THE UNCONSCIOUS UNVEILS ITSELF THROUGH ART

When Christian initially proposed this project, I said to myself: finally, psychology can lean towards its own heart: art.

The artist, through his ascribed condition, is a good psychologist for himself and for the world. As opposed to a person who is tied in the cycle of repetitions, the artist develops this mechanism of sublimating aggressive impulses, resulted from a hostile environment and a difficult reality.

The first psychologists were artists; they were people who wrote, painted, expressed another world, different from the one that was presented in front of them: wars, diseases, famine.

Dostoevsky affirmed that a painting can become a work of art only if the work manages to intoxicate the viewer with the emotions of the painter.

The artist, through his own psychological processes, chooses to look for a creative way through which he can express his feelings; not to destroy the world, but to make it more beautiful! A reparation!

Since going to the university I’ve studied more and more about this mature defense mechanism, called sublimation, and artists have supported these curious searches towards understanding.

Our project started through questions and continued with more questions. Christian challenged me to give up the formal, structured frame, and to create another one and unlock something that should be readily accessible to human beings.

The constellation method was chosen for the very freedom it involves, even in a frame.

The relationship of the artist with his brother was the central point of this healing game.

The four wooden chunks that Jochen would sculpt did not have a shape. When I was asked if I had a working proposal before starting, I thought of inviting them for a bit in their own past and organize them through the focus on one single memory, of one significant moment when the four members were together.

I did this to make them focus their mind on something, so they could leave their unconscious to express freely through shapes and symbols.

Our inner child is playful, but he slowly gives up play in front of society’s requests. This is why my intervention was intended to make their mind focus on a request to conform to, in order to leave the inner child and the blocked memories from the past resurface.

And they did! Free and uncensored, sublimated through the work.

The positions of their bodies expressed a lot about their personality and how they built themselves by interacting with others, but also though their interaction as brothers.

After the four sculptures were ready, I channeled the playfulness again through the request of playing around with the characters through the gallery. I observed how the two of them formed groups of 2 and 3, but not of 4. I asked myself, why is somebody missing?

After this game, the memory of the father’s death was resurfaced, a memory that Jochen kept very alive emotionally and that Christian did not have.

What the two brothers did is an act of courage through exposing their interior in a process, while unaware of where it would lead. Neither was I.

This is why I say that the artist already has a therapist in himself and through his works he conjures the reparation he needs.

By exposing this work, he proposes a model of reparation to others as well.

From here, it is up to any individual to figure out how much they manage to feed themselves with art, or heal through it and through the relationship with the artist.

This is why an important aspect of this work is the very symbol with which the viewer can interact; through game he can communicate about himself.

When we manage to communicate an interiority, we manage to feel ourselves heard, seen and being real. And this is a fundamental human need. This is why we stop running through defenses in isolating the Self from the surrounding world and from love relationships, a very present tendency in the times we live in.

This is what the psychologist which you see isolated on a screen is also working on. But thanks to technology – she allows continuity and motivates us to move forward!

Thank you for this collaboration!

And I will close with a relevant quote:

“Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.” – Donald W. Winnicott