Improvisation and Stand-Up Comedy

In this article, I investigate the ways in which improvisation occurs and works in stand-up comedy. I introduce a continuum model of composing and improvising and for understanding and classifying generative and nongenerative performances. The model reflects the fact that cognitive neuroscience research on creativity and improvisation provides evidence for the claim that composing and improvising are two species of the same genus (selective creation), and the differences between generative and nongenerative performance are not categorical but vague, admitting of a continuum model. The model is applied to standard cases of stand-up comedy to illuminate the specific ways in which improvisation and composition are present in stand-up comedy, and the ways in which stand-up comedy performances are mixtures of generative and nongenerative elements. In addition, I address some of the reasons why such understanding is important and useful.     

Training generalized improvisation of tools by preschool children

The development of new, "creative" behaviors was examined in a problem-solving context. One form of problem solving, improvisation, was defined as finding a substitute to replace the specifically designated, but currently unavailable, tool ordinarily used to solve the problem. The study examined whether preschool children spontaneously displayed generalized improvisation skills, and if not, whether they could be trained to do so within different classes of tools. Generalization across different tool classes was monitored but not specifically trained. Five preschool children participated in individual sessions that first probed their skill at improvising tools, and later trained and probed generalized improvisation in one or more of three tool classes (Hammers, Containers, and Shoelaces), using a multiple-baseline design. All five children were trained with Hammers, two were trained in two classes, and two were trained in all three tool classes. Four of the five children improvised little in Baseline. During Training, all five showed increased generalized improvisation within the trained class, but none across classes. Tools fabricated by item combinations were rare in Baseline, but common in Training. Followup probes showed that the training effects were durable.     

Therapists’ Subjective Experience during Improvisational Moments in the Clinical Encounter-Discussion of I’mprovisation

With this discussion, I reflect on the limitations of this pilot qualitative research. These include how categories of observation are established and the generalizability of the reported results beyond the small sample of subjects studied. Additionally, the metaphor of theater used by the investigators for understanding improvisation is compared and contrasted with the metaphor of jazz improvisation. Jazz improvisation as a metaphor works well with the quantitative data coming from infant/caregiver video studies. These studies represent a more micro focus on embodied registrations of the emotional/behavioral interactive process and account for data which might be otherwise unconsciously overlooked or dissociated with a strategy valorizing I’mprovisation. I then visit the question of whether improvisation should be held as an ideal versus an ideal of continuous practice and vigilance for how theoretical biases, personal credos and habits of activity can become unreflective traps blocking spontaneous emergent possibilities for clinically relevant movement and growth.     

Experiencing Musical Improvisation: The Body,the Mind,and the Senses

In the following article, I will try to describe and, thus, share with my readers those moments and those segments in my life that have allowed me to be involved in the experience of musical improvisation, which is comprised of the gestures, ideas, and emotions that, together, encompass the musical objects of improvisation, and the desire, the pleasure of sharing these objects in their shaping and creation.     

企业社会责任表现与员工满意度对组织即兴效能的影响

以提升组织即兴效能为出发点,构建了企业社会责任、员工满意度与组织即兴效能三者关系的理论模型;在此基础上,通过对三者各自维度的划分,借助结构方程统计分析方法,重点讨论了企业社会责任表现与员工满意度对组织即兴效能的影响机理。     

I’ll Think of Something: Improvisation in Small Church Service Programs

This paper examines the improvisation practiced by leaders in three emergency feeding programs on the south side of Chicago. It contributes to the theoretical understanding of religious leadership. Scholars recognize that religious leadership is improvisational, but little research has been done about how and when leaders improvise. This paper demonstrates that leaders in these feeding programs innovate frequently, but it argues that they do so in a limited way. Unlike improvisers in music, theater, or business, who innovate to increase variability, these kitchen improvisers exercise creativity in order to lessen variability and produce predictable results. The paper identifies the structural factors that promote and inhibit improvisation. It argues that space for improvisation is constructed by human need, institutional mission, and supply uncertainty, but that space for innovation is simultaneously limited by organizational expectations and the structure of volunteer labor. The paper suggests that the structural factors limiting improvisation in these programs also limits creativity in other areas of church work.     

A frame of analysis for collective free improvisation on the bridge between Husserl’s phenomenology of time and some recent readings of the predictive coding model

The kind of collective improvisation attained by the “free jazz” at the beginning of the sixties sets a challenge to analytic theories of collective intentionality, that emphasize the role played by future-directed plans in the interlocking and interdependent intentions (and attitudes) of the individual participants, because in the free jazz case the performers’ interdependence or [interplay] stems from an intuitive understanding between musicians. Otherwise said: what happens musically is not planned in advance, but arises from spontaneous interactions in the group. By looking at the way jazz improvisers take up the challenge of making music together without a pre-conceived notion as to what kind of effect they will achieve and without a pre-set code of agreements (related to theme, chord patterns and chorus lengths), my aim has been to clarify what kind of strategies — other than advanced action plans and joint commitments — are used by improvising musicians to integrate their improvisations into a unified shared activity. In developing this proposal I initially drawn pre-theoretically on one paradigmatic study case — Ornette Coleman’s double quartet Free Jazz, A collective Improvisation (1960) and brought it in conversation with Husserl’s phenomenology of time. In a final move, I brought this phenomenological frame into dialogue with some recent readings of the predictive coding model. All in all, what we learned from the Free Jazz case is that the interdependence and interlocking of attitudes among individual participants characteristic of shared intention is not determined by a future-directed plan and the rational pressure to be responsive to and coordinate with others, it typically engages. Rather, in the free jazz case, the performers’ connection and interplay depend on the players’ readiness to feel each other out, by listening to each other playing, in a way that no doubt presupposes the Husserlian retention-protention scheme.     

Mistakes as Pathways Towards Creativity in Counseling: A Case Example

ABSTRACT

The relationship between mistakes, improvisation, and counseling process is explored through the use of a case example involving a failed clinical intervention. Exploration of mistakes offers an opportunity to examine multiple elements of counseling while highlighting the creative nature of the counseling process. Counselor educators are encouraged to incorporate discussions of mistakes and creative development into training.     

The Aesthetics of Imperfection Reconceived: Improvisations,Compositions, and Mistakes

Ted Gioia associated the “aesthetics of imperfection” with improvised music. In an earlier article, I extended it to all musical performance. This article reconceives my discussion, offering more precise analyses: (1) The aesthetics of imperfection is now argued to involve open, spontaneous response to contingencies of performance or production, reacting positively to idiosyncratic instruments; apparent failings in performance, and so on. Perfectionists, in contrast, prefer a planning model, not readily modified in face of contingencies. (2) Imperfection is not toleration of errors and imperfections, as Gioia assumes, but a positive aesthetic, as in Japanese wabi-sabi. Imperfections can become new styles or kinds of perfection—and so true imperfectionism is a constant striving for new contingencies to respond to. (3) A subtler, more complex relation between composition and improvisation is proposed, in which both have broad and narrow senses. Composition involves (a) works, usually desk produced and notated; or more generally, (b) putting things together in an aesthetically rewarding form. Thus, improvisation is a (broad sense) compositional method. (4) Improvisation and composition are interdependent; both involve structure and spontaneity. (5) Imperfectionism is an aesthetics of performance—of compositions as well as improvisations. Improvisation is no risker, or prone to mistakes, than performance of compositions.     

Implementation of structure-mapping inference by event-file binding and action planning: a model of tool-improvisation analogies

Structure-mapping inferences are generally regarded as dependent upon relational concepts that are understood and expressible in language by subjects capable of analogical reasoning. However, tool-improvisation inferences are executed by members of a variety of non-human primate and other species. Tool improvisation requires correctly inferring the motion and force-transfer affordances of an object; hence tool improvisation requires structure mapping driven by relational properties. Observational and experimental evidence can be interpreted to indicate that structure-mapping analogies in tool improvisation are implemented by multi-step manipulation of event files by binding and action-planning mechanisms that act in a language-independent manner. A functional model of language-independent event-file manipulations that implement structure mapping in the tool-improvisation domain is developed. This model provides a mechanism by which motion and force representations commonly employed in tool-improvisation structure mappings may be sufficiently reinforced to be available to inwardly directed attention and hence conceptualization. Predictions and potential experimental tests of this model are outlined.     

“Like Walking Backwards” – The Challenge of Theater Improvisation Paradigm within the Psychotherapeutic Discourse – Reply to Commentaries

This article responds to two commentaries to the author’s original article; both commentaries relate to the issue of theater improvisation as a distinct paradigm in psychotherapy. The commentaries represent what can viewed metaphorically as the positions of “Yes, But” and “Yes, And.” The article describes these two positions, then addresses the issue of psychotherapy as art and/or science, and subsequently wrestles with how to train clinicians in improvisational skills. Considered as well, are the possible systematic changes the theater improvisation paradigm can have on the psychotherapeutic field.     

High-Risk,High-Gain Choices: Commentary on Paper by Philip A. Ringstrom

In this commentary building on Philip Ringstrom's paper, I address how improvisation, an unpremeditated spontaneous activity emerging within an interactive context, can be analytic even when not shaped consciously by the analyst's reflective capacity and therapeutic judgment. A microanalysis of the nonverbal dimensions of the analytic exchanges that Ringstrom offers is used to illustrate how affective experience can be attended and coconstructed on a subsymbolic process register carried on kinesthetic, somatic, and acoustic dimensions that may or may not be transduced to symbolic expression for mutative analytic impact to have occurred. The metaphor of jazz is added to the metaphor of improvisational theater to help elaborate this view.     

Trait Anger and Music Perception

The Spielberger Trait Anger test was administered to 287 undergraduate college students enrolled in courses in jazz appreciation. The recording of a jazz saxophone improvisation was played for the students, and they were asked to rate its emotion. The mean trait anger score for listeners who rated the music as angry was significantly higher than the mean trait anger score of those who rated it as friendly. A small but significant correlation was found between perceptions of anger in the music and listener scores on the trait anger test. Results suggest that personality may influence perception of emotion in music and that jazz improvisation may not be reliable for communicating emotions because of wide individual differences in how its emotional content is perceived.     

Neuronal symphonies: Musical improvisation and the centrencephalic space of functional integration

Musical improvisation is a sophisticated activity in which a performer realizes, real-time, melodic, and rhythmic sequences in harmony with those from other musicians. The study of musical improvisation helps one to understand not only the cognition of creativity, but also the complex neuronal basis of executive functions, the relation between conscious and unconscious action, and even more. So far, the prevailing models, founded on the brain imaging method, have focused on the connection between the cortical areas and their cognitive processes. Little attention, on the other hand, has been given to the huge variety of subcortical activities, especially in the basal ganglia. This fundamental subcortical component, through its implicit procedures and the role it plays in memory, is responsible to produce new information all the time, allowing the prefrontal cortex to transform a huge and disordered amount of data in explicit creative acts. The basal ganglia are strongly related to the activation of chemical signals generated by dissonance or lack of symmetry between perception and expectation, participating even in the responses to environmental demands according to the circumstances. Thus, they interact with the frontal cortex and with the limbic system, playing a key role in planning and selecting appropriate actions and in decision making. In this text, we try to explain in which sense improvisation is connected to the processes of executive functions, to creativity and to the integrated activity of cortical–subcortical areas controlling the free flow of ideas and to expressive spontaneity. Eventually, we purpose a model according to which structure (improvisational field) and process (improvisational time) take part at the centrencephalic space of functional integration, which, through both competing and cooperating dynamics, gives way to spontaneous composition.     

Meditative Dialogue: Cultivating the Transformative Theater of Psychotherapy

This article offers a selective review of literature on the use of improvisation and play to promote “the bursting forth from the unknown in the moment” (Kindler, 2010, p. 224) in what I term the “theater of psychotherapy.” It presents an innovative Meditative Dialogue process through which clients and their therapists are able to cultivate and access this “theater” as they co-create creative spaces in which transformative experiences are accessible. A brief vignette offers an illustration of how the Meditative Dialogue process helps to develop intimacy, presence, and focus through a collaborative positioning of curiosity, openness, and enlivenment in the therapeutic relationship.     

Reply to Commentary by Daniel N. Stern

I respond to Stern's largely affirming discussion by fleshing out a few points, for example, improvisation is more than just being spontaneous, it is ensemble work that plays off and with patterns emergent in the personalities of both parties. These patterns illuminate something about the unconscious of each from which blossom things heretofore unimagined or unarticulated. Several principles are then emphasized: First, improvisational moments arise when the “characters” in the moment draw from something real within themselves along with who they are inducing one another to become. Second, the cultivation of play in improvisation lends itself to putting to rest the myth of the perfectly analyzed analyst as not only impossible but as being both unnecessary and undesirable—a seminal point to the entire relational canon. Third, improvisation is a means for putting live flesh on the sterile bones of a host of theories now informing the contemporary psychoanalytic perspective such as chaos and complexity theory, along with dynamic systems theory. I also note that improvisational moments exhibit an emerging sense of vitality and a deepened sense of connection between the partners. Their work obtains a greater sense of focus, though not a deliberate focus as that their relational unconsciouses are “directing” them. Improvisational work feels liberating, playful, as well as affirming and recognizing what what each is bringing to their coauthorship. By contrast, when the improvisation fails, it devolves into negative thirdness or one-upsmanship, the qualities of which reflect deadness, avoidance, confusion, constriction of play, and a misrecognition of one another that devolves into a mutual sense of defeat. Responding to Stern's question about posi-traums, I affirm there is a phenomenon in which an entrenched emotional conviction of a patient's can be dramatically altered. This happens when something positive occurs that cannot be assimilated within the patient's intransigently negative belief system such that she must accommodate a new organizing principle, that is, a new emotional conviction to make sense of it. I concede, however, that it may be too soon to tell how much such phenomena penetrate the more physiologically encoded elements of trauma.     

The Function of the Human Motor System in Processes of Storing and Retrieving Preverbal,Primal Experience

Because the development of selfobject relationships is intimately involved with the development of the motor apparatus from the day of birth, it is assumed that movement improvisation can bring about the freeing of archaic memory traces. The author has painstakingly pulled together examples from her practice to demonstrate the existence of emotive memory clusters, which encompass many of life's vicissitudes and store them. She builds a theoretical framework for her hypotheses by linking her clinical observations with modern child research. Clinical vignettes illustrate this highly original, useful work. Transference and resistance are viewed with the same vigilance as in psychoanalysis while movement improvisations are given importance as type of free association.