Hi,

I'm Neil Gorman (LCSW, DSW, AP), and this one my two email newsletters. I'm sending this one out because it was in my drafts folder, and this week is ultra-beyond-double-plus-crazy for me. (i.e. I needed to take the time I usually put into writing the newsletter and put it in to other things.)

Let's get into it, shall we?

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Preface:

I like to wake up very early (between 5:30 am and 6:00 am) and do a little bit of reading, thinking, and often a bit of writing. The things I write in these early hours are not that serious. They are un-polished bit s of text that captures what is on top of my mind and get me going in a way that I think makes the rest of my day feel nicer. (I've recently started to keep some of my early mornings writing in a blog I'm calling Hello Daystar.)

The content in this edition of LM came from some of the things I've been thinking/writing about as I get my day started.

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The Levi-Strauss concept:

​Lévi-Strauss used the word “bricolage” and “bricoleur” to describe the ways that a person might use whatever is at hand to make things work.

In The Savage Mind (1962), the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss used the word bricolage to describe the characteristic patterns of mythological thought. Bricolage is the skill of using whatever is at hand and recombining them to create something new. Levi-Strauss compares the working of the bricoleur and the engineer. The bricoleur, who is the “savage mind”, works with his hands in devious ways, puts preexisting things together in new ways, and makes do with whatever is at hand. What Levi-Strauss points out here is that signs [or signifiers] already in existence are used for purposes that they were originally not meant for.1

Lévi-Strauss is using these terms to describe how cultures come up with myths that make sense of things and comparing it to science that is used in western culture. There is a comparison between the bricoleur and engineers or scientists.

in our own time the ‘bricoleur’ is still someone who works with his hands and uses devious means compared to those of a craftsman.2​

What is important about the concept (for me anyway) is how it focuses on the creative use of whatever is available to make something happen. This is different than a sort of hyper-focused or goal-directed style of making things happen.

In his book The Savage Mind (1962, English translation 1966), French anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss used “bricolage” to describe the characteristic patterns of mythological thought. In his description it is opposed to the engineers’ creative thinking, which proceeds from goals to means. Mythical thought, according to Lévi-Strauss, attempts to re-use available materials in order to solve new problems. 3​

What I’m thinking:

I think an analyst might be a good example of a bricoleur. The analyst will use whatever is at hand in the analysand’s (patient’s) speech. The analyst will highlight particular elements, and eventually, make interpretations and constructions.

The analysand will then be a bricoleur who makes creative use of what happens in his/her analysis to “tie a knot” or make sense of his/her experience of being a person living with (on/in) a lawless real.

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If any of this is of interest to you, you may want to check out this follow up post at Hello Daystar.

References:

1. Nasrullah Mambrol. (2016). Claude Lévi-Strauss’ Concept of Bricolage. Accessed by me on 1/17/21. ↩​
2. From the website for Bricolage: The Journal of Comparative Literature at Fordham University. Accessed by me on 1/17/21. ↩​
3. Wikipedia article on Bricolage. Accessed by me on 1/17/21. ↩​

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