Remembering Paul Laffoley (1935-2015)
Today would have been Paul Laffoley’s 91st birthday! Sadly he passed away of congestive heart failure in 2015, just months before the first printing of the book I worked with him on entitled The Essential Paul Laffoley that was supported and distributed by the University of Chicago Press. Paul and I met in 1987, and I was so absolutely taken by the depth of his knowledge that we proceeded to develop the first monograph on his work entitled The Phenomenology of Revelation (1989). Brilliantly designed by Tony Morgan, and edited by Jeanne Marie Wasilik, I thought an excerpt from my first interview would illuminate his unique perception:
“This concerns a dream that I had in July of 1961. I had just finished about a year of weekly sessions with a psychiatrist, who had treated me for a mild state of catatonia. During the last two months I had been given eight electric shock treatments. . . I was told that electric shock therapy induces a profound sleep, a sleep that cannot be obtained naturally or with anesthetics, and that through this deep rest it is possible to reach unplumbed energy levels in the mind . . .it was a couple of months after the shock treatments that this dream came to pass. Up to this time in my life my dreams had always been mostly in black and white, and only sporadically in color. After the shock treatments I began to dream only in extremely vivid color… My veridical dream happened spontaneously. My will became part of the action. . . I still had that sense of suspension . . . and I became almost a victim of the dream. . .
As I looked around I realized that this was an exhibit of sculpture—but not ordinary sculpture. What I was looking at appeared to be physically alive . . . here were things that were vibrant and even more alive—if that is possible to imagine—than the people who were wandering around looking at them. . . I was seized with an overwhelming emotion. My first reaction was a complete jealousy . . . All the forms I’ve been thinking about or could think about for years and years to come are expressed in this work. I couldn’t even catch up with this work, let along hope to achieve the next logical for formal steps. . .”
Condensed from Chapter One: The Dream as the Initiation.
The Phenomenology of Revelation (1989)
