Denying your creative impulses.
Splitting; ink on paper, 18" x 24", 2020.
Oh man, I got a podcast that is blowing my mind y'all: This Jungian Life (thanks to my friend Rebecca for the recc).
The podcast features three psychoanalysts discussing various topics as understood through the teachings of Carl Jung. The episode that resonated with me was (big surprise) Creativity: Drawing from the Inner Well.
It covers so much - the despairs of being creative, what makes it dangerous in one's life, and the challenges many women face in claiming their creativity. Also, there is a dream analysis at the end ... effing good.
But the most interesting question that came up in the podcast was this:
What happens if you deny your creative impulses over and over again?
What happens when we continually suppress a creative hunch?
When we edit our desires?
When we don't let the work that wants to come through us, come through us?
Here's what the analyst Joseph R. Lee has to say:
"People will confess that they've been thinking about a book ... but there's something in the psyche that blocks their ability to take a step forward. They've been thinking about taking painting classes because they had a dream and want to bring an image forward ... and one of the things that happens is these creative images haunt them like hungry ghosts -- constantly whispering to them and sometimes pounding on the door, wanting to be given the chance at being born.
Sometimes when this creative image is denied over and over again it becomes a neurosis. It creates a kind of splitting in the psyche ... often it can bring on a creative depression in someone. If the self is determined, finally, that you will pay attention to this emerging image, it will begin to steal energy from other endeavors ... until they develop an introspective stance and until the outer world loses its grip on them ... and finally, hopefully, the image that they have been refusing feels possible, and in fact even more beautiful than the life that they were clinging to."
As an artist, I relate to this completely. I spent most of my twenties desperately wishing I did not need to make things. "Why-oh-why Universe can't you just let me be a lawyer, or an engineer, or a fucking baseball coach. ANYTHING but an artist. It would be so much easierrrrrrr."
But after 10 years and many internal battles, the creative side won out. My artist self was (as Joseph Lee puts it) determined that I pay attention to it. Like a very annoying, very hungry little ghost.
I think about this a lot - the damage that's done when we deny our creative impulses, when we don't let ourselves test something out because we worry that if we can't guarantee an outcome, the journey isn't worth the risk.
But my advice is this: Listen to your creative ghosts. They're on to something. And they'll keep showing up and haunting you until you're finally ready to listen. ;)
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