A Jungian Aesthetic: Art, Active Imagination, and the Creative Process

A hundred years ago, in 1913, when Jung invented active imagination, a female voice from the unconscious said to him that what he was doing was art.  Jung disparaged this anima figure as “that aesthetic lady” and protested emphatically: “It is not art!”

In 20^th century modern art, there was a famous Freudian aesthetic based on free association – surrealism.  Now in the 21^st century, especially after the publication of Jung’s Red Book, and The Art of C.G. Jung, we have an opportunity, for the first time, to develop a Jungian aesthetic based on active imagination.  What exactly is the relation between art, active imagination, and the creative process?    

Note: This lecture is based on a program Maria Taveras gave at the Lunch Forum December 2018.

Maria Taveras, LCSW, is a Jungian analyst in private practice in New York City.
She is a supervising analyst on the faculty of the C.G. Institute of New York, and The C.G. Jung Foundation of Analytical Psychology.  She is also an award-winning sculptor and painter of “Dream Art.”  To explore the unconscious sources of creativity, she paints and sculpts images from her own dreams. She has received two Gradiva Awards from the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis for her Dream Art. 

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