The Glitter in Omnivalence

         

May the Light of the World continue to overlay the rust of my life and once more transform ruin into vibrant glitter.

I recently explored a word:  Omnivalence.  In doing so I came across a writer, John Briggs, of Western Connecticut State University, whose writing made me feel like I had found a pool of water after a tremendous thirst.  His article entitled "Nuance and Omnivalence in the Creative Mind" has me thinking about creativity, curiosity, persistence and the search for truth.  It is the stuff of brilliant glitter. 

The concept of omnivalence is hard to define.  Rather than actually define the term, Briggs seems to compare the term to ambivalence to thrash out its meaning and significance to the creative process.  It is something like the mandorla where light and dark overlap: 

"Evidently, contradictory feelings which we might be inclined to identify as conflictual ambivalence, are, on closer examination, something else. Such feelings seem to be experienced by creators not as ambivalent conflict, but as possibilities, potentials, mystery, openness. Omnivalence might be a better term, from the Latin omni, meaning 'affects all things,' and related to ops 'wealth,' plus valence or 'strength.' (Briggs & McCluskey, 1989). When omnivalence occurs there is an emotion-perception-cognition of a powerful, global wealth in the moment, a wealth in which there may be many different, even contrary, elements, each equally strong but all fundamentally indistinguishable from each other so that even the contrary elements are really a single effect eliciting an impression that somehow 'all of it,'(omni) 'the whole world,' is in this moment. We might associate the creator's experience of omnivalence both with a feeling of multi-valence and omni-presence. It is similar in some ways to ambivalence but quite unlike it as well because in ambivalence the psyche is divided between two states of mind competing for dominance. In omnivalence there is only one encompassing state containing somehow many states overlapped and not in competition....."

Briggs says of perhaps the greatest creative genius in modern history:

"In 1953, Albert Einstein, the quintessential genius, declared that 'I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent' beyond 'curiosity, obsession, and dogged endurance...' (Greenberg, 1979, p. 216).  Einstein's assertion challenges a central myth about creative genius - that it is inborn talent.  Taken together with a story Einstein told on this 74th birthday, it also offers a window into an alternative explanation for the activity of high-level creative work."

Curiosity, obsession, and dogged endurance.  Wow.  I like that.  Finally I have found someone with whom I agree, and, lo, it is Einstein himself!  He argues against the myth - which I think is born of snobbery and limitation -  that creativity is inborn or a product of madness, replacing the myth with a practical explanation that the creative endeavour is one born of curiosity, obsession, and dogged endurance.  I have long known that any creativity I exhibit is born of a great deal of hard work that I cannot help but perform when the impulse hits.  The impulse, the muse, the curiosity that must be satisfied, the spirit that will not be quinched, a determination that can be pretty irritating.  I could go on.

Einstein told a story of a curiosity he experience when he was five years old and sick in bed.  His father brought him a magnetic compass.  He was bewitched by the needle that turned north no matter what.  This curiosity surrounding the compass "stimulated the young Einstein to the realization that 'something deeply hidden had to be behind things' (Clark, 1971, p. 29), and was a factor that led Einstein "to work on relativity involving paradoxes connected with the electromagnetic waves of light traveling through a putative invisible ether..."  Who would ever suspect that a compass given as a toy combined with a child's curiosity would lead to the exploration of "hidden variables" operating behind quantum theory. 

Creative persons know that hidden variables operate behind everything, to include the human heart and mind.  Only when we are willing to quit "knowing" and explore those hidden variables are we willing to step up to a creative exchange of fantasy for the brilliant glitter of truth.  To me this is illumination.  We ask for illumination, but I'm not sure we really want it because it can hurt so bad while it hurts so good.  Whichever way it hurts, it does thrill.  But this craving curiosity has to be great enough to overpower fear or we will stay in the fantasy of darkness through lies, laziness and psychological defenses that numb and destroy us bit by bit over time.

Instead...may the Light of the World continue to overlay the rust of my life and once more transform ruin into vibrant glitter.

Lux Mundi

Light transforms so that even rust glitters when overlayed with light. My wish expressed as prayer and made visible in image is that the Light of the World will continue to overlay the rust of my life and once more transform ruin into vibrant glitter.

The "candle" in this image is a mirror image of the word Lux Mundi.

Shiver

                                   

Histriopath/Psychotrionic

Histrionic Personality Disorder (HPD) is usually a girl thing.  These are the attention seeking, lying, manipulative, Drama Queens of the world who inappropriately sexualize relationships, wallow in emotion and work you like a change machine.  

In action histrionics can look like psychopaths.  They invented emotional manipulation and can and will lie to get what they want.  Self-centered, they take in stride stunts that would induce normal people to crawl in caves to hide from the pain of embarrassment.  They take no responsibility, claim they are victims and blame others for the soap operas they script.  Outgoing, charming and seductive, histrionics can work a crowd.  They invented "love at first sight" which creates great theatrics. 

Their motto is "so much attention, so little time" as they gregariously bounce back to glad-handing after dusting themselves off from their latest train wreck.  Destroyed lives lay in their wake as they script anyone but themselves as the blame for all the bodies.  They talk loud to draw attention to themselves, kiss ass, flirt and flatter, and, subsequently, despite potential social skills, often are ostracized for uncomfortable/inappropriate behavior.    

But here is where histrionics part ways with psychopaths.  They are gullible, shallow, needy, make rash decisions, and either fake or exaggerate illnesses.  Psychopaths are not necessarily people of high intelligence, but they are less needy, less physically ill, cooler and less bumbling than histrionics.  Tougher somehow and less likely to feign regret.

But are these personality disorders the same thing, just dressed differently according to gender?

According to Personality Disorders in Modern Life by Theodore Millon, Carrie M. Millon, Sarah Meagher, Seth Grossman and Rowena Ramnath "Some theorists have hypothesized that histrionic personality disorder and anitsocial personality disorder (psychopathy) are actually 'expressions of the same latent disposition' (Hamburger, Lilienfeld, & Hogben, 1996, p. 52).

What we observe superficially are only the gender-stereotyped behaviors of the same underlying pathology. As Widiger and Spitzer (1991) argue, the differences we see in the distribution of personality disorders may be due to etiological factors such as different sex hormones that influence the final expression of pathology. Histrionic and antisocial personalities may be an example of such an effect. They may both represent expressions of the same pathology, and we are misconceptualizing them as two separate entities because their superficial expressions (the symptoms they outwardly express) are different."

What an interesting proposition, and what a break for bad girls.  The psychopath is more readily revealed; the histrionic more readily pitied.  While they both deliver a bite that kills.  If this is true we might see histrionics and psychopaths as caricatures of covert aggressive gender stereotypes.  Boys learn to win to get power.  Girls learn to seduce someone into taking care of them which is a different kind of power.  Each accomplishes the traditional gender objective through the same destructive means, just packaged according to gender.  You might say the psychopath is fake/dangerous masculine; the histrionic is fake/dangerous feminine.  We don't see the evil until it is too late because the delivery system suits our expectations.  The psychopath leads us into hell as a masculine force in control; the histrionic packs us a lunch of self-destruction as mother earth.  

I can see how gender roles might play out in the diagnostic process.  Here is an example.  In a probable diagnosis of histrionics, Dr. Joseph M. Carver at Counselling Resource evaluated some damaging traits packaged in stereotypical female behavior: 

"I have a 35 (could be 37: she changes her age frequently) year old sister (not by blood, but religion) that is a very skillful liar. In fact, she makes false statements and changes true stories into lies regularly. When anyone confronts her on the false statements made she starts cleaning the floor. Her children say that she is always cleaning the floors and walls for hours whenever she gets angry. If she is confronted by more than one person about false statements she pretends to begin bleeding from the nose, but I have yet to see blood."

We need to know more about character and mood disorders.  Gratefully a good body of literature is now available about psychopaths, and comprehension of motivation strains the imagination.  But our knowledge needs to go deeper to better decipher the overlap and co-morbidity of abusive personalities.  One can be strangled just as easily by a pink bow as by one that is blue.  

Winking In the Midst of Melodrama

"Despite all of these inner fears of removing the mask, it should be clear that when someone loves your personality and merely accepts you for the roles you are playing - it is not the real 'You' who are receiving the benefit of this acceptance.  There is always the fear of failure and the tensions created due to not being yourself fully at all times.  Nevertheless, as hard as it may seem for some to believe, there does exist a love in which one can love 'You' directly.  That is, one can love 'You' regardless of how you look, what you say, or what you do.  When a person loves 'You,' they understand the meaninglessness of how you externally express yourself.  It becomes a standing game between you to watch your lower selves 'do their thing,' while a part of you remains detached, winking at one another in the midst of the worldly melodrama.  This is true acceptance.  With it comes the absolute sense of freedom in knowing that the relationship is an eternal one.  There is nothing that can come between you, because you know each other as you really are."~Michael A. Singer from Three Essays on Universal Law, The Laws of Karma, Will and Love