From Winnicott's teddy bear to Porges' polyvagal theory to Turner's virtual space to Omar's "I feel you" I see a steady progression of explanation that convinces me of its truth as well as suggesting what to do about it. I'll see whether I can explain.
To get us all up to speed together, I'm linking four short YouTube talks about the things I want to discuss. They range from the formal to the slightly wacky to a crime series you probably know. If you go on reading this post, then you will benefit from coming back to read it again after you've watched these YouTube clips. They have as much content as a university lecture.
Winnicott: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaZkvvB367I
Omar Little: "I feel you." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22ir_jdkYnc
Winnicott is a key thinker in object relations who is sometimes referred to as a "teddy bear author" because the covers of his books often depict the stuffed bears. Many of us have been a large public groups like pow-wows or ball games where there are small children moving around freely. We've seen them plucking up courage to separate from their mothers and run a distance away, only to panic and come pell-mell back to throw their faces into their mother's laps so they are ostrich-style hidden and safe. Winnicott understood that if they had their teddy bear or "blankie" with them, they were braver.
It was as though they took a little piece of their mother with them. The real biological connection inside the womb, divided by birth, and then gradual personality separation, creates a virtual space between them. The actual cells of the body participate in a space-leaping connection with another person that is the heart of play, art and (later) sex. But it is virtual. You can't see it but you can "feel" it.
Porges is a discoverer and explainer of the vagus nerve that is a third autonomic nervous strand that connects the brain to the heart (the lungs are technically part of the heart), so that it is in addition to the binary of the previously known autonomic system -- sympathetic vs. parasympathetic, which are often identified with danger prompting flight or fight. The third system is a more recent evolution that adds total shut down, fainting. Not just hunkering down, but shutting off, maybe as dissociation which can feel like a silvery unreality in the face of inescapable torture or punishment.
But also, this nerve creates what I call the "frame of expression" which is the presentation of face, breath and heartbeat that convey our feelings to another person, the heart of empathy. It is also virtual, not seen but felt. This is the evolution jump connected to the arts and sciences that was a step added by Neanderthals with flowers and jewelry, quite solid but also "felt". Again, the physical capacity of the body meets and supports something ineffable as music and other creations.
Turner worked as an anthropologist which is particularly valuable since his theories are not based in the Western Empire line of rationality but came from working with indigenous people in Africa. His use of the idea of "liminal" time and space, in which one enters emotionally and rationally into a set-apart and protected place for purposes that include worship, play, rethinking, and other ways of stepping out of what is dictated and "normal", was very useful in "The Bone Chalice." I proposed that the steps of entering the liminal space, worshipping in safety and equality, then being returned to the ordinary world, were steps that correlated closely with many rituals, esp. those that concerned change in status or reinforcement of faith. Objects and even rationality may be included, but if the steps are bungled or left out, the ceremony won't work. It is virtual, not seen but felt.
A second much larger framework also called liminal by Turner is acts that try to restore the wholeness of a culture that is in chaos, whatever the cause from drought to war to stigma to a technology jump. An eloquent explanation for this is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dygFtTWyEGM The vid also addresses "performance," which has become a whole body of theory big enough to be called a discipline.
The idea is that there are ways to restore wholeness to a culture or nation and that they can be enacted virtually. One of his examples is the play "Romeo and Juliet" in which two warring families finally accept peace after the sacrifice of their children. In our present time of dislocation and chaos, this is a crucial and hopeful approach, but we are still sacrificing the children. It queries religion, the institution based on what is thought to be holy, which has the capacity to both rip peoples apart and to heal.
Omar Little enters the discussion as an inhabitant of that liminal chaos created between urban wealth and on the other hand its shadow world of crime and mafia. Omar says, "I feel you." He asks, "Do you feel me?" He imposes the dissociation of death. His justice is not based on the rule of law or any other rationality, but the system of emotion/revenge/desire from living in the limen, over the threshold of the conventional. He's a lot more fun to think about than Republicans. But can his world that rips off both the "civilized" and the "criminal" ever be a source of healing?
Yet this performing man -- he whistles "Farmer in the Dell" to signal people that they are in liminal, potentially deadly territory -- who is not immune to attachment (he loves his partner) -- can he create a ritual of healing? Not. But maybe his story can. It certainly grabbed the attention of a nation. A story is another virtual example that makes people feel.
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