An analytical psychology view of wholeness in art

Abstract

This paper examines the creative practice and product of the visionary artist, the artist who brings forth a new vision of wholeness for the social group. A description of the general creative process is provided according to Jung's view of the transcendent function. It is by this process that a new vision may be understood to arise. The activity and product of the visionary artist is then reified by situating it within an historical conception of the God-image and as a cultural canon. Drawing from Neumann, three phases or roles of the visionary artist are discussed: the establishment of a culture's new vision, the maintaining of the culture's existing vision, and the enduring of the fragmentation of a culture's ‘exhausted’ vision. A more detailed account, including examples, is then given for the role of the visionary artist within the present state of the West's cultural cannon – a state of fragmentation or, as it often known, the wasteland; a time when the spiritual wholeness has broken down. Finally the artist Peter Birkhäuser is briefly discussed to query the role that analytical psychology may explicitly play in supporting the visionary artist.

Keywords:

• Jung
• numinous
• wholeness
• artist
• creativity

Notes on contributor

Robert Matthews (PhD Physics) is a lecturer in the University of Adelaide's School of Education, specializing in preparing teachers to promote creative and active learning environments. His research focuses on creativity and learning, incorporating the principles of analytical psychology. He is currently training in Switzerland to become a Jungian analyst.

Notes

1. An account for the evidence of its formulation is not possible within the scope of this paper, but I would direct the interested reader to Anthony Stevens’ (2002) comprehensive effort.

2. Participation mystique is an anthropological term Jung borrowed from Lévy-Bruhl to refer to the primordial fusion or identification of subject and object; see chapter 3 of van der Berk (2012) for a detailed discussion of participation mystique in the experience of art.

3. Following Rudolf Otto (1917), Jung used the term ‘numinous’ to refer to that mysterious, often overwhelming experience – be it an outer or inner event – that takes hold of a person outside of their will. It can awe-inspiring, as well as terrifying. Otto argued that a direct experience of a numinous encounter is needed before one can fully grasp its meaning.

4. As an experiment, you might try considering that you are simultaneously good and bad, to see how hard this is – you quickly find yourself flipping from one content to the other; it is awkward, to say the least, to try and hold these views simultaneously, as they quickly fall apart to ‘I am good when I do this’ or ‘I am bad when I do that’.

5. Freud, in his study on Leonardo da Vinci, argued that his great creative drive stemmed from a pathologically strong mother complex resulting from his early fatherless years (1957).

6. No doubt this paper also suffers from the limitation that it is a conceptual writing on something that is really only understood through the lived experience. Campbell would often remind us of what Heinrich Zimmer would say on this point: that if an experience of the transcendent or numinous is the best one can be doing, then at least writing about such may be the second best.

7. Even within the analytical psychology community, Jung has been criticized for his ‘negative’ commentaries on Joyce and Picasso. The Jungian analyst James Hollis writes: ‘Much Jungian criticism has suffered from the same [Freudian] reductionism. Even when Jung himself ventured into the criticism of art, as in his essays on Joyce's Ulysses and Picasso, he might better have not written at all’ (2000, p. 61)

8. For pictorial examples and their interpretation, I would suggest to the reader Gerhard Adler's Studies in Analytical Psychology (1969) or Theodor Abt's Introduction to Picture Interpretation (2005).