people painfully trying to achieve “normal,” but never arriving. I think they can’t get there because, like me, they don’t know what “normal” looks like. Think about it: the American Psychiatric Association is currently on the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, its giant Peterson’s guide-like manual for mental disorders, and yet, if “order” is the opposite of “disorder,” as in mental disorder, what does an “ordered” person look like? It’s weird when you think about it. Strange. Maybe even a little crazy? Of course, it is. In every human effort there is always a dose of crazy.
Personally, I think “normal” may be our greatest pathology. It’s definitely not something I want in my own life, and it’s not what I aspire to for the people I help. My personal and professional lodestars are not defined by reaching some standard, but rather by attaining greater emotional depth, effectiveness and self-determination, connection, inventiveness, the capacity to hope and love, and unrelenting curiosity, imagination and, yes, play.
Purple Crayons: The Art of Drawing a Life
In this joyous and inventive rereading of the beloved children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon, the author of How We Change (And Ten Reasons Why We Don’t) celebrates our inherent “sacred originality” and establishes a new framework for self-reliance.
How We Change: (And Ten Reasons Why We Don't)
Ellenhorn explains how we are wired to double down on the familiar because of what he calls the "Fear of Hope" - the act of protecting ourselves from further disappointment—and identifies the “10 Reasons Not to Change” to help us see why we behave the way we do when we are faced with the challenge of hope.
Parasuicidality and Paradox: Breaking Through the Medical Model
This book describes parasuicidality from a different perspective, yet still within the framework of DBT. These concepts will be helpful to clinicians, who often spend much of their time dealing with these troubling behaviors.This book is well worth the price and the reader will not be disappointed."
