Art and Soul
Howard McConeghey1
Memory and Psychological Seeing
Psychological seeing not only activates the object, it also evokes the
best of ourselves, including the necessary craftsmanship to craft the
image that calls us to art (not necessarily in a Renaissance representational
style, but not ruling out representational styles). It is a process of
emptying the rational mind in order to receive what consciousness will
not volunteer-"The best of our many selves . . . the fine essence
of a smothered divinity."2 Therein is the
craft which will teach the hand to perform its artistry. The world paying
attention back to you is pregnant with image. Being true to oneself is
where beauty is found. Samuel Beckett calls this kind of seeing, "involuntary
memory."3
The original meaning of the word "memory" is "the gathering
of the constant intention of everything that the heart holds present in
being,"4 and that intention is, "the
inclination with which the in-most meditation of the heart turns toward
all that is in being."5 It is a kind of pregnant
seeing that results from involuntary memory, activates the object, and
awakens the best in ourselves. Aesthetic perception is the basis of this
craft. Out of memory and within memory the soul pours forth its wealth
of images.
This meditation of the heart is what Schaefer-Simmern means when he says
that the only instruction necessary is to work as slowly as possible.
For him, even after the drawing is "complete," an artist should
take a step back and look again. This is not to overwork the drawing but
rather to encourage a heightened sense of seeing.
After completing the drawing observe it at length, if the outline is
not clear enough, fill it in with black ink to make a silhouette in order
to see the object more clearly, and when-ever a change seems to be necessary,
start a new drawing.6
In other words do not try to fix what the rational mind wants fixed but
start over and let the drawing emerge. Craft demands a slowing down of
the "whirling dislocated soul," a psychological seeing, and
a genuine involvement. Psychological seeing depends upon paying close
attention to the world, allowing the object to magnify. The root of all
craft lies in this involuntary memory -the gathering of the constant intention
of what the heart holds.
If memory is the mother of the muses, then its relation to aesthetics
is obvious. It is made evident by the heart's perception of everything
that exists, things as they present themselves to the heart, where care,
passion, and love reside. Art presents a formed emotion. The heart's meditation
is what perception is all about. This is the aesthetic awareness of Aphrodite's
ubiquitous presence in well crafted things. This is more than our usual
ideas of beauty which often consider only pretty or pleasing and harmonious
things to be beautiful. Beauty resides in the world of sense perception
rather than some heavenly "prettiness" or sentimentality. If
we posses beauty then we are true to our own being, as we have already
posited, then craft would mean being true to one's self. Beauty resides
in ordinary objects and is perceived by our spiritual eye. The world of
objects is beautiful if we do not becloud it with concepts, which would
be to go over to another order. It does not matter whether it is joy or
grief we are experiencing, its image can be magnificent when presented
aesthetically.
This idea of being true to one's self, with its rejection of con-cepts
and scientific order does not mean that it is irrational. On the contrary
it is only rational to be true to oneself. Heidegger puts it in philosophical
terms:
Reason is the perception of what is, which means also what can be and
what ought to be. To perceive implies, in ascending order: to welcome
and take in; to accept and take in the encounter; to take up face to face;
to understand and see through -and this means to talk through. The Latin
for talking through is reor the Greek pew (as in rhetoric) is the ability
to take up something and see it through; reri is "ratio"; animale
rationale is the animal which lives by perceiving what is . . .7
If we think of reason this way we can begin to understand craft as not
less disciplined or less skillful, but demanding a different discipline
and skill. It is like having a conversation with the object or experience,
welcoming it, taking in the encounter, taking it in face to face, and
thus being true to its essential nature as well as to our own. We can
recognize the divinity in the image.
In this kind of discipline there is no ineffectual retreat into the lovely
and etheric. Instead beauty means facing what is there before our eyes,
before our heart, coming to know it, welcoming it, accepting it, and talking
to it. This is a stronger and deeper sense of beauty, and it is the basis
of our ability to craft the image. We cannot make what we do not perceive
aesthetically. We cannot welcome, take in, and see through what does not
enter the heart. Craft, in this sense, is a meditation, a careful observation
that demands slowing down in order that our psychological eye may activate
the object of our vision. It means submission of the ego to a god or goddess
-a submission that our modern worship of materialistic and intellectual
ways of knowing have not allowed.
Craft can be related to aesthetic perception through Aphrodite whose beauty
lies in the ordinary objects we meet in our daily lives. It is no coincidence
that Aphrodite was the wife of Hephaestus, the mythical master craftsman
of jewelry befitting the gods. The implication in the myth, if viewed
archetypally, is that craft needs beauty. It is beauty that craft strives
for, so we see her importance in crafting the image. But it would be a
mistake not to perceive that all the gods are involved in all our endeavors.
There are other gods and goddesses at play in art-making and in therapy
and education. There is bright-eyed Athene, goddess of invention and practical
counseling, and Hermes with his mediating communication and helpful transitions,
taking advantage of chance events.
There is a function represented by each archetype, but there is a necessity
for love and beauty. If we would only spend as much time and energy teaching
students and patients to see Aphrodite's golden-ness in everyday objects
and events-remembering the images of the soul -as we now spend teaching
techniques, we would find more lively works of art and fewer lifeless
academic works. We would also experience greater and deeper healing and
education. Through psychological seeing and aesthetic perception the object
becomes active. It is made pregnant. Then it produces and one's work becomes
more vital. The very ground of the sensate world, its very existence,
lies in the lap of this goddess of love and beauty.
Beauty is an ontological necessity grounding the sensate particularity.
Without Aphrodite, the world of particulars becomes atomic particles.
Life's detailed variety is called chaos, multiplicity, amorphous matter,
statistical data. Such is the world of sense without Aphrodite. Then sense
must be made of appearance by abstract philosophical means -which distorts
philosophy itself from its true base .8
Personifying
Psychological seeing, then, is a form of aesthetic perception. It is seeing
with the eyes of the soul, proceeding from personified figures in the
heart rather than from mental concepts and techniques. Aesthetic perception
needs aspiration and inspiration -a wonder which precedes intellectual
wonder and inspires the given beyond itself, motivating the artist in
each of us, letting each thing reveal its particular aspiration within
a cosmic arrangement. Aesthetic breathing in the world is a form of taking
it to heart, interiorizing it, hearing the world soul in the speech of
things. "Taking in" means interiorizing the object into itself,
into its image so that its imagination (rather than ours) is activated,
so that it shows its heart and reveals its soul, becoming personified
and thereby lovable!9 The object's activated imagination
shows the hand what needs to be done.
Personification is a structuring agent; it is "poiesis." It
is helpful to see figures in a picture as complexes walking around and
talking to each other rather than paying attention to our personal feelings.
This is because personal feelings lead us away from the psychic drama.
In our materialistic culture we no longer believe in imaginary persons
who "could possibly be as they present themselves, as valid psycho-logical
subjects with wills and feelings like ours but not reducible to ours."10
Therapy-or soul-making-depends upon our ability to personify the movements
of the soul in our daily experience, revivifying our relations with the
world we encounter and hearing the many voices within each of us. Our
goal is to acknowledge Psyche's needs and her influence in our lives.
For this "we need an imaginal ego that is at home in the imaginal
realm, an ego that can understand" the major task now confronting
psychology: differentiation of the imaginal; dis-covering its laws, configurations
and moods of discourse, and its psychological necessities. But this major
psychological task of differentiating the imaginal begins only when we
allow it to speak as it appears -which is personified. Personifying is
thus both a way of psychological experience and a method for grasping
and ordering that experience."11
By achieving this psychological task, one's hand is given the means of
sure craft-skill in the perception of the essential reality we face. It
is the anima who teaches personifying, and who activates the hand of the
artist. Her very first lesson is the reality of her autonomous personality,
so difficult for us to accept in our common ego-centered experience. Her
second lesson is the necessity of love. Anima comes to life through love,
just as Psyche in the myth is mated with Eros, who rescues her from her
deathlike stupor.
With aesthetic perception we see personifying as a way of knowing and
doing. It is a more subtle and sensitive way of apprehending the world,
giving things vitality and meaning. Personifying is a way of seeing the
world ensouled, independent from us, with its own interior existence and
capable of experience, obliged to a history and motivated by purpose and
intention. A personified world implies a passionate engagement with the
things we perceive. This is the true craft-skill in the perception of
the independent subjectivity of the things we encounter.
The older notion, that we develop skill by following directions and learning
predetermined techniques, derives from a belief in the analytical concept
that says we can understand anything by studying its parts. Aesthetic
perception does not respond in analytical terms but rather requires that
we face the world in its very presentation. It is here in the face of
the world, and in facing it, that authentic response is possible. It is
here also where therapy occurs, for:
Images are primordial, archetypal, in themselves ultimately real. They
are the only direct reality that the psyche ever experiences. As such
they are the shaped presences of necessity. The image turns our “pathologizings”
into inner archetypes, teachers, as they move from generalities and abstractions
of conceptual cognition to the concrete immediacy and multivalence of
events.12
It is not we who are the teachers and therapists. Rather it is the inner
archetypes who teach us to be true to our own natures. We do not need
prescribed techniques when we can converse with material things by seeing
them as psychic realities. We find the means at hand to craft the image
because the natural sanctity of things grips our hearts and we can love
the material shapes, colors, and rhythms of our everyday world. Such a
heartfelt relation with reality embodies the necessary craft to give form
to the image.
The importance of this attitude for art therapy should be stressed. Craft
is the artists’ careful perception of – and attention to—the
world of their senses. The teacher or therapist will find their craft
in careful attention to the art work which the student or patient has
produced rather than to abstract concepts about the patient’s past
or the student’s academic prowess. Skill and technique are best when
they come from the drive to give a face to the invisible image and not
from principles gathered from other people’s experiences and accomplishments.
But such an attitude is not simply given in our modern materialistic world.
It is not a spontaneous reaction. Rather it must be provoked, called,
forth, “raged”, as Hillman puts it, “or outraged”
into life. Leaving these forces unprovoked could be detrimental. “What
is passive, immovible, asleep in the heart creates a desert.”13
The discipline required for such efforts is much greater than that required
of an academic art education with its rules and principles. Without the
manifestation of the image the work will be lifeless. Such exactness (the
anxiety of a Cezanne, the desperation of a deKooning) requires real passion.
It may even need outrage at the aridity of academic and scientific expectations
– a rage that can tear one away from the safety of convention and
generality. Yet it does no good to denounce the academic language of technique
and power if we can suggest no way to promote genuinely imaginal artistic
achievement.
Once a fourth grade boy came up to my desk to ask how to draw a hand.
My response was not what the boy expected: "A hand? A hand? There
is no such thing as "a hand." What do you mean?" I said.
Growing a little frustrated the boy replied, "How do you draw a hand?
You know, a hand," and he shook his hand in my face.
"Oh," I said as if suddenly understanding, "an angry hand
shaken in someone's face." "No," he said. "I want
to draw a hand holding a baseball bat." He had already been provoked,
even outraged, so now I could help him to get in touch with the image
he was trying to depict. I began by asking him about the game. "You
like to play? Are you good at it?" I asked. "Oh yes, I'm the
pitcher for our team." And thus began a discussion about how he holds
the baseball bat differently during a game when the bases are loaded than
when he is in practice. "Oh, I get it.," he said and went back
to his table.
Later he came to me smiling and proudly holding the drawing up for me
to see. This drawing had more authority and genuineness than might have
come from a lesson in how to draw "a hand." It required a new
step in the traditional process. There are no traditional techniques for
saying what the student wanted to say. Technique alone can only produce
lifeless forms. A prescribed technique for drawing a hand already shapes
the "a hand" before it is fully experienced in the present moment.
Actually, "a hand" cannot be experienced; it is a mere generalization.
Once one is in touch with the enchantment of the image, fingers will know
what to do. They will be directed by the complexes, one's pathologies,
and one's inner archetypal teacher, who appear in the half-light of negative
capability. They do their finger-work in the primal clay of the imagination
which is fed by experience. In a moment of vision, an object or experience
is illuminated with significance.
Although craft does require constant attention and ritual, it is not mere
practice to gain facility in the use of tools or knowledge about the traditional
way things are formed. Rather it is related to the ideas we gain from
intense experience, the images we gain through aesthetic perception. The
Greek work for craft was techne, but as Heidegger makes clear, techne
belongs to the “bringing forth,” to poiesis. “It is something
poetic. . . . It reveals whatever does not bring itself forth and does
not yet lie before us.”14 The challenge was
to get this fourth grader to see his task more as “bringing something
forth” (his image of the game) rather than as representing a literal
generality. I tried to provoke the heart, and as his heart was truly in
the game, but obviously not yet in the drawing. This did not occur until
he became vaguely aware of involuntary memory (memoria).
Howard McConeghey is an internationally
acclaimed artist, art therapist, and pioneer in the field of archetypal
psychology. Howard is former Directore of the Art Therapy program at the
University of New Mexico and the author of
Art and Soul.
1Excerpted from Art and Soul by Howard McConeghey (Spring Publications,
Putnam, Ct., 2003) pg. 70-77. With Permission.
2 Samuel Beckett in Beckett and Myth by Mary Doll (Syracuse: Syracuse
UP, 1988), 11.
3 This is a term Beckett used in Proust as a precondition to artistic
creation.It was a process of emptying the mind's known rational contents
so as to receive what consciousness would not volunteer, "the best
of our many selves... the fine essence of a smothered divinity."
See Doll, 11.
4 Martin Heidegger, What is Called Thinking? (New York: Harper & Row,
1968), 141.
5 Ibid., 140.
6 Henry Schaefer-Simmern, The Unfolding of Artistic Activity (Berkeley:
The Uni-versity of California Press, 1948), 73.
7 Martin Heidegger, op. cit., 61.
8 James Hillman, the Thought of the Heart and The Soul of the World (Dallas:
Spring Publications, 1992), 45.
9 Ibid., 47-48
10 James Hillman, Re- Visioning Psychology (New York: Harper & Row,
1997), 2.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid, 64.
13 Ibid.
14 Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays,
William Lovit, trans. (New York: Harper & Row, 1977), 13.