Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; A new concept of the mind, part one
- Transcript
From the Great Hall of the Cooper Union in New York City. National Educational radio presents the Cooper Union forum series on peace love and creativity the hope of mankind. These programs are recorded by station WNYC. Here now is the chairman of the Cooper Union forum Dr. Johnson yfere child. Good evening ladies and gentlemen welcome to the show for you in the forum with your German is not only fair taking you from the great hall of the Cooper Union where we're continuing with the program of the title the creativity the hope for. Readers something for the immediate discussion of the moment has to do with a new concept of the mind and. Its Implications for a creative power. Your guest tonight is Dr. Daniel Schneider. Dr. Schneider is a diplomated the American Board of psychiatry and neurology and
a member of the American Psychiatric Association and a founder of the Academy of psychoanalysis. He is president of the foundation for perception. However the author of numerous books. The gross concept of nervous integration. The Psycho of. The Artist. The image of the heart. His most recent book. Psychoanalysis of a heart attack. In 1958 in a lecture here at the Cooper Union Dr. Schneider introduced a new concept of the mind as containing a basic. Creative tension relaxing level of conscious of the power of Congress and the president lectures a
chapter in a new work in progress. Anonymous Thomas wrote a line of the night of the will come down the Cooper Union I think it was evening. You're fair. Game and. Some eighteen years ago I published a book called The psychoanalyst and the artist. That book took me on a very long journey. I am still travelling.
But I hope to be able to. Tell you some of the places I've been and what conclusions I have come to so far. And that book. I was particularly interested. In Howard the dream was made how it related to the artistic process and how it was that a work of art was sometimes the equivalent of a dream turned inside out. There was every evidence that there existed in the mind. In other words they form a maker which at night could produce the form of our dream of art. And during the day.
But it produced the framework. And forms. Of all of our arts and even our sciences. In addition to that though not bad at all. I soon learned that there was an imagery of the heart imagery actually based upon the beat of the heart. And in many ways producing the derivative imagery of the heart which exist in all languages to express emotion courage one. Harrowed. Etc.. Third way the more I study in an objective way
the artistic process the more it became clear that an essential part of that artistic process. Was the capacity to renounce or intrigue to tame and subdue. Not only others but mainly ourselves. And the man did not build his world on the basis of renunciation of certain animal drives including the tendency toward. Riot prejudice and superstition. If a man did not payment these animal instincts however intellectually seemed not much creativeness resulted. There was a price point which I had also
brought to this concept of the mind from my medical studies and my neurological studies. And this was really the repression of the old grief I feel. Namely that a healthy mind exists in a healthy body or in more technical terms that the heart was actually monitored by the mind. And that all the necessary tension relaxation balances that make it possible for us to breathe and indeed to exist are also exquisitely. Used to monitor the car the tension relaxation machine of the heart as it makes its imagery and that it provides its energy. It is this balance which gives an architecture of the mind. There were there are or there are new aspects one
there was a porn maker too. There was an imagery of the heart. Three there was a tension relaxation machine that made possible the architecture of these forms in the creative process. And furthermore there was a thing called. Taming and subduing or remounting animal instincts. We hear a great deal today about the subject of creativeness and wow the creativeness is an important thing. It becomes increasingly important not in the cliche in trivial consideration of how to make more money by writing a more gimmicky book or a play but it comes becomes very important now to day in our lives when the world
stands on the brink of destruction. The larger creativeness with which we are concerned therefore must be a part. Of the fundamental creativeness of every man. And it is in this sense that I am interested in creating this. I am interested in it at every level of historical political sociological artistic scientific industrial and in that ever present creativeness we call the making and rearing of children. The most harm in the denominator in our human experience however. Which enables us to relate this new concept of mind to history and sorrow.
Which is the capacity of a man to tame and subdue his world and himself. And there is only one word for this. Creative nucleus which exists in every human character. We have a name for this although most of us do not know it. The name for each of our capacities for games that do are in green nouns are animal instincts so that we may build them ourselves and our world. Is the word domain domain is different from your minion. And it is different from the dominate domain comes fundamentally from the Latin word. Meaning to tame or to subdue. It gives us the Latin word doormen a form master. And it gives us the word daemon for the wife of the
master. Domain is not the same as Dominion nor is it the same as imperialism. Domain has several meanings and they are meanings at every level but like. Every creative level of life at every level of legal expression even the real estate spheres of interest territory. And this even in mathematics domain means one thing. It means the capacity to build and you see creative instrumentality of the mind which will on the one hand compose creative solutions in the outer world. And at the same time monitor the body especially the heart in the inner world. At this point a new book. Comes to our aid. I read very a very
excellent book by Robert Hart called the territorial imperative who showed that in all higher vertebrates. There is precedent need preparatory even pressured into sex and it is clear that men who have a need to mark out territories. Dominate that territory and build it themselves. The concept of domain in all its relationships the territory as one example of how to read only and enables us to make a link with history a link between history and psychology that was never made before. One hundred eight years ago on this forum in this hall. Abraham Lincoln delivered one of the great speeches of the Civil War.
It had to do with this subject of territory and not only territory but more than that it had to do with the subject of right upon that dark territory and about what form those territories and those rights would take. He spoke here against the extension of slavery to the new territories. And as you know the Civil War was not a fight. Primarily to free the slaves although that was one of its collateral instrumentations the Civil War was fundamentally a war. Designed to prevent the session. You remember that the rebels recalled the secessionists. It was designed to protect the union. Because of the union of the United States represented the new
domain of the man not the new dummy but the new domain. What the founding fathers did in 1776. What is to create a new concept of man's right to his own mind and to his own body. Jefferson hoped that slavery would disappear Union was the outer expression of that and it is there or in the concept of domain that we can see the link between history and psychology between an internal war maker in man that is connected with his ability the standard speak write. Paint then make architecture create science. It was for this that Lincoln bought. Into what supports this
that the world remembers him when he lean green the slaves he created. Again what the founding fathers had created he created again in the new sense of domain a new sense of world. Brotherhood. Which is perhaps the most creative idea the world has ever developed. And therefore tonight after I have given you some examples of how this domain works in the arts in the sciences I'm going to try a new interpretation of the confrontation between pilot and Jesus of Nazareth and to attempt an interpretation of the crucifixion Beijing
upon man's incessant struggle to develop higher frameworks better configurations and the more powerful mind where will solve the world's problems. Modern History begins with the story of Jesus. It comes almost to an end with the Lincoln and we are still fighting Lincoln's war. It is in this sense that I am concerned with creativeness and I see the arts and the sciences and the industrial genius of this country as part of the same creative liberation of an evolving human mind that has within it a form a maker related to these miraculous hands of ours related to this capacity to speak to communicate among one mind with
another. To create a tissue and texture. Intangible but definite that we call public opinion or the public mind. And the thing which responds to truth. In a very definite way it has in it if you will all the resonant feet of the human heart. It has a thrill when it is right. Whether it be a great moment on the stage whether it be a great moment in architecture where be it whether it be a great educator to your greatest advantage or whether it be a great political speech in history. There is no mistaking the thrill of creativeness when it hit the note of truth even though we may never define truth. I do not believe that any great artist or any great figure in human history worthy of the name
has ever created anything unless he was touched by this feeling. Of the emerging universal body. And emerging brotherhood among all the peoples of the world Earth. And perhaps eventually toward the conquest and space itself. It is in that larger framework that I see the problem of creativeness not in the terms of the vanity of this author or that author or this act or that actors who preceded him in cried himself in whatever paper or magazine he can hold. We have need of a greater concept of human creativity a new concept of the human mind than the one in which we are presently. I was going to say immerse but I think I often say swamp men are not animals. This is not a rat race.
This is a world of men struggling to become an evolutionary ladder to the stars. So automatic is our internal artistic form maker that a great many works of art have come from dreams themselves and in those dreams they show not only in the form of this field which works automatically at night which I call the para conscious feel. It shows not only the general forms of our mind in our speech and our hands and our rationale. It also shows the imagery of the heart. One of the greatest examples of a dream become art and universal art and therefore enduring and therefore one that will
be read throughout the history of man resulted from a nightmare. That Robert Louis Stevenson had he was suffering from tuberculosis which he had had his entire life. And as a young child. With fever you usually hear the heartbeat in the ear and imagine the lives of a horse or a rider galloping past his house all night long. Years later on the island of Samoa trying to recover from a nearly fatal lung hemorrhage he had a violent nightmare that nightmare which is why it woke him from his great anger because he hadn't had a chance quite to finish it. He sat down and wrote out for three long days that nightmare was the story Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In that nightmare we have Jekyll as the rational man the man
who understands right. And the illumination of the of the world which we call life. He is ready you know. He is good and we have Mr. Hyde who is of a curious and bloodthirsty creature. A part of Jekyll himself this is the other self. This is the self that is the heart hungry for blood. This is the cell that prowl the streets at night. This is the man. The other engine of all our world will fantasies. And this opposition in our own body and our own mind illustrates the struggle that we have to come to a rational solution of the world's dilemma. As you remember. One Jekyll finally loses control of Mr. Hyde and Mr. Hyde takes over entirely. Gentle can no longer return to himself until the heart
has stopped beating until Heidi is dead and one hide is dead then the form the form of man again. It has a curiously prophetic quality. It is almost as though those who would throw the atomic bomb whose minds are governed by the curious sick animal. Regret you need you to destroy with the concentrated hide of our universe and our terror is that they will take over. All the Dr. Jekyll aspect of our lives and that only as we all lie dead of the Jekyll form returned to no avail.
- Producing Organization
- WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
- Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
- Contributing Organization
- University of Maryland (College Park, Maryland)
- AAPB ID
- cpb-aacip/500-154ds251
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- Description
- Episode Description
- This program presents the first part of a lecture by Daniel Schneider, psychoanalyst, author.
- Series Description
- This series presents lectures from the 1968 Cooper Union Forum. This forum's theme is Peace, Love, Creativity: The Hope of Mankind.
- Date
- 1968-07-08
- Topics
- Literature
- Media type
- Sound
- Duration
- 00:23:07
- Credits
-
-
Producing Organization: WNYC (Radio station : New York, N.Y.)
Producing Organization: Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
Speaker: Fairchild, Johnson E.
Speaker: Schneider, Daniel E. (Daniel Edward), 1907-
- AAPB Contributor Holdings
-
University of Maryland
Identifier: 68-10-31 (National Association of Educational Broadcasters)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Duration: 00:22:42
If you have a copy of this asset and would like us to add it to our catalog, please contact us.
- Citations
- Chicago: “Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; A new concept of the mind, part one,” 1968-07-08, University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed October 9, 2024, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-154ds251.
- MLA: “Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; A new concept of the mind, part one.” 1968-07-08. University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. October 9, 2024. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-154ds251>.
- APA: Peace, love, creativity: Hope of mankind; A new concept of the mind, part one. Boston, MA: University of Maryland, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-500-154ds251