The Art of Acting Must Be Rescued From . . .

. . . Association with Psychoanalysis

It is imperative that the art of acting be rescued from all or any association with psychoanalysis.

Only AQAL can do this. It was Flatland and Boomeritis-and an historically bad relationship with Amber-that brought the idea about in the first place. And, we should add . . . only in America . . .

But of those three, who do you think wins the grand prize? Who, I ask, who or what mind-structure, what cultural consciousness faction on this Earth in any time period in all of Kosmic history would insistently believe that their own, deepest, personal, 100% and wholly subjective, God's honest . . . (clear throat) . . . feelings . . . (that is to say, utterly private, totally first person, nine-times-out-of-ten tragic, past and personal traumas and dramas of suffering and pain) would be the most appropriate-nay, the only appropriate-thing to enthrone upon a stage, beneath expensive bright lights, directed purposely at the affair, in front of a paying audience, and expect for the effort, honor, praise and standing, raving ovations? All of this, in spite of all those pesky unimportant things such as a script, a character, fellow company members, the audience itself. Etc.

Have you guessed yet?

Try this one. Who in their right mind would believe that the true and genuine and only possible key to the "true" art of acting is to "break down" all of your "barriers" to first person "feeling"-those "barriers" that evil parents beat into you with their horrendous "rules," gross dislike of  "self-expression," onerous "boundaries" (curse them! curse them!!!) and society with its horrifying "oppression" of your "feelings" and "truth" and, oh, . . . (arms wrenched to Heaven) . . . you'd have been such a good actor, oh a grrrrrrrreat actor! from the start! if they had just left you alone to freely "express" yourself in your true and natural, uninhibited, oceanic, beauteous state of "genuine"  . . .f . .f . . f.f .f . feeeeeeeeeeeeeeelings? (Which once again, nine-times-out-of-ten, are only of the most tragic sort, and if not that, the other favorite in dramatic circles . . . destructive rage and anger.) Know the answer yet?

Let's go for one more round.

WHO in their right mind would not only usurp one highly specialized scientific profession of which it genuinely knows nothing (in this case, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, etc.)-but no matter, we're so brilliant-replace another centuries old profession with confused, backwards and contradictory ideas about both, oh and then, yes, you guessed it, declare itself now the greatest ever in history, thus rendering into oblivion every last scrap of progress and evolution of the art form contributed by the labors all those dumb, "inauthentic," un-"true" folks who ever attempted the act and realize a thing or two about it before?

Need we continue? You have guessed it. The answer is

Boom - er - I - tis.

Ah, yes, that lovely tradition which has since declared that, anyway, the only character you can ever play, the only human being worthy of the stage, screen, bright lights, camera and an audience which must pay for the tickets is . . . You. Are you in love yet? You should be. Because every great dramatic work of art ever written, it turns out, after all, can only really be all about YOU. 

Okay sorry, enough sarcasm. (Clear throat. Arms no longer wrenched to Heaven.)

It is imperative that the art and profession of acting be rescued from its current, now 70 years longstanding, association with psychotherapy. Please-it is imperative that the dignity and integrity of psychotherapy-for the love of God and mankind-be rescued from acting! Are you really willing to put your money down in a wager that there has ever been an "acting teacher" who was also a licensed PHD in psychology? No seriously-as a resident of Las Vegas, please go ahead and put aaaaaaaall your money down on that one. ;-) How about this: if a child close to you is deeply disturbed, someone is having marital troubles or a loved one is verging on a schizophrenic break . . . are you really going to call . . . an actor!

Actually, I shouldn't even ask that one because I know that some folks in the home audience will actually be answering "yes."

Here. This is from an appropriately titled book The End of Acting in which Richard Hornby has been one of the few to put in print what some of these "barrier" breaking and "releasing" session are like.

"An extreme example of the emotional release approach to actor training was reported in New York in The Village Voice in 1979. An acting teacher named Paul Mann, whose classes included such techniques as group nudity, allegedly had sexual relations with his students as a method of "releasing" them."

(Ooooooooh yeah! Who wouldn't wanna get in on that!)

"Had he been bisexual he might have gotten away with it, but students noticed that the "special sessions" in his private office were limited to the female members of the class, and the more attractive ones at that. Interestingly, after the Voice exposed this outrageous "teacher," other acting instructors were quoted as saying Mann's approach was perfectly reasonable; they too had sex with their students. In this they were being logically consistent; if the goal of actor training is the release of real, honest emotions, then rape by deception is certainly one way of achieving it."  

If we cannot reasonably and sensibly rescue acting from its association with psychoanalysis-which in AQAL terms is to say, from the idea that the key to great acting resides buried deep within a subconsciousness located in zone#1 and only zone#1-or that the proper approach to acting lies somehow in zone#1 altogether-the art form, acting, is doomed. 

No art actually holds its key in zone#1; otherwise anyone undergoing psychoanalytic catharsis or perhaps satori, et al should then be able to come out of the session a great composer, a great sculptor, a great painter, a great actor. Why do we believe this about acting and no other art? The answer is pretty simple: we have never properly understood the actor's talents and abilities. Like every other art form, the key to great acting is located in zone#5-is located in a specific and unique, dedicated un-conscious cognitive mechanisms and pattern recognition systems not even available to introspection; a capacity necessary and available to all, but highly acute and sensitive in some. Actors don't "release" personal zone#1 feelings. Utilizing a dramatic intelligence, they construct great performative artworks out of affective expression patterns and broader affective rhythmic patterns and movements between individuals and across scenes and stories that they are highly sensitive to re-cognizing and thus artistically inhabiting. These patterns come out of life or even fiction and physically embodied reproduction of them uses exactly the same system you use to smile when you're happy, or to communicate such to another in any way. We speak of neutral, psycho-physical patterns that can be used in any desired or applicable manner and both this writer and the reader use them all the time. If highly sensitive, they do bring with them a powerful and unique energy; impulses and desires and inspirations to somehow release them ( e.g. the impulse to act), but the system has also been empirically implied in its effects upon imagination and memory. But these are not zone#1 structures or realities.  Just as a painter works with spatial patterns, a composer sound and musical patterns, the actor works with affective patterns. These patterns and this dedicated cognitive system are actually the very same thing which allows you, as an audience member, to apprehend and respond to an actor's performance-or anyone's expressions of affect in real life. (Which incidentally, are always present, and impossible to get away from. So it is not a matter of having them or not. It is a matter of utilizing the correct and most exciting ones for a dramatic or comedic performance or role.) It can be impaired in conditions such as autism, Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, stroke or severe right brain damage involving distinct areas, etc.

I am currently near completion of a two part essay, hopefully to be published in AQAL Journal, which explains this; integrates the evidence, that is, for a dramatic intelligence. I am not sure this work will have any effect upon the MGM, but there have been boisterous dissenters to the psychoanalytic tradition since day one and they continue. And, it is true that the thrill of it all-me as the center of the drama (even if someone wrote it 400 years ago)-is dying for more and more. But that I am aware of no one has ever used an AQAL approach to look for and gather evidence-cognitive, neurological and otherwise-to answer this question. (It is also true that there are broader cultural implications also,  since this two part neurocognitive evidence of which I speak has only begun to receive scientific inquiry since 1975. That's part of the Flatland deal. No one in the applicable areas ever seriously supposed that there was actually an organic interface for the expression and apprehension of emotions between two or more individuals, not only in human beings, but also in most primates. Yet now, even as we speak, AI specialists are working hard to try and model this extraordinary system which supports these crucial areas of our lives, and which has been the source of the actor's abilities all along. AI and neuroscientists can tell you it's the special ability of the actor too -since it is actors they hire to conduct their experiments when applicable. Although, it might sometimes be hard to find an actor these days who is able to present :-)  :-(  :-0   without psychotherapy first.) There was a famous statement made by one of America's greatest 20 ^th Century acting teachers, Stella Adler; that it would take a hundred years to undo the damage of the onslaught of this 20th Century belief and approach. AQAL has the chance of correctly directing the way. But we need to rescue acting from its association with zone#1 and psychoanalysis. Even the mention of such, since this is still what is now being taught to future generations in universities et al, it must be cautioned, is not at this time a very good thing.

Now, do I believe a great experience and performance of acting can . . . do incredible things for you psychologically and emotionally? 100%, without question, absolutely. I have seen people fully and completely transform the entire direction of their selves and lives from one (properly directed) artistic experience on stage. My own life would actually be a testament. I do think, even highly believe, that dramatic (and comedic!) work has the power to transform like nothing else upon this earth. I can also think of no better engine of development within schools for learning, mobilization and utilization of every intelligence and consciousness stream that exists just about. (That's actually the reason it's so potentially transformative and translative. Strangely, to inhabit fiction requires more life than to actually inhabit life itself.)

But more and more, in light of the evidence that AQAL and an Integral Methodological Pluralism alone has helped to uncover, I just do not believe that what can occur as a result of acting-that is, as an art form performed for an audience-is at all the same thing as can occur as a result of psychotherapy. (Drama Therapy, Play Therapy, etc. are all things not intended to move and entertain an audience. That is, we hope.) The psychoanalytic equation with acting has proven nothing but an absolute failure. We can enthusiastically admit some incredible transformative release of energy, balancing of emotions, etc., which, yes, could be said to be "equivalent" to five years of psychotherapy in some way. But . . . not really more than any other flow or performative experience . . . it's not psychotherapy . . . it's not the same thing . . .  it's acting.  Well, allow me to give a first person example.

My own personal greatest experience and achievement as an actor to date was many years ago when I had the chance to play the character of Alan Strang in Peter Shaffer's Equus. It does not happen to an actor often that he can, as it were, literally "sight read" a role and especially one so difficult. But for some reason with this one I could. There was something about this role that I felt from the beginning that all I needed to do was just memorize the lines and "say" them. (That's not so great, by the way, for the psychotherapeutic actor, because "we are beautiful, in every single way, words can't bring us down . . ." Oh, anyway .. .) That is, somehow everything about the potential performance of this character was just completely clear and explicit to me. Awoke in me creative emotions, inspired me to creative performative work. This is not some casual thing either. Alan Strang is a deeply disturbed, semi-psychotic young man in a mental institute. And the reason he is there is for the heinous, crazed act of blinding six horses with a hoof pick. Why did he do this? Oh, it's a field day for psychoanalysis! Apparently he is deeply sexually repressed by his weird, weird, weird, dry, repressed British parents ( I didn't write the play ;-) but here's what's funny: I don't even remember the details. I don't think I ever even understood them fully! But to continue, somehow or another this character's psyche is all locked up in God as sex or something or other, but to make things ever WEIRDER he is sexually aroused by horses! And he also sees them as God! Yes, that's right. So much so that in the dark of night he steals away from his parent's house, takes a particular big, burly and muscular, magnificent horse out of the stable where he works during the day and rides him naked through the misty darkness until he has an ecstatic religious orgasm! What makes him crack, however, is his an actual healthy attraction to a human female, who is also attracted to him. He knows nothing about this type of sex, really. They go to the stables to have sex, he freaks out due to his confusion and arousal and the fact that oppressive, jealous, horse-god is "watching" them and flips out and kills all the horses.

Okay.

Typical psychoanalytic "acting" theory would say something along the lines of the fact that to play this complex, tragic-psychomaniac role well, . . . what? Find out of my zone#1 psyche the feelings of all those times I rode on horses in the dead of night naked having religious orgasms? Or something equivalent? There's a speech in the play where Alan actually describes his arousal and attraction to horses. Hmmm. What am I gonna do? Go find a stable and sit there until I get religiously and sexually aroused? Ah . . .yeah . . . I'm afraid that would RUIN the role if not-as is often the case with the lovely psychoanalytic acting traditions-send me packing to the psychiatric ward myself. No. What about the psychotic frenzy at the climax and then the-as called for by the script-spasms of deep, cathartic, weeping, hyperventilating, psycho-emotional release and maniacal catatonia that ends the show? Such, or anything equivalent, has never happened to me. How am I to find this in my 1 ^st person, zone#1, Freudian psyche? Seriously. Or if I do, how in the hell after that am I supposed to perform the role?

This is not some funny thing I speak of either. I personally have seen actors reduced to preverbal states and then attempt to get on stage to "perform" a bit role that had only ten lines-none of which this actor could even say. After the show-and after frightening all of the rest of the actors back stage-indeed this person did have a nervous breakdown with most of the audience still there to witness it. (Other members of that particular cast would wait a few months before having theirs.) A great forgotten French actor of the 19 ^th century once wrote a quip about another actress who in an interview claimed and insisted that as she acted on the stage everything was really and truly happening to her, was completely real emotionally and physically. The interviewer then asked, "But what happens when you die?"

I had to do all of three things with this role beyond memorizing the lines (in addition, of course, to learning the staging, etc.). I had trouble learning the 1970s Double Mint gum song for some odd reason (I had it in my head differently); one of the co-directors informed me of a line that had been misread (i.e. where wrong inflection changed the meaning, or rather right inflection clarified the meaning I had interpreted incorrectly) and then in the horse "I'm hot for you" speech I decided to use a mental image that meant something to me. (These things are personal to actors-don't ask. . . . Okay, it was Playboy centerfold. Speak of imaginary horse, think of Playboy centerfold.) The image worked well, people said this quite nausea-inducing scene/speech gave them goose-bumps ( art) and beyond that . . . for some strange, odd reason I simply understood everything else. The mania, the passion, the anger which was deeply repressed terror and confusion, etc. etc. The PATTERNS of all of these emotions and their associated behavior were simply like some kind of a song that my entire body and being were able to somehow, and with excitement and ease, assume. Why? I will explain this in a minute.

I was told in this role I was consummate. I actually received letters from (regional level) audience members expressing how powerfully moved they were by the performance, and beside the fact that it was at a few moments exhausting, it was really fun. Well, I'll go further than that; it was an actor's dream to perform. The associated, liberating, exhilarating and goose-bump inducing affects of this role, from way back when, come right back to me now as I describe it. But why was it so? Actors don't get dream roles like this every day. Roles that they can sight read and perform consummately not only with continual excitement, but comfort and ease.

As it turns out, only now, while I am completing my study into the nature of dramatic intelligence, as a result of past experiences I DO have associations with mania. Serious, horrendous, nightmare, psychotic mania. Even, in fact, in my early childhood. Wouldn't ya know it. My mother, in fact, battled with severe depression, psychosis and eventually all out schizophrenia from the time I was born until about the time I was about five years old.  But why did I never think about this nor ever make ANY association with it in the playing of this role? Further, the playing of this role DID NOT release whatever is still buried in my psyche regarding those early experiences. (And remember, they didn't really happen to me.) Released some energy? Maybe. Balance? Sure. Existential assimilation? I think so, absolutely. But in no way, shape or form did the performative source of this role have any direct zone#1 relation, or release. Were it so, last summer, facing the advent of my parent's 50th wedding anniversary, and long over-due family reunion with the people who went through this real life trauma with me, I would not have suddenly for the first time in my life felt myself really growing crazy because of it. In other words, the legitimate psychotherapy work regarding this event has still never occurred. And at times, the dark shadow, repressed so far not even to be felt for over 30 years, authentically begins to show. I acted a crazy person. I did not perform psychotherapy. Nor did the role accomplish such.

The source of an actor's talent is simply exactly the same as the source of the musician's, etc: un-conscious pattern recognition systems, highly sensitive and acute which can be traced to zone#5. i.e. inside the brain. We actually have a lexical affect "vocabulary" stored in these unconscious cognitive systems and this is what we use to express affect every moment of every day, and what the gifted actor intuitively and instinctually uses in a gifted performance.

Heilman, Blonder, Bowers (from the Florida Affect Battery):

A radiant smile, a piercing scream, a looming upraised fist! In humans and nonhuman primates, the ability to decipher the meaning of nonverbal social signals - facial expressions, tone of voice, body posturing - is present very early in life and remains relatively stable throughout the adult life span. These nonverbal signals form the basic elements of a highly evolved and complex social signaling system that enables socially driven creatures to "read" the intentions of others ( i.e., threat, acceptance) and at the same time communicate one's intentions [and affects, attitudes, etc] to others. Over the course of normal development, the complexity and the nuances of this nonverbal language rapidly evolve . . .

We have argued that specific neural networks exist within the brain that are particularly concerned with deciphering the affective meaning of perceptual signals (facial expression/tone of voice). In our view it is primarily [. . .] the right hemisphere of humans that contains a "vocabulary" or neural representations of these nonverbal affect signals. We have referred to these representations as the "nonverbal affect lexicon." . . .

The overall network appears modular in organization . . . Broadly speaking, these affect representations are just one component of a cortically based affect processing network that is dedicated to reading [and communicating] the nonverbal social displays of [and to] other members of the species.

The role of crazed Alan in Equus was performed out of neutral patterns which had as a result of the experience of the same (or similar) in my own life left representations within my personal zone#5 lexical affective vocabulary. My mother's mania, without my even being aware, added itself to my affective vocabulary. Thus, when called upon, and without my knowing it and without the slightest disturbance to zone#1, I was able to "speak" this particular role.

Why and how then was the performance moving? Because, as audience, your own un-conscious zone#5 cognitive affect pattern recognition system HAS NO CHOICE but to start telling the rest of your brain and consciousness, "my god there's a psychotic in the house!" and signal the body, etc. to respond affectively to that "fact." There's another zone#5 mechanism at play here also; that is, the one-which can also be impaired-which allows you AND me to consciously engage in FICTION. This is the mechanism that allows the rest of your brain-neocortex and rational mind-to say "This is just a play" even while you are on the edge of your seat, overcome with emotion. This is developmentally graded, however. Mrs. Sarah Kemble Siddons did scare ladies in the audience so much when she played Macbeth that they fled the theatre in terror . . . This is also why amber has never been so fond of actors. I did not release nor touch upon mania in any way. I merely sang the tune, and in this instance sang it well. Singers usually enjoy singing. Actors usually enjoy acting.

Stanislavsky had a name for this. He called this "secondary emotions." But he did not have the knowledge and resources available to him in his culture and time to validate, clarify and affirm what he meant. (Nor could he have imagined Boomeritis though he clearly warned some of his ideas could be misunderstood.) 

Acting needs to be rescued from all association with psychoanalysis. Integral has this opportunity. Not only is the zone#1 subconscious NOT the source in reality of any great performance (do we really see people leaving the psychiatrist's office and suddenly saying "Guess what!? I'm ready to play Macbeth!"), but I will tell you first hand, even the most inspired of performances does not accomplish the point of and necessity for genuine psychotherapy. 

The shadows of my mother's mania still abide within me. They were not released in this consummate performance. And somehow . . . I do not suspect that delving into such would be as much fun . . .

---

References:

Richard Hornby, The End of Acting, 1992

Peter Shaffer, Equus, 1970

Benoit Constant Coquelin, Art ad the Actor, 1915

Constantin Stanislavsky, An Actor Prepares, 1980

Dawn Bowers, L.X. Blonder, K.M. Heilman Florida affect battery, 1999