Book Review - Sheri D. Kling, "A Process Spirituality" - Breathing In New Moments of Transformity

In a word, we must share cultures of belonging. There's no mystery here. We all know this. Process Spirituality is simply a way to say,

"Hey, let's learn to get along, respect each other, try to love one another, and let societal transformation become a worldwide contagion."

Put God in the middle of all this and you have the fuller story. Again, no mystery here, but there is every reason to pursue this dream till it becomes a real and constant model for behavioral change.

R.E. Slater

July 31, 2020

*I'm sure this would be a helpful book to read but at $95 the masses will never see it. If process Christianity has anything to offer it needs to be affordable and available to everyone. Otherwise we're left to figure it out on our own. - re slater

SHERI D. KLING

B.A. PURDUE UNIVERSITY, M.A.T.S. LUTHERAN SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY, PH.D., M.A.R. CLAREMONT SCHOOL OF THEOLOGY

https://theology.sewanee.edu/

https://theology.sewanee.edu/faculty-staff/kling-bio/

Sheri D. Kling studied theology with an emphasis in religion and science at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago (LSTC) and then followed her passion for connecting theology and spirituality with psychology to the Claremont School of Theology (CST) in Claremont, California. Seeing deep resonances between the process thought of Alfred North Whitehead and the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung, especially in terms of creativity and transformative spirituality, she integrated the work of these two thinkers in her doctoral program.

As a public scholar-theologian, Kling works in the interdisciplinary space where worldviews, beliefs, and practices can create either dis-ease and suffering or psycho-spiritual wholeness and common flourishing. Drawing from process philosophy/theology, Jungian psychology, and mystical spirituality, Sheri focuses on communicating theological ideas and practices that positively impact humans’ relationships with God, self, and world, especially the use of dream work as a spiritual practice for divine encounter, personal integration, and widening our relationship to creation.

In the fall of 2017, Kling traveled to Prague to speak at the International Transpersonal Conference and on the way there, delivered three lectures at Palacky University in Olomouc, Czech Republic where she had been invited to be a collaborating lecturer for their program in social and spiritual determinants of health. Also that year, she participated in a webinar on Real Spirituality for the Church organized by Process and Faith, a part of the Center for Process Studies that brings resources on process theology to congregations.

Prior to entering graduate theological studies at LSTC, Kling had a successful career in marketing and communication in the enterprise software industry in the Atlanta area followed by a deeply creative period in the arts as a performing singer, songwriter, and recording artist. While enrolled in doctoral studies at CST, she served as project manager for strategic planning at Western University of Health Sciences in Pomona, California. It was this extensive background that led her to Sewanee and her first position as associate registrar for curriculum, publications, and communication. She considers her current position in the School of Theology to be the culmination of her work experience, theological education, and passion for spiritual transformation.

Books

• “Avoiding a Fatal Error: Extending Whitehead’s Symbolism beyond Language,” in Rethinking Whitehead's Symbolism: Thought, Language, and Culture, Edinburgh University Press, September 2017
• “An Aesthetic Revolution of Love,” in For Our Common Home: Process-Relational Responses to Laudato Si', Process Century Press, August 25, 2015
• “Bifurcation: Divorce or Divergence?” Response to Jeffery D. Long (“Non-Duality, the Bifurcation of Nature, and the Question of Maya: the Integration of Jain, Vedantic, and Process Approaches to Deep Ecology”) and Donald A. Crosby (“In Imago Naturae: the Ultimacy of Nature as a Closing of the Gaps”), in Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, November 2014
• Finding Home: Rural Reflections on the Journey to Wholeness

Other Publications and Papers

• “The God of their Dreams: A Qualitative Inquiry into the Lived Experience of Christian Dream Workers and the Mystical Nature of their Experience” Presented in the Mysticism Group for the American Academy of Religion/Society for Biblical Literature conference in November of 2014. 
•  “Wisdom Became Flesh: An Analysis of the Prologue to the Gospel of John” Currents in Theology and Mission, Vol. 40, No. 3, June 2013
•  Review of “The Holy Spirit, Chi, and the Other: A Model of Global and Intercultural Pneumatology, by Grace Ji-Sun Kim” Journal of Inter-Religious Dialogue, Issue 10, September 2012
• “Darwin, Hubble, and God: Theologies of ‘The Fall’ in Light of Modern Science” Claremont Journal of Religion, Issue 2, July 2012

Music

Let It Unfold, 2002

Heartland, 2005 

Passions & Prodigals, 2005

Amazon Link

A Process Spirituality:

Christian and Transreligious Resources

for Transformation Hardcover

by Sheri D. Kling

American culture is in a state of critical fragmentation. The author argues that we will solve neither the ecological crisis nor our social estrangement from each until we transform our perception of life as embodied and interconnected, and rediscover what is sacred through transformative lived experiences of wholeness.

Using an embodied theological framework supported by comparative, hermeneutical, and constructive methodologies, A Process Spirituality synthesizes theoretical, empirical, and practical resources to construct a hopeful and holistic understanding of God, the world, and the self. 

Interweaving Alfred North Whitehead’s vision of a relational cosmos with Carl Gustav Jung’s integrated, relational psyche, and a powerful spiritual praxis of dream work creates a generative matrix through which to perceive a God-world reality characterized by value, relationality, and transformation in which individuals matter, belong, and can experience positive change.

Such a Christian and transreligious vision of hope offers individuals the possibility and capacity to move from a state of fragmentation to one of psycho-spiritual wholeness and flourishing.

About the Author

Sheri D. Kling is associate dean and executive director of the Beecken Center of the School of Theology at the University of the South, a faculty member of the Haden Institute, and a visiting lecturer with Palacky University in Social and Spiritual Determinants of Health.

Review

In this bold book, Sheri Kling offers an integrative vision for a better future. Incorporating psychology, philosophy, religion, and more, Kling weaves together a proposal to overcome division and confusion. This book is for those who want to united deep thinking and open living for real transformation!

-- Thomas Jay Oord, author of The Uncontrolling Love of God

Christianity is at a crossroads. Perhaps this is fitting for a religion whose central symbol is the cross. In the United States, more people than ever before report being religiously unaffiliated, especially young people. At the same time, more people are identifying as "spiritual but not religious." Sheri Kling's A Process Spirituality is indeed a resource for effecting the much needed transformation of the Christian religion so that it might better address the pluralistic spiritual needs of our age. With help from Whitehead, Jung, and feminist theology, Kling brilliantly diagnoses the cosmological and psychological underpinnings of the modern world view, clearing the way for a renewed appreciation of the embodied and imaginative dimensions of human spirituality.This is not just another theoretical framework, however; Kling also shares well-developed practical methods for the cultivation of dreams and healing encounters with the divine that, God willing, will help revitalize Christian spiritual life by welcoming the followers of Jesus into the more relational, inclusive, and human mode of existence that, it is safe to say, he originally intended.

-- Matthew T. Segall, California Institute of Integral Studies

This is an exquisite text joining mind, body, and spirit. Within its pages, we find wisdom to guide our personal lives as well as our lives as planetary citizens. Twenty-first century wholeness and healing must embrace conscious and unconscious, analytic thinking and dream work, and tradition and novelty. Sheri Kling provides an integrative path toward the healing we seek for ourselves and our communities. In a time in which theologians, psychologists, and philosophers often think small, Kling provides a large vision of the human adventure, capable of inspiring us to take responsibility for our own healing as well as the healing of our communities.

-- Bruce Epperly, author of Process Theology: A Guide for the Perplexed and Become Fire: Guideposts for Interspiritual Pilgrims

Reading through the pages of Kling's inspiring book, I found myself digging into this remarkable treasure chest that she has opened, with valuable insights from Whitehead and Jung, dreams and religious tradition, all working together to produce something truly wonderful. Here is a work well worth reading, and then reading again!

-- C. K. Robertson, Canon to the Presiding Bishop for Ministry Beyond the Episcopal Church

Kling's "process spirituality" is based on Alfred North Whitehead's cosmology and Carl Jung's psychology. Jung's psychology, she holds, "is to the human psyche as Whitehead's metaphysics is to the cosmos." Her aim is to construct a spirituality that is robust, liberative, and transformative, helping us overcome modern fragmentation and that will produce more joy, more love, more compassion, and more wholeness for those who embrace it." Central to her program is the use of Whitehead and Jung in the service of dream work. Whereas she considers her project deeply Christian, she also calls it transreligious, because it is based on the "capacity for spirituality in every individual." Kling's Process Spirituality should become a path-breaking book.

-- David Ray Griffin, author of The Christian Gospel for Americans

This is a book with an important message for our time, written with great compassion and insight into the contemporary religious situation. We need religion, says Sheri Kling, but the old symbols and ideas of religion no longer work. Contemporary people need to be shown how to connect with them in new ways. To this end, she suggests we construct an experiential bridge to religion. Kling uses the religious philosophy of A.N. Whitehead and the spiritual psychology of C.G. Jung as our guides. She argues that Whitehead and Jung can be compellingly combined to achieve the task of religious renewal that neither system can achieve in isolation. The way forward, she indicates, is to connect the metaphysical with the ground of human experience. A Process Spirituality is as convincing as it is refreshing. 

-- David Tacey, La Trobe University; author of The Postsecular Sacred

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​

Sheri D. Kling 

https://www.openhorizons.org/sheri-d-kling-whitehead-jung-and-psycho-spiritual-wholeness.html

Whitehead, Jung, and Psycho-Spiritual Wholeness

After having successfully defended my dissertation on Whitehead, Jung, and dream work as a spiritual practice for transformation at the Claremont School of Theology, I submitted two topics to the International Transpersonal Conference scheduled for September of 2017 in Prague. Its theme, “Beyond Materialism – Toward Wholeness,” fit well with my own research looking at the fragmentation in the U.S. caused I believe, at least in part, by the dualistic, mechanistic, and materialistic worldview within which we are living.

I believe strongly that the metaphysical cosmology of Alfred North Whitehead and the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung are life-giving resources that can serve our psycho-spiritual wholeness well at this time in our history. This is even truer when combined with an authentic spiritual practice, such as dream work, that leads us to what I call embodied experiences of wholeness. The reason such embodied experiences are necessary is because simply assenting to any one of the many preferable worldviews available to us now, whether process philosophy/theology, panentheism, indigenous worldviews, ecofeminism, or similar relational cognitive frameworks is inadequate because we cannot think our way into a new way of being. We are facing a climate catastrophe that can end mammalian life as we know it on this planet. We are fragmented societally, interpersonally, and intrapersonally, and better ideas aren’t enough to get us to the transformation we need to live and relate to each other differently.

In Prague, I delivered a presentation entitled “'The Terrible Need for Metaphysics’: Answering Hillman’s Challenge through Whitehead”, along with a workshop discussing the relational-imaginal theory of dreaming I’ve developed.

Upon my return from Prague, Rosemarie Anderson, one of the founders of the field of transpersonal psychology and a fan of Whitehead invited me to submit an article for an upcoming issue of The Humanistic Psychologist focusing on transpersonal psychology. In that paper, “Whitehead’s Metaphysics as a Cosmological Framework for Transpersonal Psychology”, I make the case that Whitehead’s thinking can offer a solid framework for transpersonal psychology “because of his:

1. integration of subjective, objective, and transpersonal experience within one integrated cosmos,
2. argument that existence is made up of dynamic events that are both mental and physical,
3. unification of body and mind,
4. refusal to bifurcate subject and object within a relational reality,
5. validation of nonsensory perception as the basis for internal relations, and
6. description of a participatory cosmos of creativity and freedom where novelty, value, purpose, and transformation

are universally available realities.”

But what does all of this mean for those of us who are just trying to increase the amount of wholeness and flourishing, or what Whitehead called “zest” or “intensity of experience,” in our own lives and in the lives of others?

For many years, archetypal psychologist James Hillman had a deep aversion to metaphysics because he was focused on the human psyche alone. But when he heard physicist David Bohm admit “frankly and sadly” that “physics had released the world into its perishing” through the nuclear bomb, Hillman suddenly “saw the terrible need for metaphysics.” In a chapter of the book Archetypal Process: Self and Divine in Whitehead, Jung, and Hillman, Hillman wrote,

The internal needs of the soul require that its psychology meet the soul's concerns about the nature of the cosmos in which it finds itself…Soul seeks to understand itself beyond itself; it attempts, in a strangely persistent and universal way, always to fantasy beyond; otherwise, would we have the many sciences and philosophies, the theories of origins and ends? This paranoid restlessness of the soul to be metaphysically satisfied by ultimates of meaning must be acknowledged as one of its internal needs.

It is an internal need of the psyche/soul to understand itself in relation to the cosmos in which we live. When we engage Whitehead at the level of cosmos, engage Jung at the level of psyche, and embrace spiritual practices that foster embodied experiences of wholeness, we learn in our own deep experience that we are part of a primordial, transpersonal Reality that shows us that we matter, that we belong, and that we can experience positive change.

Speaking at the recent Haden Institute Summer Dream & Spirituality Conference in Hendersonville, NC, I wove together ideas from Whitehead, Jung, and also Fr. Richard Rohr (whose recent book The Universal Christ has been getting a lot of well-deserved traction) to talk about “The Whole-Making Nearness of God.” How can such ideas offer us hope in troubled times?

From a Whiteheadian perspective, we can understand God to be both near to us and actively involved in our wholeness because for each one of us, God is present to us, internal to us, in every moment of our existence, and offers us the creative possibilities that can move us out of our painful pasts into transformed futures. I believe that dream work is one practice we can use to discern those possibilities.

This is true no matter our place of birth, no matter our current or past circumstances, no matter if we believe a certain doctrine or not, no matter our gender, no matter the color of our skin or the content of our bank accounts. It is true for every one of us because this is how the world itself is continuously created. And the possibilities offered by God are always relevant for that moment. God offers us God’s self and God’s vision for our best outcome in every moment. God and God’s possibilities for our wholeness are as near to us as our next breath.

From a Jungian perspective, the “Unspeakable” primordial mystery at the base of all life is encounterable through the god-image in the psyche he called the Archetypal Self. And that Self works toward our wholeness as it draws us on a path of individuation in which we are given opportunities to integrate shadow material and novel possibilities by holding the tension between the opposing forces within us until our transcendent function kicks in, offering us something creatively transforming. This can often be experienced as a flow of grace.

We matter. We belong. And we can experience positive change because the Big Reality that we encounter at the base of our lives is seeking our wholeness and is encounterable within us. 

Kling singing at Haden Conference: @ Robert Haden

Sheri Kling “The Whole-Making Nearness of God”

Sheri's Music Blog/Vlog -
https://www.sherikling.com/works/music/

Abstract

Whitehead’s Metaphysics as a Cosmological Framework

for Transpersonal Psychology

Sheri D. Kling, University of the South

https://www.openhorizons.org/sheri-d-kling-whitehead-jung-and-psycho-spiritual-wholeness.html

​

"While it is tempting to eschew metaphysics in our postmodern and poststructuralist milieu, one of the reasons given for the founding of transpersonal psychology was a dissatisfaction with existing “person-centered” psychologies that “ignored placing human beings within a cosmic perspective” (Hartelius, Friedman, & Pappas, 2015, p. 44). Even more significantly, Grof (2015) sharply critiques those scientific approaches that take “leading paradigms for an accurate and definitive description of reality” and whose materialistic explanations of reality cannot account for recent observations in consciousness research.

This paper argues that the philosophy of organism of Alfred North Whitehead provides an effective metaphysical framework for transpersonal psychology because of his integration of subjective, objective, and transpersonal experience within one integrated cosmos, his argument that existence is made up of dynamic events that are both mental and physical, his unification of body and mind, his refusal to bifurcate subject and object within a relational reality, his validation of nonsensory perception as the basis for internal relations, and his description of a participatory cosmos of creativity and freedom where novelty, value, purpose, and transformation are universally available realities."

​God's Nearness and God's Wholemaking:
Springboards for Reflection 

Sheri Kling

https://www.openhorizons.org/sheri-d-kling-whitehead-jung-and-psycho-spiritual-wholeness.html

Picasso Through the Looking Glass (A Reflection of Self without Self)

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something.

Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality.

There's no danger then, anyway, because the idea of 

the object will have left an indelible mark.

- Pablo Picasso

May Facebook friend Greg Laughery recently asked the question of self without self. I would like to intermix his thoughts with some of my own. Here they are... together.... - res

The question of whether we can be other than we are is significant. Put another way, "Is it possible to be other than who we are?" Both questions relate directly to our essential essence, our core self, our inner being. This is a different question than addressing whether we may act ethically or morally regardless of our inner self. It is the Christian position that we can and must act ethically and morally as much as we can in ourselves given any state of affairs we are behaving within at that time. It is why a penitent faith is so crucially important... without it we live unredeemed and unfulfilled spiritually. Statedly, "God has come into this world (and will remain in this world until creation's end) to redeem it" from its "lack" that it might be more fully "alive" to His Spirit of love and grace. Some call this lack imperfection, sin, a disobedience, and so forth. It is that indescribable something that prevents our spirit from soaring, reclaiming, healing, rectifying, binding, hearing, listening, doing, and unifying all around itself with new sight, perspective, union, solidarity of very creation itself.

Thus, the significance of Picasso attempting to paint a painting without any trace of Picasso in it should give rise to thought. Could he do it? Was it possible for him to be so disengaged from his work that its meaning and interpretation would be entirely up to the viewer? Picasso, intriguingly, may have set out to accomplish this, but ultimately could not.

Guernica - Link to Portrait

What Picasso was attempting – a total distinction of the subject from the object – is a deceptive goal. Neutrality is not a plausible option for any person since "intentionality is an unrelenting dimension of who we are." After all, being erased, unnoticed, excluded from participation in creativity - or life itself - would not be human. We are present, involved, and continually leaving traces of ourselves in time and space.

This dynamic truth then amounts to the gift of a perspective of the world and humanity that shows to us that "the subject and the object" are commissioned to "interact" with each other. Meaning and interpretation, therefore, can never be reduced to the viewer. Why? Because the "creator-painter" always plays a role in what’s created-painted. It is essentially who we are. And it is this role of discovery that gives to ourselves the meaning, drive, purpose, and reason for living each day as if we are re-discovering who we are in relation to all other living created things. The relational world we live in is the telling world of being. Our identity ceases within and outside itself if it were not relational. Yet we are, and are to exuberantly claim this life force we possess that it might be fully reclaimed by the Spirit of God to the glory of God and to the furtherance of His evolving, redeeming, renewing creation.

R.E. Slater

January 22, 2019

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Pablo Picasso Biography

https://www.pablopicasso.org/picasso-biography.jsp

As a significant influence on 20th-century art, Pablo Picasso was an innovative artist who experimented and innovated during his 92-plus years on earth. He was not only a master painter but also a sculptor, printmaker, ceramics artist, etching artist and writer. His work matured from the naturalism of his childhood through Cubism, Surrealism and beyond, shaping the direction of modern and contemporary art through the decades. Picasso lived through two World Wars, sired four children, appeared in films and wrote poetry. He died in 1973.

Early Years: 1881-1900

Although he lived the majority of his adult years in France, Picasso was a Spaniard by birth. Hailing from the town of Málaga in Andalusia, Spain, he was the first-born of Don José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López. He was raised as a Catholic, but in his later life would declare himself an atheist.

Pablo Picasso's father was an artist in his own right, earning a living painting birds and other game animals. He also taught art classes and curated the local museum. Don José Ruiz y Blasco began schooling his son in drawing and oil painting when the boy was seven, and he found the young Pablo to be an apt pupil.

Picasso attended the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where his father taught, at 13 years of age. In 1897, Picasso began his studies at Madrid's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which was Spain's top art academy at the time. Picasso attended only briefly, preferring to roam the art exhibits at the Prado, studying works by El Greco, Francisco Goya, Diego Veláquez and Zurbáran.

During this nascent period of Picasso's life, he painted portraits, such as his sister Lola's First Communion. As the 19th century drew to a close, elements of Symbolism and his own interpretation of Modernism began to be apparent in his stylized landscapes.

Middle Years: 1900-1940

In 1900, Picasso first went to Paris, the center of the European art scene. He shared lodgings with Max Jacob, a poet and journalist who took the artist under his wing. The two lived in abject poverty, sometimes reduced to burning the artist's paintings to stay warm.

Before long, Picasso relocated to Madrid and lived there for the first part of 1901. He partnered with his friend Francisco Asis Soler on a literary magazine called "Young Art," illustrating articles and creating cartoons sympathetic to the poor. By the time the first issue came out, the developing artist had begun to sign his artworks "Picasso," rather than his customary "Pablo Ruiz y Picasso."

Blue Period

The Picasso art period known as the Blue Period extended from 1901 to 1904. During this time, the artist painted primarily in shades of blue, with occasional touches of accent color. For example, the famous 1903 artwork, The Old Guitarist, features a guitar in warmer brown tones amid the blue hues. Picasso's Blue Period works are often perceived as somber due to their subdued tones.

Historians attribute Picasso's Blue Period largely to the artist's apparent depression following a friend's suicide. Some of the recurring subjects in the Blue Period are blindness, poverty and the female nude.

Rose Period

The Rose Period lasted from 1904 through 1906. Shades of pink and rose imbued Picasso's art with a warmer, less melancholy air than his Blue Period paintings. Harlequins, clowns and circus folk are among the recurring subjects in these artworks. He painted one of his best-selling works during the Rose Period, Boy with a Pipe. Elements of primitivism in the Rose Period paintings reflect experimentation with the Picasso art style.

African Influence

During his African art and Primitivism period from 1907 to 1909, Picasso created one of his best-known and most controversial artworks, Les Damoiselles d'Avignon. Inspired by the angular African art he viewed in an exhibit at the Palais de Trocadero and by an African mask owned by Henri Matisse, Picasso's art reflected these influences during this period. Ironically, Matisse was among the most vocal denouncers of "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon" when Picasso first showed it to his inner circle.

Analytic Cubism

From 1907 to 1912, the artist worked with fellow painter Georges Braque in creating the beginnings of the Cubist movement in art. Their paintings utilize a palette of earth tones. The works depict deconstructed objects with complex geometric forms.

His romantic partner of seven years, Fernande Olivier, figured in many of the artist's Cubist works, including Head of a Woman, Fernande (1909). Historians believe she also appeared in "Les Demoiselles d'Avignon." Their relationship was tempestuous, and they separated for good in 1912.

Synthetic Cubism

This era of Picasso's life extended from 1912 to 1919. Picasso's works continued in the Cubist vein, but the artist introduced a new art form, collage, into some of his creations. He also incorporated the human form into many Cubist paintings, such as Girl with a Mandolin (1910) and Ma Jolie (1911-12). Although a number of artists he knew left Paris to fight in World War I, Picasso spent the war years in his studio.

He had already fallen in love with another woman by the time his relationship with Fernande Olivier ended. He and Eva Gouel, the subject of his 1911 painting, "Woman with a Guitar," were together until her untimely death from tuberculosis in 1915. Picasso then moved into a brief relationship with Gaby Depeyre Lespinesse that lasted only a year. In 1916-17, he briefly dated a 20-year-old actress, Paquerette, and Irene Lagut.

Soon thereafter, he met his first wife, Olga Khoklova, a ballet dancer from Russia, whom he married in 1918. They had a son together three years later. Although the artist and the ballerina became estranged soon thereafter, Picasso refused to grant Khoklova a divorce, since that meant he would have to give her half of his wealth. They remained married in name only until she died in 1955.

Neoclassicism and Surrealism

The Picasso art period extending from 1919 to 1929 featured a significant shift in style. In the wake of his first visit to Italy and the conclusion of World War I, the artist's paintings, such as the watercolor Peasants Sleeping (1919) reflected a restoration of order in art, and his neoclassical artworks offer a stark contrast to his Cubist paintings. However, as the French Surrealist Movement gained traction in the mid-1920s, Picasso began to reprise his penchant for Primitivism in such Surrealist-influenced paintings as Three Dancers (1925).

In 1927, the 46-year-old artist met Marie-Therese Walter, a 17-year-old girl from Spain. The two formed a relationship and Marie-Therese gave birth to Picasso's daughter Maya. They remained a couple until 1936, and she inspired the artist's "Vollard Suite," which consists of 100 neoclassical etchings completed in 1937. Picasso took up with artist and photographer Dora Maar in the late '30s.

During the 1930s, Picasso's works such as his well-known Guernica, a unique depiction of the Spanish Civil War, reflected the violence of war time. The menacing minotaur became a central symbol of his art, replacing the harlequin of his earlier years.

Later Years: 1940-1973

During World War II, Picasso remained in Paris under German occupation, enduring Gestapo harassment while he continued to create art. Some of the time, he wrote poetry, completing more than 300 works between 1939 and 1959. He also completed two plays, "Desire Caught by the Tail," and "The Four Little Girls."

After Paris was liberated in 1944, Picasso began a new relationship with the much younger art student Francoise Gilot. Together, they produced a son, Claude, in 1947, and a daughter, Paloma, in 1949. Their relationship was doomed like so many of Picasso's previous ones, however, due to his continual infidelities and abuse.

He focused on sculpture during this era, participating in an international exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1949. He subsequently created a commissioned sculpture known as the Chicago Picasso, which he donated to the U. S. city.

In 1961, at the age of 79, the artist married his second and last wife, 27-year-old Jacqueline Roque. She proved to be one of his career's greatest inspirations. Picasso produced more than 70 portraits of her during the final 17 years he was alive.

As his life neared its end, the artist experienced a flurry of creativity. The resulting artworks were a mixture of his previous styles and included colorful paintings and copper etchings. Art experts later recognized the beginnings of Neo-Expressionism in Picasso's final works.

Picasso's Influence on Art

As one of the greatest influences on the course of 20th-century art, Pablo Picasso often mixed various styles to create wholly new interpretations of what he saw. He was a driving force in the development of Cubism, and he elevated collage to the level of fine art.

With the courage and self-confidence unhindered by convention or fear of ostracism, Picasso followed his vision as it led him to fresh innovations in his craft. Similarly, his continual quest for passion in his many romantic liaisons throughout his life inspired him to create innumerable paintings, sculptures and etchings. Picasso is not just a man and his work. Picasso is always a legend, indeed almost a myth. In the public view he has long since been the personification of genius in modern art. Picasso is an idol, one of those rare creatures who act as crucibles in which the diverse and often chaotic phenomena of culture are focussed, who seem to body forth the artistic life of their age in one person.

Nietzsche Understood Regret as a Good Thing vs. the "Feel Good" YOLO industry of Avoiding Reflective Action

Miley Cyrus, circa 2013; Friedrich Nietzsche, circa 1887. (Photos: Debby Wong/Everett Historical/Shutterstock/Pacific Standard)

The Psychology (and Philosophy) of ‘No Regrets’

http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/its-our-party-we-can-do-what-we-want-until-we-die-so-lead-a-meaningful-life-okay

by Jared Keller

April 17, 2015

A clinical psychologist argues that Nietzsche is better than any pop self-health book.

From 2012 to 2014, it seemed America’s mantra had nothing to do with any sort of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” mumbo jumbo, or even “liberty and justice for all.” For two years, American stood for something simpler: YOLO. Born around 2004 and short for “you only live once,” YOLO is the late capitalist predecessor of carpe diem, the rallying cry of a Millennial culture tired and frustrated with burdens of the economic crisis and the constant nagging of doddering New York Times op-ed columns.

While the sentiment may be admirable, the term has been misused and overwrought. YOLO has essentially become the over-used watchword for every toxic manifestation of masculinity looking to throw off the crushing yoke of personal responsibility. But, at its core, YOLO is also the current manifestation of a fundamental human sentiment: I want to live my life without regret.

Psychologically, humans have been struggling with the experience of regret for as long as anyone can remember. Regret appeared as an essential question of the human condition as early as two thousand years ago, in the dogma of Epicureanism. But our modern American culture has a complicated relationship with regret. Namely, regret has become a stigma of sorts. “It’s regarded as self-indulgent and irrational—a ‘useless’ feeling,” explains Carina Chocano in Aeon:

We prefer utilitarian emotions, those we can use as vehicles for transformation, and closure.... Regret is so counter to the pioneer spirit—with its belief in blinkered perseverance, and dogged forward motion—it’s practically un-American. In the US, you keep your squint firmly planted on the horizon and put one foot in front of the other.

The twin forces of American industriousness and modern YOLO culture have bred a society that abandons regret at every turn. But for psychologist Edward Chang, there’s a path forward: Americans need to drop the siren song of Kesha and Miley Cyrus and bone up on their Friedrich Nietzsche. A clinical psychologist with a philosophical streak, Chang heads up the Perfectionism and Optimism-Pessimism Lab at the University of Michigan, where he leads a team of researchers in a quest to understand how intangible emotional orientations like optimism, pessimism, and loneliness interact with different cultures across the world. Pacific Standard spoke to Chang about the nature of regret and what our modern culture could learn from Nietzsche about living with our mistakes.

How exactly do you define regret?

I have to break down the idea of regret into two parcels: the psychological, and more of the philosophical and cultural. There’s a general consensus on a definition for regret that most people won’t find controversial: a negative emotional reaction to a moment when we feel like we could have chosen otherwise, and that other choice would have been more beneficial to us.

A lot of researchers in psychology have defined the experience of regret in more nuanced ways, but they all tend to show a fairly common pattern. If you experience these pangs of regret, that experience is often associated with a host and range of negative psychological outcomes, from greater anxiety to depression to suicidal ideation in some extreme cases. This is what forms the foundation of the psychology of regret: If you’re the sort of person who has a great deal of regret in your life, and you’ve accumulated this grief as you’re growing older, you’re likely to be at high risk for maladjustment or depression.

This seems pretty straightforward. Is there anything new about the current philosophy of no regrets?

I have a young daughter who listens to music, and there’s a song out there by Kesha called “Die Young.” It’s about teenagers and living the night like it’s the last night of their lives. We find this theme everywhere in our history and culture. Think of Dead Poets Society, with its emphasis on the notion of carpe diem. There’s a tendency in human civilization to put an emphasis on living for that day, to its fullest. It extends back to ancient Greece, where citizens never had a notion of “human beings,” but of “mortals” and “immortals.” If you read any text from the ancient world, they all center on how a human being can live like the gods, forever. It’s this notion of mortality, embedded in us by religion, that drives not just aspiration, but also fuels a cycle of regret—a sense that no matter how hard you try, you’ll fail to live like the gods.

It was Nietzsche who really wanted to develop a coherent philosophy of “no regrets.” This starts, really, with Nietzsche’s “formula” for human greatness and the principle of amor fati, or “love of [one’s] fate.” Nietzsche wrote that

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing

to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear

what  is necessary, still less conceal it—all idealism is mendaciousness in the

face of what is necessary—but love it.”

Nietzsche was struggling with the question, driven by the specter of mortality, with how humans should live a good life. He had two extreme positions in front of him:

• the ancient ascetic position (stoicism), which dictates that to live a good life you must forgo human desire,

and

• the more hedonistic carpe diem philosophy ["live for the day"] that we see crop up in pop culture.

But really, Nietzsche wasn’t arguing for either position. When he talks about amor fati, there’s a higher level of uber-morality going on there, that goes beyond carpe diem or asceticism, that’s really asking us to embrace our mortality rather than shy from it with regret.

So I guess Nietzsche was the originator of YOLO, then?

Sort of. In a way, amor fati and the “will to power” aren’t just abstract philosophy; I’d argue that Nietzsche is actually one of the first and most powerful psychologists. Nietzsche asks:

"How am I going to get people to wake up from their day-to-day habits,

the iron cage of daily life that makes us creatures of comfortable habit,

and how should we be truly living our lives?"

The vehicle for people to wake themselves up and change their lives, Nietzsche says, is regret. In reality, the YOLO and carpe diem culture is a misinterpretation of the “will to power” that made him famous. I’ve seen so many pop psychology books that suggest abandoning regret to live a good life; purging regret from your thought process. But none of these books have the backbone that Nietzsche did, to advocate that we face our mortality and the certainty of regret as a motivation for changing your life.

Nietzsche has laid out a two-pronged attack against regret:

1 - If you choose wrong, forget about it, just accept it and love it.

2 - From this point on, live with constant awareness of your mortality.

So instead of living without regret, we should be embracing it?

The problem is that we don’t always realize this until we’re truly faced with our own mortality, like an acute or chronic health condition. And even when we try to achieve a good life and fail, it’s a question of embracing that failure, and reassuring yourself that you’re living intentionally and with purpose. Psychologically, that’s a smart and healthy way to process regret. It’s by embracing it that you learn to live a life without it.

Even more frustrating, American society doesn’t necessarily support this idea of embracing regret. From an early age, we have these great ambitions, but we tell ourselves that we’ll live that life 30 or 40 years from now. But by the time we’ve reached that point, that life isn’t available to us: We’re tired, we’re old, and we’re laden with regret that is immutable. We live in a society built around the idea of delayed gratification, and we’ve lost our ability to really use regret to bootstrap ourselves out of this manufactured comfort zone.

What are the big cultural differences in how we experience regret?

The perceived lack of control over your life is one major force underpinning our experience of regret: It’s premised on the assumption that we actually have the power to choose otherwise [sic, pessimism]. I’m not sure if psychological research has captured that. [Editor's note: Research comparing regret across different cultures show varying differences in the subjective experience of the emotional reaction.] My sense is that you’ll find higher instances of regret in cultures where there’s a presumption that people actually have more control over their lives. In some cultures, say, India, where the caste system remains deeply embedded in day-to-day life, notions of regret aren’t as salient in shaping psychological well-being.

There are pluses and minuses to this. You don’t necessarily have a culture of people trying to transform their lives outside of these rigid classes, so there’s less broader social improvement driven by an individual desire for self-improvement. Even in totalitarian countries, as long as people believe they have some sense of control over their lives, I’m sure we’d see significant levels of regret.

But universally, it seems like mortality is the key here. Our culture is full of anecdotes about those who dodged death turning over a new leaf.

So many times we hear of someone developing late-stage cancer or some other sickness and saying “Oh my goodness, the things I wanted to do, or should have done!” Why wait that long? The effort for Nietzsche is to give everyone a dose of what it means to be mortal, and regret is the vehicle by which we confront our own mortality—and move past it.

This is Nietzsche’s prescription on how to live a life of no regrets, but keep in mind that it’s not hedonistic; this is a significantly more sophisticated question than just extreme pleasure. They’re all existential, philosophical questions about what it means to be a human being, to have a good and moral existence, not just the biological impulses to mate and procreate. It’s the search, the hunger, that Nietzsche is trying to answer.

A lot of psychological research in therapy suggests that it’s really mindfulness that helps deal with depression, suicide, and other negative ideation. Isn’t that interesting?

Nietzsche would probably have predicted that anything that got people to stop and take stock of their lives would have some inherent psychological value. Indeed, were finding in scientific literature that mindfulness can get people to accept their flaws and mistakes and move past regret, but also be more lucid about the world they live in and how they build that world with others. It’s interesting that the therapies that work now are really made up of ingredients of Nietzsche would have proposed in his formula had be been a modern-day psychologist.

It feels like there’s two competing methods of dealing with regret here: The guided clinical version, which you’ve described, and the YOLO/die young mentality. What’s the relationship between the two?

In some ways, the pop culture that’s funneling notions of “let’s die young, let’s live it up tonight”—Nietzsche might say that this is an excuse. It’s definitely a mental gain, a hyped-up alternative to dwelling on past (or future) mistakes, and that’s fine if it gives people the motivation to pull the trigger. But with this sort of mantra, there’s a high chance you’ll actually end up doing something you regret—and that’s kind of going in the exact opposite direction, isn’t it? Even if you come to embrace “living fast and leaving a beautiful corpse,” that’s veering more into the world of nihilism than it is intentional, thoughtful, deliberate living.

What would you tell people about how to live with regret?

If I were to provide guidelines to pursue amor fati, it would be for people to realize and accept that there are some things we lack ultimate control over. There is a fine balance between teaching children the difference between having and not having control. We tell kids they can be president or an astronaut, but at the same time they live under the complete control of their parents, and it creates a very odd, strange equilibrium with regards to how kids develop a sense of agency and, in turn, how they experience regret.

On an adult level, how do we want to embolden children to feel a sense of control, but also develop this meta-cognitive awareness? There are cases when people are diagnosed with a fatal disease and come to terms with their mortality, but it’s tough to expose the average person to; they’ll simply retreat into their comfortable world. This fast-paced world is built on connection, on business, on the go-go-go, where we’re constantly trying to produce more innovation and succeed. When does anyone ever have a moment to reflect on their own mortality, to come to terms with the life they live?

Are Americans hungry enough for this? Are we reaching a psychological breaking point?

Anthropologist Lionel Tiger, currently at Rutgers, has this theory that he calls the “manufacture of evil,” where he gets at the idea that society is in “a terrible tangle of moral, ethical, and social confusion,” and that we’re creating the means of our own social chaos. Technology is out of control, changes in the economy are out of control, and we’re acclimating as best we can, but often that’s not enough.

There’s a hunger for getting this information. How can we cultivate an American culture that keeps our ingenuity and our innovation but allows us to pursue these questions? Maybe it’s a question of education. Perhaps early on, we talk to young adults and cultivate a sense of what it means to live a good life in the social context. We don’t have anything like that—it doesn’t add to GDP, so why would we? People should be able to say, at that last moment, that “yes, I did it, and I’m OK with what I’ve done.”

The problem is that there is a desire for that time to live thoughtfully and deliberately. Perhaps this is why we see questions of vacation coming up as a major labor issue. But in the bigger picture, even if there is a need or a want, there’s an entire industry to package and reframe regret as part of our national growth machine.

The YOLO industry is part of this. It’s selling a way of handling regret without inducing the introspection and reflection that can actually put us on the path for a better life.

Perhaps we’re in a psychological bubble. We’re going to reach a point where it’ll pop. But at that point will we actually realize a greater connection to humanity?

Disney Delusions and Regrets:

"Frozen - A Musical feat. Disney Princesses"
(may stop at marker 2:15 to skip production promotion)