Joseph Kyle

December 2016

Friends or Foes?

A Comparative Analysis of Carl Jung’s Collective Unconscious and Sigmund Freud’s Phantasy

Every structure, no matter how conventional or mundane, holds certain characteristics

that make it unique. The Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia) is no exception. In addition to the

thousands of works it holds, it has undergone two separate and completely unique additions and

renovations, resulting in two very different entrances. The current entrance, designed by Kenzo

Tange in 1974, greets visitors with Sunburst, a gigantic glass chandelier that resembles the sun.

The 3,000 pound glass sculpture, made by Dale Chihuly in 1999 playfully invites visitors into

the grand central atrium with a dancing collection of bright glass rays. The old entrance,

completed in 1915, greets visitors very differently. At the top of its grand, neoclassical central

stair, there stands Doryphoros, an ancient Greek sculpture of a nude male figure. Figures like

Doryphoros are present in almost every civilization, theology, and mythology and represent a

longstanding tradition of formal sculpture and the study of human anatomy. Dichotomies like the

one seen between Sunburst and Doryphoros at the Mia, which contrast playfulness and

imaginative forms with archetypal ones are common throughout the art world. In this paper, I

explore the implications that these dualities bring and draw some conclusions about the very

nature of fine art and the motivations that exist in art making.

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

Considerable work has already been devoted to investigating art’s psychological

interworkings. Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud are the most notable individuals to do so.

Understanding their varying perspectives thus becomes important in understanding the

differences and similarities between contrasting works.

In his paper, The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming, Sigmund Freud draws numerous

connections between phantasy, daydreaming, and literature. He first investigates play, first as the

occupation of children, then in its transformation into adulthood daydreaming. Children play

without shame or self-awareness, often imitating the adults around them (Freud, 501). This

occupation children take very seriously, but as they age and learn to adopt the self-consciousness

of adulthood, they begin to hide their phantasies from the world behind a veil of secrecy and

shame (Freud, 502). Phantasy thus becomes an intimate occupation, one only revealed through

daydreaming. Just as children imitate what they want – the authority, knowledge and

responsibility of adulthood – in their play, so do adults. “Unsatisfied wishes are the driving force

behind phantasies,” so daydreams form the stage where adults play out the desires they hide from

the outside world (Freud, 502). How do Freud’s beliefs about daydreaming relate to the arts?

Freud finds a connection through literature. The poet places the reader at the center of their

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

imaginary world, where they fill the role of the hero. It is in this hero that the reader places their

ego, “the hero of all daydreams” (Freud, 504). This transference is what allows art to “arouse

emotions in us of which we thought ourselves perhaps not even capable” (Freud, 500). Whereas

we usually would feel disgusted by a clear display of one’s inner phantasies, the writer, through

their unique and unknowable artistic abilities, makes phantasy approachable and immersive

(Freud, 505). As Freud clearly shows, there is a direct connection between the phantasies we

create for ourselves in daydreams and the phantasies we experience through novels. We can

engage these phantasies through not just literature but also through visual art, particularly

painting.

Freud’s ideas are complimented, perhaps complicated by the work of Carl Jung. Jung’s

paper, Psychology and Literature, while fringe in the psychosocial community, acts as an

illuminating model for his somewhat radical ideas. In it, Jung argues for a far more universal

understanding of how we interpret and appreciate art. Significant art, for Jung, does not find

success in to its ability to engage our egotistical phantasies, but rather in its ability to access or

reflect our collective unconscious. This unconscious is seen “in archetypes that inhabit the

recesses of all human inner experience [and] expressed in myth and religion but also art” (Ross,

499). Jung’s theories apply to art in a number of interesting ways. Visionary works – works that

reflect the unfamiliar, grotesque stuff arising from the timeless depths of human experience –

Jung considers as the quintessence of artistic expression. It is in these works that we access

something deeper, something that moves entire communities or generations of people (Jung,

516). Like Freud, Jung references mostly literary works from Blake and Goeth as evidence in his

paper. I contend that the same arguments can be applied to all visual art as well.

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

In Psychology and Literature, Carl Jung makes a clear distinction between psychological

and visionary works, arguing that the ladder, which embraces the knowable, grounded stuff of

human consciousness, pales in importance to the former (Jung, 511). I make a similar

comparison between Jung’s collective unconscious and Freud’s phantasy. In the words of Freud,

“every separate phantasy contains a fulfillment of a wish” (Freud, 502). Put another way,

phantasies concern what we want. When the artist manifests these phantasies in a novel, our

innermost desires are satiated, which explains why men and women can be so enchanted by the

novels they read. I believe something similar can happen in visual works. We stand transfixed by

a work for hours, unwilling to tear ourselves away from its beautiful intricacies, its lovely forms

and imaginative perspective. These works, however, merely quench the thirst of our want. Works

that access Jung’s collective unconscious through archetypal imagry, like Goya’s Saturn

Devouring His Son, however, appeal to who we are and who we have been. Therefor, it seems

reasonable to infer the former outweighs the ladder in visual and conceptual importance.

As evidence for this tentative claim, briefly consider Asher B. Durand’s painting,

Kindred Spirits. Standing as one of the most recognizable works from the Hudson River School,

this 1849 painting depicts Thomas Cole (another influential landscape painter) and his poet

friend looking out over a narrow river valley. They survey the land in both appreciation and in

domination while a bird flies overhead.

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

Kindred Spirits continues a long tradition of Hudson River School transcendentalist

thought as it depicts two individuals overwhelmed by a profound longing for nature and the

escape, wisdom and peace it brings. The transcendentalists saw nature as the antidote to the

industrialized lifestyle that was becoming normalized in Europe and the United States. In

venturing into nature, we return to Eden – the place from which we came. Want for this Eden is

inescapable in their works. The individuals within Kindred Spirits are no exception in their deep

longing for nature which the viewer is compelled to share with them. It is for these reasons that I

consider Kindred Spirits as an example of Freud’s phantasy.

Now consider the work of Jackson Pollock, which has received considerable Jungian

interpretations throughout the years. Many, including Pollock himself have considered his work

to represent the unconscious. In his early work, Pollock “was ‘involved in a process of private

symbol making,’ a process ‘intimately related to [his] mental, that is, his psychic, life’” (Leja,

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

124). In Pollock’s Guardians of the Secret (1943), the artist creates a complex dynamic between

semi-representational human and animal figures and abstracted, messy symbols. These

primordial archetypes dance around a central arena where they come into contact in a chaotic

frenzy. The result is moving, although the reasons for this are unclear. Autumn Rhythm (Number

30), one of Pollock’s later, better known drip paintings expresses a similar chaos. Rather than

depicting images on a canvas, however, Autumn Rhythm records the very dance Pollock

employed while creating the abstracted work. Many art critics and scholars alike have

commented on this dance and contended that it expressed something primordial stemming from

the collective unconscious itself.

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

Pollock’s conceptual objectives may appear ambiguous at first, but Pollock himself

resolves some of this obscurity when he claims that “the source of [his] paintings is the

unconscious” (Leja, 122). If we take Pollock literally, then his unconscious is riddled with

“primitive” symbols and myths. While this may be true, it is also unlikely. This being said,

Pollock’s choice to include these symbols and link them to his unconscious is significant. What

he is likely accessing is a deeper unconscious – something similar to the collective unconscious

Jung describes in Psychology and Literature. Could this could explain the immense acclaim

Pollock has received since the mid-20th century? Jung would probably say yes! It is not

surprising then that many consider Pollock’s work as a “verification” of the Jungian

interpretation of archetypal symbols (Leja, 349).

If the argument can be made that Durand’s Kindred Spirits represents Freud’s phantasy,

and Pollock’s works represent Jung’s collective unconscious, then surely that means Pollock’s

work is more artistically significant than Durand’s. Many, especially those preoccupied with

more recent art would probably agree. This may be an oversimplification, however, for each

borrows qualities from the other. Durand’s Kindred Spirits, while possessing the desire of

Freud’s phantasy, also reflects upon human’s universal connection to the landscapes we inhabit.

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

Perhaps the want that Thomas Cole and his friend show stems from something deeper,

something like Jung’s collective unconscious. Perhaps the magisterial gaze they employ across

the landscape is but a mere manifestation of the same archetypal land-worship that we see in

ancient civilizations. Looking again at Autumn Rhythm (Number 30), Pollock’s primordial dance

may reflect more ancient archetypes, but does it not also resemble the play that Freud mentions

in his paper? No matter how hard one may try, it is difficult to push Freud and Jung to mutually

exclusive ends of a spectrum. But what then is their relation if not hierarchal? I now contend that

it is mutually reinforcing. Both artists access Freud’s phantasy and Jung’s collective unconscious

when they paint, making their works some of the most significant in modern history. I see further

evidence for this mutually reinforcing relationship in my own work.

My work this year has taken much inspiration from the surrealist masters of the 1920s,

particularly their juxtaposition of unrelated images, whimsical compositions, and dreamlike

auras. My most recent work, DO YOU GET IT? Stands as the best example thus far.

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

In it, Adirondack chairs float weightlessly in a bucket filled with water, which hovers above an

extensive seascape. Mountains rise in the background with a vast sky above them. The image is

dreamlike, but it is no nightmare; it also reflects the play of childhood and the phantasy of

adulthood daydreams. Like the authors who created worlds for the reader’s ego to inhabit, my

surreal landscape invites the viewer to explore its unique space. I want viewers to sit themselves

in the chairs and gaze over the dreamlike landscape around them.

My painting process also mirrors many of Freud’s ideas surrounding play. While I

conform to hiding my play as I enter adulthood, the person I am while painting unselfconsciously

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

plays with the process. Like a child, I take my work very seriously, but give little regard for

those around me.

I see vestiges of Jung’s collective unconscious in my painting process as well, not in my

employment of primordial symbols, but through the process of craft itself. Art may be a

relatively new social construction, but craft has existed forever in tool making, textiles, carpentry

etc. I believe it is part of our collective unconscious just like love of landscape or worship of the

divine. This primordial connection is reflected in the feeling that craft gives the individual.

Through craft’s repetition of hands-on creation, I find time for contemplation, reflection and self-

analysis. The overall effect that this process brings is therapeutic. It both clears and focuses my

mind, taking away distraction and laying out a clean slate on which clear thoughts can come. The

feeling runs deep through me and I share it with all others who practice a craft. Like the child at

play, this process is a serious one, but also one that brings me joy and complete absorption.

While certain distinctions can be made in art analysis, it is important to not let these limit

our understanding of certain works. Art can hold many complex layers, meaning different

methodologies and ideologies can be at play at once. As we have seen, artists like Pollock and

Durand can draw from both Jung and Freud’s seemingly distant ideologies and achieve artistic

significance. While this complexity can be vexing for art analysis, ultimately it permits a higher

degree of depth and understanding.

Joseph Kyle

December 2016

Works Cited:

Leja, M. (1993). Reframing abstract expressionism : Subjectivity and painting in the 1940s. New

Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press.