Mark Winborn Discusses Deep Blues on Shrink Rap Radio

Dr. Dave Van Nuys interviews Fisher King Press author Mark Winborn, PhD about his book Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey on his podcast show Shrink Rap Radio. Dr. Dave interviews a wide range of therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychoanalysts across a broad range of subjects. The interview can be listened to here: Winborn Interview or on ITunes.

In the interview, Dr. Winborn discusses the experiences that drew him to Jungian analytic work, his interest in the blues, various themes in the book, and a brief overview of the three main schools of Analytical Psychology.

Deep Blues explores the archetypal journey of the human psyche through an examination of the blues as a musical genre. The genesis, history, and thematic patterns of the blues are examined from an archetypal perspective and various analytic theories – especially the interaction between Erich Neumann’s concept of unitary reality and the blues experience. Mythological and shamanistic parallels are used to provide a deeper understanding of the role of the bluesman, the blues performance, and the innate healing potential of the music. Universal aspects of human experience and transcendence are revealed through the creative medium of the blues. The atmosphere of Deep Blues is enhanced by the black and white photographs of Tom Smith which capture striking blues performances in the Maxwell Street section of Chicago. Jungian analysts, therapists and psychoanalytic practitioners with an interest in the interaction between creative expression and human experience should find Deep Blues satisfying.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 

Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 

and a growing list of alternative titles. 

www.fisherkingpress.com

The Devil's Music . . . perhaps its Soul?

A Commentary on Mark Winborn’s Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey by Deborah Bryon

Originally published in Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche, Summer 2012, Vol. 6, Num. 3, pp. 96-97 (www.ucpressjournals.com/journal.php?j=jung)

I was surprised and delighted to encounter the colorful and poeticstyle in Mark Winborn’s Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey. Through his writing, he reminds us that blues music- like visual imagery - can be a rich, metaphoric language with the capacity to hold archetypal experience as a living entity. As a Jungian analyst pulling from his own background as a musician, Winborn creates a compelling space for the deep spiritual expression of blues experience as it surfaces on the pages of this book, giving it a voice of its own.

Winborn starts by tracing blues history back to its original roots, paralleling it with Greek tragedy and the perils of Orpheus and Odysseus. By asking the question, “What is the blues?” Winborn explores the music as both an internal psychological state and an attitude–a philosophy and way of being in the world. Similar to working with a dream, he circumambulates around symbolic themes found in blues material – first, in a historical context using amplification, and then by describing the blues as a vehicle for psychological healing and transformation. Winborn successfully moves back and forth from being in the actual experience of relating to the blues into expressing it through verbal language that is both imaginative and easily accessible to the reader.

Next, Winborn travels into universal themes encrypted in the lyrics of blues songs. The shared emotional state between the performer and the audience, arising from the human experience of daily living, becomes poetically transformed through musical metaphor. The blues is a language of the senses and a language of spirit. The human experience of love and heartbreak, the early mother-child bond, addictions, and sexual frustrations, for example, are remembered, and once again come alive.

In addition to considering the blues within the context of a personal frame of reference, blues is a collective energetic experience. Winborn explores the trance-like nature of the blues that is capable of bringing the listener, as well as the performer, into a field of unitary reality. Through the creative process of being touched by sound we become one with the experience. Besides offering a means for human emotional expression, the sounds of the blues penetrate the body in a way that brings visceral experience of sensual embodiment, and with this redemption and new awareness. Opposites are transcended through the immediacy of being in relationship with life that takes place in ontological time.

Winborn examines the cultural myths of the blues as “devil’s music.” The blues originated as a reaction to the oppression of slavery, manifesting in archetypal shadow figures of the “bad man,” the trickster, and other potentially self-destructive archetypal characters associated with possession by the death instinct. Yet the blues can also be regenerative–bringing the capacity for growth and new life. Jung stated that energy contained in our personal shadow is life force. Blues music is also about the ecstasy of initiation and being in the twilight of the crossroads of liminal spaces, between darkness and light–the places where magic happens and shamans cross bridges between ordinary and non-ordinary reality.

Winborn goes on to suggest that healing which takes place in hearing blues music is a shamanic rather than analytic process. Creating a contagion through the music is the elixir. The constantly changing lyrics provide context and meaning as the singer’s personality, feelings, and state of mind shines through with shifts and fluctuations of subjective experience in any given moment. If a feeling response is evoked by the performer, that brings the listener into the enchantment of the projection created by the music, then the song is effective. The blues narrative is one of the ways we can face and synthesize the unprocessed and repressed aspects of the shadow in our own journey, as well as the collective cultural psyche as a whole. The blues musician functions as a channel with access to the energy of the collective experience of pain by humanizing it and making it more tolerable.

Sparked by reading Deep Blues I found myself drifting into my own reverie, wondering if the powerful archetypal charge constellated in blues symbols is a reflection of the separation that is a bi-product of living in modern culture? Do the blues provide us with the needed cathartic experience that we have lost the ability to generate as easily on our own? Winborn reminds us of the personification and humor in first-person stories conveyed by blues singers, making us remember the feeling of being human, and with this, the capacity for relatedness.

I thoroughly enjoyed Deep Blues, and would highly recommend the book. In his writing, Winborn artfully moves the reader into an archetypal Dionysian experience residing in the body, and prompts us to remember that blues music makes us feel alive. He follows blues experience into the alchemical realm of the prima material – instinct in its most raw and vital form--by using the metaphor of color to describe how blues music can resonate in our psyches. In reading Deep Blues, I wished for an expanded discussion of the alchemical healing that a blues melody has on the psyche. Shadow material can emerge not only in the words but in the energy generated from the relationship between the notes of the blues scales bending on guitar strings. This phenomenon might add additional fodder for exploring archetypal expression–but perhaps this will be a topic Winborn will explore in greater length in a future book.

To quote Winborn, citing Chicago blues disc jockey Purvis Spann, “If you don’t like blues, you’ve got a hole in your soul.” Anyone who has listened to a captivating blues melody knows that these sounds come from the heart and the soul, from deep inside. As Winborn has describes, the listener cannot resist the inward pull of the melody, just as it is impossible to refrain from tapping to the beat. when we are captured in the spell of listening to the blues.

Deborah Bryon, PhD, is an analyst with the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and practices in the Denver, Colorado area. She is the author of a book on shamanic experiences, Lessons of the Inca Shamans: Piercing the Veil, released by Pine Winds Press in August 2012 (http://lessonsoftheincashamans.com/)

Read more reviews of Deep Blues and listen to an audio interview with Dr. Winborn at www.deepblues.org.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, and a growing list of alternative titles. 

www.fisherkingpress.com

If You’ve Got “The Blues,” Play 'em

Review of Mark Winborn's Deep Blues
by Laura Sentineri Harness

Mythopoetry Scholar Annual eZine vol. 3. Stephanie Pope, Editor. Fountain Hills: mythopoetry.com, January 2, 2012 (© 2012)

Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey
Publisher: Fisher King Press
September 1, 2011 1st edition
140 pages, Illustrations, Index, Bibliography
ISBN-10: 1926715527
ISBN-13: 978-1926715520

In the midnight hours, long ‘fore the break of day
              When the blues creep on you and carry your mind away
                                -Leroy Carr, Midnight Blues1

What Is It About “The Blues” That So Deeply Stirs The Soul?

In Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey, Jungian psychoanalyst, Mark Winborn brings the astute lens of depth psychology to this question, exploring “Blues” music as a psychological, archetypal and cultural phenomenon. The strength of this book is its ability to cross between two vastly different worlds juxtaposing the gritty emotions and simple earthy lyrics of the Blues with the expansive intellectual framework of Jungian Psychology.

Winborn’s brilliant analytical skills and personal passion for the subject is evident and this book often reads like a love story to the muse of the Blues. Although the genre of Blues music is his focus, there is a breadth to his writing that distills many valuable insights into human nature. Winborn applies a variety of Jungian analytic theories as well as elaborates upon the interface of creativity and alchemy, the shamanic role of a “Blues” performer and Neumann’s theory of Unitary Reality.2 Deep Blues is a poignant testimony to the power of Blues music to heal and redeem the “midnight hour” sufferings of the soul.

Tracing the origins of the Blues to slavery and the African-American experience of devastating loss, tragedy, trauma and personal pain, Winborn calls the Blues “survival music.” He then gives a brilliant in-depth analysis of the healing, medicinal qualities inherent in Blues music which contribute to emotional resilience, redemption and restoration of wholeness.

Music has long been used to help people deal with their emotions. In the 17th century the scholar, Robert Burton's The Anatomy of Melancholy3 argued that music was critical in treating mental illness especially melancholia. He noted that music has an "excellent power ...to expel many other diseases" and he called it "a sovereign remedy against despair and melancholy."4 Back before Prozac and Zoloft music was prescriptive, often used as a homeopathic remedy as “like cures like.”

Simply Stated, If You’ve Got “The Blues,” Play Them

I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some Blues.
-Duke Ellington5, US jazz bandleader, musician, & songwriter (1899 - 1974)

Listening to, singing, writing and playing the Blues facilitates a release and deepening into the murky emotional aspects of life and helps us to integrate the dark, split off, unconscious aspects of the archetypal shadow in both the personal and collective psyche. As Winborn illustrates, Blues music is an excellent depictation of the alchemical process of psychological transmutation. Through the telling of one’s personal story, the narrative of life’s tragic aspects and the cathartic action of putting strong feelings into song “the prima materia of everyday life becomes the gold of unitary reality.”6 The experience of unitary reality is “a reciprocal coordination between world and psyche”7 and Winborn illustrates how music and the Arts have the power to invoke this expanded consciousness of oneness which transcends polarities, divisions and limitations of time and space. As we listen to the Blues we have the opportunity to emotionally empathize and resonate with archetypal themes of longing, grief, hope, and abandonment, connecting us to what’s universal and meaningful in our common struggles.

Because Blues music often deals with shadow themes it can help us to develop non-polarized attitudes towards human suffering, bringing acceptance and transcendence. In Winborn’s words, “Ultimately, the blues has an innate healing potential: it is a form of therapy which incorporates elements of humor, alchemical imagination, personification and the narrative impulse.”8 As a music therapist I’ve witnessed firsthand how music, specifically the Blues, can provide healing support to people who are vulnerable, disempowered or socially marginalized.

In psychiatric hospitals, nursing homes, pediatric cancer wards, or programs for the developmentally disabled this music has a powerful way of meeting people in the trenches of the deepest, darkest experiences that life brings. Blues music is direct, emotional, and above all, accessible. To write a Blues song we can simply start with the question “What’s bothering you today?” Raw, heartfelt lyrics flow easily into the reassuring form of the 12 bar blues where even the most challenging and overwhelming emotions are contained, accepted, validated and transformed.

In the final chapter “Imaging the Blues,” Winborn encourages us to listen with an active imagination approach, allowing the music to evoke feelings, images, and memories which emerge from the unconscious. At this point it would have been helpful to clarify the role of Music Therapy in the prescribed use of music as a therapeutic catalyst vs. music as therapy, the awareness that music is intrinsically therapeutic. There is great potential for interface with the field of Music Therapy since Blues music is widely used in clinical settings with great therapeutic success. Winborn’s depth psychological perspective lends itself to further inquiry into practical applications in the field of Music Therapy as well as the interface between Depth Psychology and the Creative Arts Therapies.

An Antidote For Rationalism?

Is Blues music an antidote to Western society’s tendency to intellectualize, compartmentalize and defend against emotions? Winborn makes a good argument for this and illustrates how the Blues can deepen and expand our emotional vocabulary via universal acoustic images that speak to the heart. The musical elements of rhythm, timbre, and vocal tone create a physiological response which overrides the mental and ego defenses and gets underneath our skin. The instinctual, visceral, emotional energy of the Blues is the shadow of Western classical music idioms and provides a means for reckoning with both our collective and personal shadow.9

Paradoxically the Blues helps us to both accept and transcend painful emotions since Blues lyrics are often laced with humor, wisdom, signification and elements of the trickster archetype. Winborn provides an excellent analysis of how the Blues-man performer can play a shamanic role as a catalyst for transformation in the listener, encouraging us to accept the reality of human misery and hear the Blues as a “joyful participation in the sorrows of the world.”10

Deep Blues is well crafted with research in the areas of music history, aesthetics, philosophy, and depth psychology. Got the blues? Deep Blues infuses the midnight hour with meaning and provides the reader with a homeopathic remedy for what ails the soul.
notes

1 American “blues” singer, songwriter, pianist, see http://www.elijahwald.com/carrtimes.html

2 Neumann states, “The archetype always refers to a unitary reality embracing world and psyche.” See The Journal of Analytic Psychology, Vol. 4, Issue 2, 1959, p.126.

3 Burton, Robert and Gass, William H., New York: NYBR, 2001.

4 Ibid. p.117.

5 For more on Duke Ellington see http://ellingtonweb.ca/ and Duke Ellington

6 p. 66.

7 Neumann states, “The archetype always refers to a unitary reality embracing world and psyche.” See The Journal of Analytic Psychology, Vol. 4, Issue 2, 1959, p.126.

8 p.7

9 p. 11. Shadow- “Hidden or unconscious aspects of oneself, both good and bad, which the ego has repressed or never recognized.” (Sharp, Jung Lexicon)

10 p.21.

---

Reviewer Bio

Laura Sentineri Harness, MA, MT-BC has a Masters degree in Integral Counseling Psychology from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a Bachelor’s degree in Music Therapy from Arizona State University. She has worked as a Board Certified Music Therapist for over 25 years, using music and expressive arts therapies in a variety of clinical settings. She is currently a Jungian oriented therapist in private practice and is the director of Sedona Music Therapy Services, a state funded agency which provides Music Therapy services to the developmentally disabled throughout northern Arizona. Laura plays the guitar, piano, harp and harmonium and writes songs and poems, many of them inspired by her dreams and inner work. She lives in Sedona, Arizona where she and her husband are co-directors of Temenos Healing Arts Center and they lead personalized, mythic retreats in the majestic beauty of Sedona’s red rock cathedrals.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including 

Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, Poetry, 

and a growing list of alternative titles. 

www.fisherkingpress.com

News Release: Deep Blues and Unitary Reality

Fisher King Press is pleased to present

Deep Blues: 

Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey

by Mark Winborn
Deep Blues explores the archetypal journey of the human psyche through an examination of the blues as a musical genre. The genesis, history, and thematic patterns of the blues are examined from an archetypal perspective and various analytic theories – especially the interaction between Erich Neumann’s concept of unitary reality and the blues experience. Mythological and shamanistic parallels are used to provide a deeper understanding of the role of the bluesman, the blues performance, and the innate healing potential of the music. Universal aspects of human experience and transcendence are revealed through the creative medium of the blues. The atmosphere of Deep Blues is enhanced by the black and white photographs of Tom Smith which capture striking blues performances in the Maxwell Street section of Chicago. Jungian analysts, therapists and psychoanalytic practitioners with an interest in the interaction between creative expression and human experience should find Deep Blues a worthy contribution. Deep Blues also appeals to ethnomusicologists and enthusiasts of all forms of music.

In his ever-fascinating book, Dr. Mark Winborn goes where few authors on the blues have ever gone: into the profoundly psychological implications of the genre. A Jungian by training, Winborn argues convincingly how the blues communicates for reasons that extend to the symbolic language of the unconscious. His results are sure to inspire future research in not just the blues but in other areas of traditional culture and the creative act.

—Dr. William L. Ellis, Saint Michael’s College, Colchester, Vermont Ethnomusicologist - Musician - Music Critic

Just like a fine bluesman, Winborn ‘riffs’ on the various psychological aspects of his topic: the genesis of the sound, the unitary reality created in playing and listening to the blues, its archetypal manifestations and healing potential, and the influence of the personality of performer and performance. As he states, ‘the blues belongs among the great arts because of its extraordinary capacity to embrace, embody, and transcend the opposites, especially as they become manifest in the experience of tragedy and suffering.’ Using original lyrics throughout, Winborn invites us to reimagine the power of the blues in its ability to deepen our own soulfulness.

—August J. Cwik, Psy.D., Jungian Analyst & Musician

Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist. He is a training and supervising analyst of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts. Dr. Winborn maintains a private practice in Memphis, Tennessee where he is also currently the Training Coordinator for the Memphis Jungian Seminar.

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Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting-Edge Fiction, and a growing list of alternative titles.

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Jigging in the Deep Blues: News Release

Another Fisher King Press title is on the way:

Deep Blues: Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey

by Mark Winborn

Deep Blues explores the archetypal journey of the human psyche through an examination of the blues as a musical genre. The genesis, history, and thematic patterns of the blues are examined from an archetypal perspective and various analytic theories. Mythological and shamanistic parallels are used to provide a deeper understanding of the role of the bluesman, the blues performance, and the innate healing potential of the blues.  Universal aspects of human experience and transcendence are revealed through the creative medium of the blues. The atmosphere of Deep Blues is enhanced by the black and white photographs of Tom Smith which capture striking blues performances in the Maxwell Street section of Chicago.  Jungian analysts, therapists and psychoanalytic practitioners with an interest in the interaction between creative expression and human experience should find Deep Blues satisfying. Deep Blues should also appeal to enthusiasts of music, ethnomusicology, and the blues.

about the author
Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA is a Jungian Psychoanalyst and Clinical Psychologist. He is a training and supervising analyst of the Inter-Regional Society of Jungian Analysts and is also affiliated with the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis and the International Association for Analytical Psychology. Dr. Winborn maintains a private practice in Memphis, Tennessee where he is also currently the Training Coordinator for the Memphis Jungian Seminar, a training seminar of the IRSJA.

Fisher King Press publishes an eclectic mix of worthy books including Jungian Psychological Perspectives, Cutting Edge Fiction, and a growing list of alternative titles.

• We Ship Worldwide.
• Credit Cards Accepted.
• Phone Orders Welcomed: +1-831-238-7799 skype: fisher_king_press