Embodiment of the Real: An interdisciplinary study of subjectivity, trauma and spiritual cultivation

Abstract

In Lacanian psychoanalysis the Real stands for a register of the psyche that resists symbolisation. It may erupt through contingent traumatic events, unbearable bodily intensities, anxiety, or death. How is one able to process these painful events? Here, I refer to the tragic event of my father’s brain stroke, which turned him half-paralysed, our family breakdown and subsequent passing of both of my parents. This interdisciplinary practice-based research seeks to properly understand the above sorrowful events of eruption of the Real. My goal is to establish a plane of knowledge that allows viewing the psychophysical processes of encountering the Real positively, and to develop skilful means of integrating it into the subject’s life. Applying the Noble Eightfold Path of the Buddha as a method I seek to alleviate and integrate these psychophysical processes, primarily via practices of insight meditation and movement arts – taijiquan, parkour, martial arts, swimming and movement improvisation. My thesis seeks to provide phenomenological accounts pertaining to subjectivity in the form of creative writings describing my personal experience in undertaking the above practices. In addition to that, videos of movement practices and performances are to be provided as creative works.