psychoanalysis, poetry and painting


Freud, I feel has been the grand magician of a theorist. How many times the academecians have written him off as too fanciful, just to realise that the human subconcious is unfathomable and murky beyond comprehension. The visible part of the 'iceberg', a mere about one tenth, has generated many observational theories, which obviously have more scientific rigour and some sort of replicability especially in controlled/laboratory situations.
Psychology and psychotherapy were to change beyond recognition with the advent of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) on the scene, he staged the great coup with his theory of subconscious motivations and drives; the newly 'discovered' subconscious swept through the intellectual sphere and the world of art; from poetry to painting, from drama to fiction; the counter reaction was also daunting, the 'modernized' world found it too difficult that we are somehow still not exorcised of the demons of instinct and biological drives, and the religion brigade was too wary of dethroning man and to equate him with animals; coming to terms with one's own irrationality was very frightening.
Collective human wisdom has always recognised the subconcious and given it its due place; ancient shamans/exorcists/lay counsellors/sooth sayers/fortune tellers/priests and godmen etc all have lived and practiced the art of subconcious. Mandalas, totems and folklore have been a witness to and manifestation of the grand collective subconscious/unconscious of the humankind. A return to pagan origins is one of the deepest fears of the western society, hence the counterreaction.
Poetry, using language and still transcending it, flirting with irratioinality, unbound of syntax grammar and logic, speaks in the words of the subconcious; all that is seething fuming burning molten intense infinite transcendental dark deep decaying cosmic, animal and angelic, beatific and biological, sundry and supreme, inundating and incalculable................. peeps through the window of poetry.............
The swirl of brushes, the dance of colours, the glow of the voids, radiance of countenance, shadows of the forms, darkness of the depths; are they not the subconscious flowing through paint, congealing into snapshots of the molten emotions, frozen in time?.........

Comments

Anonymous said…
The belief that there are such things as unconscious mental states at all is a direct function of Freud's determinism, his reasoning is being simply that the principle of causality requires that such mental states should exist, for it is evident that there is frequently nothing in the conscious mind which can be said to cause neurotic or other behaviour. An 'unconscious' mental process or event and is not one which merely happens to be out of consciousness at a given time, but is rather one which cannot, except through psychoanalysis be brought to the forefront of consciousness. hence as the such unconscious mental states entails, that the mind is not, and cannot be, identified with consciousness or that which can be an object of consciousness it is rather structurally akin to an iceberg, the bulk of it lying below the surface,and has a influence upon the part which is amenable to direct inspection, the conscious mind.It is repeatedly asserted that the significance of psychoanalysis is that itis science, dealing with the mind and with mental illness. And there can be no doubt but that this has been the chief attraction of the theory for us but on the face of it, it has the capacity to accommodate, and explain, every possible form of human behaviour.
Anonymous said…
Excellent, love it! » »

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