Creative Arts Expression
To open to the creative means to be new, to be fresh, to experience every moment, as though one had just sprung from the hand of the Creator.
Creative art expression utilizes art materials, such as paints, chalk, crayons, markers, collage, etc. as a means to give form to the formless. These forms are used to amplify and experience the unconscious. In my work as a Jungian analyst, they are rarely used to interpret the unconscious.
My use of creative art expression in analysis is based on the belief that the creative process of art is both healing and life-enhancing. Using art materials and the creative process with the issues that come up during analysis invites a very rich and deep dialogue. Using creative art expression, analysands may find increased insight and judgment, cope better with stress, work through traumatic experiences, increase cognitive abilities, have better relationships with family and friends, and learn to enjoy the life-affirming pleasures of the creative experience.
Oftentimes the unconscious itself suggests the subject and sometimes even the medium for expression. Clay, collage, crayons, and such are ways to speak without words and the message they deliver is oftentimes profound and startling. What is oftentimes created is a process of communication, a relationship between the conscious mind and the unconscious imagination. The focus is on the process of creation rather than on the product, as such, skill, experience, or judgement of the arts is not the aim.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves. Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
