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.