Quote Art Is the Magic Mirror That We Create to Turn Invisible Dreams Into Visible Pictures
Mother and Child Smiling at Each Other. (Mary Stevenson Cassatt) Wikioo.
"It is an absolute human certainty that no ane can know his own beauty or perceive a sense of his own worth until it has been reflected back to him in the mirror of another loving, caring human being."
John Joseph Powell.
- Relationships As Mirrors: How can some other person function as a mirror for u.s.a.?
Alessia Zolfo – Beefcake of Thought, The Lovers [2008] Gandalf's Gallery. Flickr.
"Human relationship is understanding. Information technology is a process of self-revelation. Human relationship is the mirror in which you notice yourself – to be is to be related."
Bruce Lee
- "To Exist Is To Be Related…"
As we saw last week in Part 1, from our earliest years, nosotros need care, nurture and beloved from others; nosotros cannot thrive without them.
Nosotros more often than not live in relationship to others and this is essential to our mental and physical well-being.
Crucially, other people will mirror and reflect who we are in terms of what they say, their behaviour and how they relate to us.
Ii Heads Looking at Each Other. Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. Wikioo.
It helps to have several people in our lives whose opinions and thoughts we respect, and then that, hopefully, they can reflect us with less interference from their own problems or prejudices.
However, what nosotros run across in other's optics may non necessarily exist the whole picture of ourselves.
It tin can be contaminated, overcast, or rose-coloured, according to how that person sees you and what they project onto you.
Some other who can come across united states of america relatively conspicuously is an asset in our lives.
"The ane who has a good friend doesn't need any mirror."
Rumi.
We tin can, therefore, in relationships, serve as mirrors for each other.
We can reverberate back to the other person issues within them that we feel need to be worked on, and in plow learn what we need to attend to in ourselves.
"Through others we become ourselves."
Lev South. Vygotsky
Relationships offer a gamble for personal growth, challenging some behaviour patterns, affirming others. Our reactions to other people reveal much about ourselves.
"Everything that irritates the states about others can lead the states to an agreement of ourselves."
Carl Jung
Jung was referring to the fact that the behaviours and feelings that problem u.s. most in others must be inside ourselves, otherwise we would not experience so disturbed by them.
We all role as a mirror for others, and they volition also give united states a reflection of ourselves.
"People remember a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. Just a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is property you back, the person who brings you to your ain attention then y'all tin can change your life."
Elizabeth Gilbert
If, for case, nosotros are ever irritated past another's anger, perhaps they are giving vent to something that we notice hard to limited.
Portrait. Jawlensky.Wikioo.
"The feeling of being 'offended' is a warning indicator that is showing you where to look within yourself for unresolved problems."
Bryant McGill
"When you run into a good person, retrieve of condign like her/him.
When you see someone non and then good, reflect on your own weak points."Confucius
Jawlensky. 1913 . Meditative Woman. Wikimedia Commons
"Whenever yous are about to find fault with someone, ask yourself the following question: What mistake of mine most nearly resembles the i I am near to criticize?"
Marcus Aurelius
- Self-Reflection
Self-reflection is important if we are not to unconsciously projection our uncomfortable feelings onto others around us, scapegoating and demonising them, instead of being able to reflect on our own shadow side.
This prevents the states from having to face up our own real feelings. Notwithstanding, in doing this, nosotros volition miss seeing our reflection in the people around united states of america and we will be incomplete every bit a result.
"The world is a looking glass and gives back to every human being the reflection of his own confront."
William Makepeace Thackeray
The Mirror. Shani Rhys James. Wikioo.
"The journey into self-love and self-credence must begin with cocky-examination… until y'all have the journey of self-reflection, it is almost incommunicable to grow or learn in life."
Iyanla Vanzant
"DalH from the Dorsum Painting Gala from the Dorsum Eternalized past Six Virtual Corneas Provisionally Reflected in Six Real Mirrors (unfinished), 1972-73"
Salvador Dali. Wikioo.
`'There is one art of which people should be masters – the fine art of reflection."
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
- Reflection And Mirroring In Therapy.
"The heart of the wise, like mirrors, should reverberate all objects without being sullied by whatever."
Confucius.
Reflection and mirroring play an important part in counselling and psychotherapy.
The therapist will paraphrase and summarise the patient's words, and echo the essence of these words back to the patient in this dissimilar form, whilst also identifying, clarifying and reflecting back the feelings behind the words.
This demonstrates that the therapist has understood and heard what the patient has said.
The therapist may also subtly mirror back the patient's body language to testify further empathy on a different level.
Function of the therapist'southward task is to be sufficiently self-enlightened to give a reflection back to the patient as conspicuously as possible, unsullied by person blocks and projections.
In this manner, a therapist tin better help a person to appreciate their individuality and their diversity, giving them clear reflections of themselves to strengthen their personal identity.
To enable this clarity, information technology is essential that the therapist has had therapy herself, and then she can value her ain departure and strengths.
"And you say yous are broken, simply broken mirrors like you lot create the nigh beautiful patterns of light."
Nikita Gill.
"He who is unlike from me does not impoverish me – he enriches me. Our unity is constituted in something higher than ourselves – in Man… For no man seeks to hear his own repeat, or to find his reflection in the drinking glass."
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Therapist's self-reflection is crucial here, achieved through introspection, therapy and through regular individual and group casework supervision.
A therapist can then work though whatever personal blocks that might be in the mode of showing empathy to all kinds of others.
"To my listen, personal psychotherapy is, by far, the almost important part of psychotherapy training."
Irvin D. Yalom
"Allow us brainstorm past but stating that therapists must show the way to patients by personal modeling. We must demonstrate our willingness to enter into a deep intimacy with our patient, a process that requires us to be adept at mining the best source of reliable data near our patient- our own feelings."
Yalom.
For a therapist, a lack of personal integration can exist a serious handicap.
If the therapist has non risked facing her own deeper reflections, and listened to the mysterious echoes from her unconscious, there will be difficulty helping some other to do this.
As a therapist, information technology is of import to remember that you lot cannot accompany anyone anywhere you take non been yourself.
"Question: What is the therapist's almost valuable instrument? Reply (and no one misses this i): the therapist'south own self."
Yalom.
It is a privilege to exist trusted past some other on their psychological journeying. However, we, as therapists, need to know our own depths before nosotros dare to back-trail someone else into theirs.
On such a difficult journeying, frequently involving painful memories from long ago, we need to exist helped along the way by a therapist who knows their ain reflections, deep within themselves.
The Mirror of Long Ago. 1946. Clarence John Laughlin. Wikioo.
- Reflections and Projections In Couple Therapy.
In a couple human relationship, we may see reflected in the other aspects of ourselves, some of which we may find attractive, others nosotros may dislike.
Sometimes we might unconsciously projection these 'unacceptable' feelings and behaviours onto our partner, and reject and disown them in ourselves.
The other person and then unconsciously carries a 'double dose' of the denied aspect, theirs and ours. Thus, they may be labelled, for example, as the 'angry' partner, or the 'depressed' one.
Unless nosotros are enlightened and in control of unwanted and unrecognised parts of ourselves, they will be acted out in some bearded and perchance destructive way.
Herb Kruckman – The Couple [1938] Gandalf's Gallery. Flickr.
Couple therapy can assistance us 'take back' our projections and re-own the rejected parts of ourselves.
Such therapy may help us empathise where our dislike, or fearfulness, of these aspects originated, so that we can come to terms with them.
The concepts of psychoanalytic couple therapy are complex; for those interested, these are recommendable books explaining theory and practise:
'Psychotherapy With Couples: Theory and Practice at the Tavistock Institute of Marital Studies' by Stanley Ruszczynski (Routledge. 2018)
' A Couple Land of Mind: Psychoanalysis of Couples and the Tavistock Relationships Model' (The Library of Couple and Family Psychoanalysis) by Mary Morgan. (Routledge, 2018.)
Edvard Munch. Eye in Eye. 1899—1900. Wikimedia Eatables.
"There is a mirror in which you tin see yourself entirely – not your face, but all that you call up, all that you feel, your motives, your appetites, your urges and fears. That mirror is the mirror of relationship: the relationship between you lot and your parents, between you and your teachers, between you and the river, the trees, the earth, between you and your thoughts. Relationship is a mirror in which you can see yourself, not as you would wish to exist, but as y'all are."
Jiddu Krishnamurti
- The Mysteries And Magic Of The Mirror
Magic mirrors have long featured in stories and have been used by magicians and in funfairs.
They may distort the truth, or, as in Alice in Wonderland, secrete another world inside.
I end this post with a whimsical look, through images and quotations, at how magical mirrors tin can exist….
Spencer Gore. Interior. Wikimedia Commons.
"I beloved mirrors. They let ane pass through the surface of things."
Claude Chabrol.
Velázquez. Las Meninas (detail)1656–57 Wikimedia Commons.
"For I practise not exist: there exist but the thousands of mirrors that reflect me. With every acquaintance I brand, the population of phantoms resembling me increases."
Vladimir Nabokov.
Magic Mirror. Escher. Wikioo.
"A mirror can incorporate the reflection of the whole universe, a whole skyful of stars in a piece of silvered drinking glass no thicker than a breath."
Terry Pratchett
Not to Be Reproduced, 1937 by Rene Magritte. Wikimedia Eatables.
"If art reflects life, information technology does and so with special mirrors."
Bertolt Brecht.
Paul Klee, Nello Specchio Magico,(In The Magic Mirror) 1934. Wikimedia Commons.
"Art is the magic mirror you make to reflect your invisible dreams in visible pictures."
George Bernard Shaw.
Tenniel sketch from "Alice Through The Looking Glass" 1871. Wikimedia Eatables.
"Oh, Kitty, how nice information technology would be if we could only go through into Looking-glass Business firm! I'thou sure information technology's got, oh! such beautiful things in it! Let'due south pretend in that location'south a fashion of getting through into it, somehow, Kitty. Let's pretend the drinking glass has got all soft like gauze, then that we can get through. Why it'due south turning into a sort of mist now, I declare! It'll be easy enough to get through."
Lewis Carroll
Ernst Oppler. Self-Portrait and Portrait. 1928. Wikimedia Commons
"I took a breath and let information technology become
and of a sudden the air was crisper
and my lungs lighter
and suddenly
there was him
maxim my proper noun
in unlike ways
and I catch myself throwing glances in the mirror,
seeing someone I don't know
quite notwithstanding
merely I can't wait to,
and that is the beginning of everything."
Charlotte Eriksson
© Linda Berman
Source: https://waysofthinking.co.uk/2021/11/16/mirroring-and-reflection-2/