“We find ourselves in finding vision”
Will Pritchard
Dramatherapy June 3, 2021 DOI: 10.4324/9781003042792-2 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that Owen Barfield's concept of a future, creative participation—retaining modern wakeful consciousness while regaining numinous experience—is relevant to Sesame dramatherapy praxis. Barfield contends that habitual unconscious participation underlies the positivist world-conception and the view of consciousness as an arbitrary addition enclosed within the skull. |
Abstract
This chapter considers the contemporary relevance of the ideas of Owen Barfield to the praxis of Sesame dramatherapy. An oft-forgotten member of the Oxford Inklings, Barfield had a profound influence on the work of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R Tolkien, and thereby on mythopoetic fantasy literature in the English-speaking world. Comparable to individuation, a future form of participation would not be a regression, but a new relationship forged by creative imagination. The new kind of participation sought by Barfield was one that retained a wakeful modern consciousness, whilst regaining the meaningful and numinous experience of reality that characterised primal participation. Barfield saw the habitual, unconscious participation of modern humanity as the precondition for the positivist world-conception, and of any conception of our consciousness as only an arbitrary addition to the world, enclosed within our skulls.