9. CREATIVITY AND COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS

In the analytical psychology developed by Jung, the notion of the collective unconscious introduced by him, in contrast to the unconscious in general, that is, mental prototypes or archetypes, occupies a particularly important place. Proceeding from this concept, Jung considers the creative process in man, primarily as the revival of the archetype, and the artistic work as a kind of living creature that uses the author as its mouthpiece. For Freud, however, a work of art appears as a symbol of a certain state of the individual psyche to be deciphered, as an expression of affective experiences associated primarily with child sexuality.
One of the first works of Jung devoted to questions of art can be considered a report entitled "On the relation of analytical psychology to poetic work", read by him in May 1922. In it, for the first time, Jung formulates the possibilities and limitations of the study of works of art within the framework of psychology. He writes: “The subject of psychology can only be a part of art, which is a process of artistic creation, as opposed to another, which constitutes the essence of art itself” (Jung KG On the relation of analytical psychology to works of fiction \\ Problems of the Soul of Our Time. M ., 1996, p.37).
For Jung, the Freudian approach to the analysis of artistic creativity is unacceptable, since only the individual development of the child, his childhood traumas and attitudes towards parents cannot reveal the essence of poetic creativity. The psychoanalytic reduction of the latter to a neurotic disease leads to the destruction of all the uniqueness of art as such. The creative process, according to Jung, consists in the unconscious revival of the archetype, in its development and design before the completed work. The design is an adaptation of the archetype (elementary image) to the language of modernity so that everyone can find an approach to “the deepest sources of life that would otherwise be lost” (ibid., P. 59). The latter, according to Jung, also determines the social significance of art, which consists in “nurturing the spirit of the time,” that is, actualizing those images that are lacking in a given era and in which it needs. The actualization process takes place in the following way: a prototype (archetype), extracted from the depths of the unconscious, changes its appearance as it approaches consciousness, until it becomes accessible to the understanding of modern man. Consequently, the nature of the artwork allows us to conclude about the nature of the century in which it originated. For example, such trends in art as naturalism, realism, romanticism show us what was most necessary for the spiritual atmosphere corresponding to that time.
In the next work devoted to the issues of art - "Psychology and Poetic Creativity" Jung develops a statement on the types of artistic creativity. The author of analytical psychology devotes his attention to two aspects: the features of the work of art and the features of the psychological type of its creator. The artistic work of Jung is divided into two types, which he designates as psychological and visionary. The material for the psychological type of creativity are the elements of ordinary human life, such as: life experience, a certain shock, passionate experience, in general, human destiny.
In contrast to the psychological type of creativity, the visionary is based on experience, which reflects one of the images of the collective unconscious, i.e. “A peculiar and innate component of the structure of that“ soul ”, which is the matrix and prerequisite of consciousnesses” (Jung KG Psychology and poetic creativity \\ Self-consciousness of European culture of the twentieth century. M., 1991, p. 113).
For example, the first and second parts of Faust respectively represent the result of the psychological and visionary type of artistic creation. The first part describes a love story, the plot of which does not require further psychological interpretation. The second part of Faust, on the contrary, presupposes a lot of material for psychological research, without which the symbolic imagery of this great work remains incomprehensible. The reason for this is the individual-conscious content of the first part and the collective-unconscious content of the second.
An artist who possesses a visionary type of creativity is a certain synthesis of two things: on the one hand, he is a living, suffering, loving, and so on individual person, and on the other hand, he is “a collective person, carrier and sculptor of the unconsciously acting soul of humanity” (ibid., p. 117).
In other words, the superpersonal creative process makes the artist a “collective” person, giving his own archetypes to humanity. If the creative beginnings are dominant in the nature of the artist, then this means that the unconscious receives greater power over life and fate than the conscious will and consciousness, which in this case turns out to be only a spectator of what is happening. Thus, intuition is understood by Jung as a mystical force, which makes the artist a mysterious creature, and artistic creativity is an unknowable process, attempts to comprehend which are doomed to failure in advance. When comparing the approaches of Jung and Freud to the problem of artistic creativity, it should be noted that in his theory of creativity Jung combines the ideas of the myth-symbol as a source of art with the intuitive ability prevailing in the implementation of the plan. Intuition, understood as an irrational, unconscious phenomenon, is transformed by Jung into a mystical force, which makes the artist a mysterious creature, and artistic creativity is an unknowable process. For Freud, art appears as a symbol of a certain state of the soul, as an expression of emotional states, most often associated with children's sexual experiences.
TEST 9
1. Did Jung agree with the Freudian analysis of artistic creation?
? Freud forced him to agree
? Agreed
? Did not agree
? They often argued and finally made friends
2. Did Jung believe that artistic creativity is reduced to neurotic diseases?
? That is what he claimed
? No, I did not count
? Jung thought that some works of art are neurotic.
? Jung was not sure that he was mentally healthy
3. Who talked about educating the spirit of the time with the help of art?
? Jung
? Lessing
? Anna Freud
? Makarenko
4. Why a piece of art can tell about the character of the era?
? because the writer must always have a party position
? because the content of the epoch can be expressed in it
? because the writer describes in detail the customs and life of people of a particular era
? because the writer writes only about what he knows well
5. Who considered intuition a mystic power?
? Masons
? Fluke
? Freud
? Jung