Art and the Unconscious

Art and the UnConscious

To quote Karl Jung "often the hands know how to solve a riddle with which the intellect has wrestled in vain." Karl Jung, like the Buddhas, believes in two levels of consciousness; the conscious and the unconscious. He believes the only way for the collective unconscious to be assessed is through dreams or art.

"The collective unconscious shows no tendency to become conscious under normal conditions nor can it be brought back to recollection by any analytical techniques since it was never repressed or forgotten." If anything in our conscious life is devalued and perishes -- so runs the law there arises a compensation in the unconscious."

According to Jung, "That is the secret to great art and its effect upon us. The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archaetypal image and in elaborating and shaping this image into the finished work."

Thus by giving it shape we are able to understand how the artist translates it into the language of the present which helps us to find our way back to "our deepest springs in life."

Jung believes "the social significance of art is constantly at work educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking." The artists relative lack of adaptation turns out to be to his advantage; it enables him to follow his own yearnings far from the beaten path and to discover what it is that would meet the unconscious needs of his age.

What is the relationship between art and psychology? The close connections that exist arise from the fact that the practice of art is a psychological activity. "Analyisis of artists consistently shows not only the strength of the creative impulse arising from the unconscious but also its capricious and willful character."

"The biographies of great artists make it abundantly clear that the creative urge is so often so imperious that it battens our humanity and yokes everything to the service of the work, even at the cost of health and ordinary human happiness."

Jung believes "the unborn work in the psyche of the artist is a force of nature that achieves its end either with tyrannical might or with the subtle cunning of nature herself, quite regardless of the personal fate of the man who is its vehicle." The creative urge lives and grows in him like a tree in the earth from which it draws its nourishment.

Joseph Campbell, author of The Portable Jung, believes we would do well therefore to think of the creative process as a living thing unplanted in the human psyche.

The psychological interests of the present time is an indication that modem man expects something from the psyche which the outer world has not given him. Perhaps that is why so many people turn back to their art or develop their art in the afternoon of their lives..40 years and beyond..