Some Contributions of Applied Psychohistorical Poetry to Imagining and Understanding a World at the Edge – Howard Stein

Abstract:

What happens when catastrophic world destruction fantasies, long associated with individuals afflicted with schizophrenia, and tribes or nations experiencing devastating identity loss, becomes possible if not likely for the entire human species if not for most life on earth? One way that psychohistorians can grapple with this unimaginable-become-imaginable reality is through applied poetry. The presenter will read, discuss, and facilitate discussion of poetry, most of which is his own, that attempts to enter into and immerse both poet and reader/listener in a world you cannot make up; and to help make sense (interpretation, explanation) of that lived experience.

Short bio:

Howard F. Stein, an applied, psychoanalytic, medical, and organizational anthropologist, psychohistorian, organizational consultant, and poet, is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, OK, USA, where he taught for nearly 35 years. He has published numerous articles, chapters, and 35 books. He has published 11 books and chapbooks of poetry, of which the most recent are Presence — Poems from Ghost Ranch (2020), Centre and Circumference (2018), and Light and Shadow (2nd edition, 2018). Finishing Line Press has published five of his chapbooks. He can be reached at