Colwyn, Age 5 1/2, “Protecting Mom and Dad”

Abstract

The present paper is part of a larger case study of a 5 1/2 year old Korean boy, Colwyn, with his mother, Dr. Bae. Dr. Bae interviewed Colwyn twice, about 2 months apart; the first interview was audiotaped, the second videotaped. The present paper is based primarily on the second interview where Colwyn tells several wildly imaginative stories of himself like a superhero “protecting mom and dad.” Our aim is to communicate a sense of Colwyn’s “feeling, consciousness, state” when he is telling these “stories”, using the portraiture philosophy of Lawrence-Lightfoot and Davis and the “Participant-as-ally - Essentialist portraiture” approach of Witz and his students.
 The paper suggests that Colwyn’s “telling stories” in that Interview involves a highly self-actualized way of “being involved with his ‘I’”, which was apparently prompted by Interview 1 and is expressed in the drawing in Fig. 1. (In Interview 2 he constantly comes back to this drawing and uses it as a jumping off point for ideas in the stories). In addition, when he is telling a story, his whole being (feeling and mind) is “as if flowing in a direct channel,” manifesting as a constant stream of inspiration (creativity), ideas and diverse kinds of energy which is coming from within him, and that is carried on a powerful undercurrent of moral feeling of “being good.” At the same time telling the story represents a state of “subjectively being in a unity with” his mother’s feelings of appreciation and love. These things represent intense genuine spiritual engagement that at the same time manifests itself as creative expression in painting and in verbal interaction, already at this young age. This conclusion is supported by various additional data available.