Difficult circumstances can remove delusions in our lives, and enable us to grow and know ourselves better. Our relationships to AI-like bots of various kinds can clarify the importance of being human. Lynn’s current project, The Human Self in Dire Circumstances, explores how pain, frustration, loss, or disease, terrible as they are, can help us see through various delusions that keep up from realizing our true selves.
Repairing damage
When we have experienced emotional or physical or relationship damage in the past, it can continue to feel frustrating at best and irreparably harmful at worst. I so often look at the broken places as problems, limitations, and inadequacies. Or I try to ignore them. But the kintsugi approach actually highlights the beauty in repairs.
The Japanese word kintsugi describes the ancient art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver or platinum. Kintsugi takes a broken piece of pottery and uses precious and beautiful golden lacquer to highlight all those places where the breakage happened. The end result is something that many would say is even more beautiful than the pristine original.
Kintsuge treats breakage and repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise. Reflecting on this is helpful for me. The kinds of damage we can experience can include things like emotional abuse, physical illness or injuries, treatments for cancer, relationship break-ups, or forced relocation.
I have had a laundry basket for decades. The lid has slowly been breaking apart at the edges. I decided to repair it using raffia pieces that came in some packaging. I tied the raffia pieces to the edge places where it was breaking to hold them together. This is a drawing of the result. Someone commented on this drawing, and said that it looks like the raffia pieces are dancing. I can look at this basket lid, and reflect on the same for my life. I can react to the injuries, and make beauty, and creatively respond. Fully acknowledging the injuries, the hurts, the damage, but also reveling in the dance of my responses.
Interviews
Art and the experience of suffering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-KwqF8JvYwQ&list=PL0wqJ0vwushOyoJWF__8BRLzt8PUhIg9b&index=3
How suffering can reveal us to ourselves:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uqnkl3lesQ4&list=PL0wqJ0vwushOyoJWF__8BRLzt8PUhIg9b&index=4
What If Suffering Had an On/Off Switch?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=HdjVLMdLpWw&list=PL0wqJ0vwushOyoJWF__8BRLzt8PUhIg9b&index=9
Dire circumstances, stress, and suffering:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TILRcKdqd7s&list=PL0wqJ0vwushOyoJWF__8BRLzt8PUhIg9b&index=10
Presentations
Joy and Human Flourishing, Yale University, October 28-29, 2016 ( to see my ongoing work in this area click here)
Promotion of resiliency, post-traumatic growth, greater sense of meaning, and less burnout in the face of distress. Nov 1 2017, CCT, La Mirada, California.
Delusions about the self that are dispelled by dire circumstances. January 17, 2018, CCT, La Miranda, California.
How can the arts help us to care for those in distress? Revealing the heart of the human person. Rosemead School of Psychology, California, Nov 28, 2017.
Flourishing in difficult circumstances. August 2018 Collegeville Institute, Minnesota.
Full Spectrum Living: The “More Than” in Daily Life, Full Day Workshop, Community of Caregivers Conference, September 19, 2014, Kalamazoo, Michigan. Various CEU’s. Brochure
From the brochure: “Developing the inner life opens us to full spectrum of daily experience, which is ever-present, but often overlooked. Most people sense that spirituality has a positive impact on the quality of life: less burnout, fewer addictions, better relationships, and greater equanimity to name a few benefits. The day will include times of quiet reflection, opportunities for expressive writing, and a chance to share with others.”
Flourishing in the Midst of Life’s Challenges. Full day Retreat, Shaker Heights, Ohio, October 4, 2014.
From the brochure: Overwhelming responsibilities and duties, an exhausting daily life, physical and mental disease, aging, loss of any kind…. How do we flourish in the midst of life’s challenges? this retreat provides space to become more open to how limitation and hard times can actually enable us to live more fully. Challenge and difficulty can pull the wool from our eyes, the wool of illusions about life on the surface, calling us to have a more realistic view of life – one rich with meaning and blessing. Resources that can help will be explored such as humor, the arts, silence, community, and journalling.
A Day of Refreshment for Caregivers, Workshop/Retreat June 20, 2014, Healing Services and Spiritual Care Department, Cleveland Clinic Bolton House, Lyndhurst, Ohio.
This was a day of rest and renewal, inspiration and sharing, for those who provide spiritual care and support in the midst of illness in hospital settings. We explored our own relationships with the transcendent through poetry and music and learned more about each other in the process. Lynn led some exercises that could also be carried into our ordinary daily life beyond the retreat, and provided some methods and tools for deeply listening to compassionate love for each of us in the midst of the rough and smooth of our daily lives.
Metaphor and the Self: A Role for the Arts in Understanding Suffering and Treating the Person in Distress,International Neuroethics Conference, Brain Matters 3: Values at the Crossroads of Neurology, Psychiatry, and Psychology, October 24-25, 2012
Neuroethics, the Arts and the Nature of the Human Person, Medical Humanities Conference, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan, September 29-30 2011.
Visual Art: Insights on the nature of the self in health and disease. Opening of the Gelbke Art Center, Hiram College, February 2008.
What exactly are ‘Good things’–the Outcomes of Interest in Human Research. Public lecture as part of the Bissell Symposium, Hiram College, March 25, 2008.
“The Human Person: Possibilities for Flourishing in Dire Circumstances.” Hellenic Research Foundation, European Research Network. Athens, Greece, September 21, 2007.
“The Human Being as revealed more fully in Disability and In Extremis.” European Research Network meeting: The human person in the 21st Century. Thessaloniki, Greece, April 22-25, 2007.
Articles
“Crucial considerations for AI implementation with implications for human relationships and recommendations for action”. June 2023 for the US Office of Science and Technology Policy
“Refining Research on Joy” Underwood LG (October 2019) Journal of Positive Psychology, https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2019.1685575. click here to view preprint: Underwood_Joy_Positive_Psychology_2019_ RE editsLGU edit
“Sadness, Depression, and the Dark Night of the Soul: Transcending the Medicalization of Sadness” Lynn G. Underwood (2021), Journal of Disability & Religion, DOI: 10.1080/23312521.2021.1895954
“Now bounded, now immeasurable: Perspectives on time in disability, in suffering, and at end of life.” click here to view Underwood L, Medical Humanities (2007) 33: 11-15.
“Physiologic Markers of Chronic Stress in Premenopausal, Middle-Aged Women”, with Powell Lynda H., Lovallo William R., Matthews Karen A., Meyer Peter, Midgley A. Rees, Baum Andrew, Stone, Underwood, Lynn Arthur, McCann J, Janidula Herro Kristi, Ory Marcia, Psychosomatic Medicine (2002) 64:502-509
“Biobehavioral Pain Research: A Multi-Institute Assessment of Cross-Cutting Issues and Research Needs,” Keefe, FJ, Underwood L. Jacobs, M. The Clinical Journal of Pain, 1997:13:91-103.
“The Intrinsic Value of Mental Health,” Underwood L. with Ville Lehtinen et al, in Mental Health Promotion, World Health Organization, 2004. (Also available in Mandarin Chinese)
Invited Blogposts
Vulnerability and Inclusion (Invited blogpost for the Berkley Forum at Georgetown University, October 10, 2018)
Humility and Self-Love: Are They Compatible? (February 24, 2016)
Bouncing Back and Springing Up: The Complicated Nature of Post-Traumatic Growth (February 27, 2017)
Lighten Up: The Goodness of Humor and Humility (August 18, 2016)