Human mind consists of conscious and subconscious realms according to psychoanalysis. There are rich literatures on conscious and subconscious minds accumulated by many psychologists. Among them, Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, unders...
Human mind consists of conscious and subconscious realms according to psychoanalysis. There are rich literatures on conscious and subconscious minds accumulated by many psychologists. Among them, Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, understood human psyche not by a fraction but by the whole, and said that subconsciousness is not repressed by consciousness and instead it has its own creative functions. As I agree with the views of Jung, I intend to recognize "Individuation" as a process toward self-knowledge based on basic concepts of human personalities that he defined. During the Individuation process, expanded realm of consciousness awakes the psychic centre, making a person acknowledge the contents of subconsciousness and ultimately coming to meet selfhood or the real Self. By then, subconsciousness which has not been recognized becomes emerges as an also important realm.
The path of Individuation which can be translated as "coming to self-hood" or "self-realization" increased public interests in the subconscious realm. Artists also use subconsciousness as a source of expression by arousing inner qualities of objects including themselves and providing them with primeval imagination. Movement in the art to find a creative source in the subconscious area is represented by surrealism and abstract expressionism. Surrealists integrated actual and visible situation with dreams or imagination which is manifested to us by subconsciousness, instead of rational judgment, to express a non-existing fantasy world; while abstract expressionists invented their own abstract languages from their inner necessity.
These inner desires to proactively create the subconscious world visibly relate to me working in the 21 century, over time and across cultures, in finding a unique figurative language. Hereby, to find my figurative language, I adopt psychoanalyst approaches. I present the process of how inner figures are shaped in a consecutive manner by visibly converting the original figures latent in the subconscious realm.
As I repeated drawing circles, also known as ‘circle passage’, I realized the infinite space is inside, and the silent hours facilitated the integration between conscious and subconscious minds, playing as a driving force to invoke the subconsciousness. I also adopted Automatism that surrealists used to read the flow of subconsciousness, and I was able to find the original figure immanent in my subconscious realm. Images from the Automatism drawing is transformed into a reversible figure, that is seen the same with the right and the left turned or upside down. This complete image is called the psychic figure. It gives a delusion as if it moves due to psychological awareness rather than it is accepted consciously.
The psychic figure is completed by forms and colors. For its form, it is in linear form consisting of repeating lines or curves. In the Asian paintings, lines are regarded as strokes. Shitao, ancient Chinese painter, said in One Stroke that the stroke is the very mind of the painter. In the Western paintings, lines are considered as a method of manifestation of the subconscious realm. I look into how these concepts of lines are applied to the psychic figure, and vibrations of lines and various types of mobility embodied by lines of the psychic figure. For colors, I chose white, black and blue as the most important components while shaping the psychic figure. I compare and analyze what psychological influences each color has and what meanings the colors are supposed to have.
Last but not least, I intend to understand symbolism that the psychic figure reveal. To this end, I divide the symbolism into two: external symbolism as described in the circle which is geometrically abstract figure; and internal one as in selfhood which is the root of forms generated by subconscious actions.
This study provides an opportunity to deeply understand Jung’s Individuation process and establish the theoretical ground of the psychic figure placed in the subconscious realm. Based on the study, image of the psychic figure may be interpreted as a possible communication with the Self, beyond just being an abstract figure. I intend to find my true personality-the Self by uniting the subconscious realm with the consciousness through an ongoing endless Individuation process and to convert the creative motivation generated in the process into figurative languages, ultimately to find harmony and balance that the psychic figure has.