The Moon Is a Silver Coin

Let Poetry Stimulate the Transrational Potential in Children and Adults!

Abstract

This is a theoretical paper aiming at enriching biblio/poetry therapy with a new framework. It consists in a vindication of a “transrational” world view, defined as “perceptions developed and combined in ways that are rejected by an empirical-rational world view”. Such perceptions are frequently dismissed as “magical”, “animistic”, or “superstitious”; frequently denigrated in children; and submerged in adults. Yet they harbor a great potential, worth cultivating purposefully, for personal growth; for a sense of coherence counteracting malaise and promoting resilience; as well as enhanced self-esteem in children.

Children suffer from being constantly reproved for their deficiencies in the adult world, including their supposedly wrongheaded transrational mode of perception. Instead of confining that mode to the preserve of children’s literature, it should be displayed to children in prestigious adult poetry where it occurs in abundance, sometimes with explicit links to childhood. This can engender in children a fellow feeling with adult role models, thereby boosting their self-esteem shaken by the adult world’s fault-finding.

As for adults, they have learnt since their early school years to suppress and belittle the transrational – including their own nocturnal dreams – in favor of empirical rationality. This may cause mental malaise and/or stunt personal growth. However, such conditions can be counteracted in poetry therapy by systematic and attentive exposure to freely metaphorical and associative poetry.

Having established these basic goals, the paper calls for more research into the specific features and potentials of the transrational world view in adults and in young people of different ages.