Shibboleth and the unconscious

Kjell Andersen

Chapter 7 in Leadership, Art, and Responsibility, 2026, pp 37-38 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter presents a psychiatrist's reflective account of encountering a single Shibboleth performance 15 years earlier – an experience that remained psychologically and emotionally indelible. He describes the form as intense, disorienting, fragmentary, and deeply penetrating, bypassing cognitive defence mechanisms and speaking directly to the unconscious. Shibboleth, he argues, contains threatening and emotionally charged material, intensified by its unpredictable musical–literary composition, which can momentarily dissolve the boundaries of the self and expose repressed impulses such as guilt, shame, sorrow, and fear. Yet this confrontation with inner pain is also a precondition for genuine inner growth. He challenges simplified claims that art alone can make one a “better leader”, insisting instead that transformation requires difficult, prolonged inner work. As a unique artistic form – whose composition gives rise to something new, operating beyond language – Shibboleth enables a movement from one unconscious to another. What remains with him is the atmosphere: the eerie, the unsettling, the trace of hope, and the enduring imprint left upon the soul.

Keywords: Shibboleth Performance; Unconscious Processes; Psychoanalytic Perspective; Emotional Impact; Fragmentation and Form; Anxiety and Resistance; Artistic Confrontation; Inner Growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781049403991
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