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The Archetypal Artist: Reimagining Creativity and the Call to Create
In this thoughtful and revelatory book, Wood explores enduring and powerful theories on art, creativity, and what Jung called the "creative spirit" in order to illuminate how artists can truly understand what it means to be a creator.
By bringing together insights on creativity from some of depth psychology’s most iconic thinkers, such as C.G. Jung, James Hillman, and Joseph Campbell, as well as featuring a selection of creators who have been influenced by these ideas, such as Martha Graham, Mary Oliver, Stanley Kunitz, and Ursula K. Le Guin, this book explores archetypal thought and the role of the artist in society. This unique approach emphasizes the foundational need to understand and work with the unconscious forces that underpin a creative calling, deepening our understanding of the transformational power of creativity, and the vital role of the artist in the modern world.
Acting as a touchstone for inquiries into the nature of creativity, and of the soul, this enlightening book is perfect for artists and creators of all types, as well as Jungian analysts and therapists, and academics interested in the arts, humanities, and depth psychology.
By bringing together insights on creativity from some of depth psychology’s most iconic thinkers, such as C.G. Jung, James Hillman, and Joseph Campbell, as well as featuring a selection of creators who have been influenced by these ideas, such as Martha Graham, Mary Oliver, Stanley Kunitz, and Ursula K. Le Guin, this book explores archetypal thought and the role of the artist in society. This unique approach emphasizes the foundational need to understand and work with the unconscious forces that underpin a creative calling, deepening our understanding of the transformational power of creativity, and the vital role of the artist in the modern world.
Acting as a touchstone for inquiries into the nature of creativity, and of the soul, this enlightening book is perfect for artists and creators of all types, as well as Jungian analysts and therapists, and academics interested in the arts, humanities, and depth psychology.
- GenresPsychology
176 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 24, 2022
17 people are currently reading
101 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
October 31, 2024
Not a fast read and certainly not an easy one, but if you’re a serious student of depth psychology and have an interest in the arts, this book ticks all the boxes.
February 12, 2023
enriquecedor
Um Livro fundamental a qualquer artista e ser humano. O processo de criação de alma é essencial em nossas vidas.
Um Livro fundamental a qualquer artista e ser humano. O processo de criação de alma é essencial em nossas vidas.
April 22, 2023
The book is super dry but I'm giving it 3 stars because Wood's research is IMPRESSIVE. Two examples in particular:
1. It's been disputed whether Freud actually made the statement that "no matter where my research led, a poet had always been there first." Wood provides Freud's exact quote, which I have never seen anywhere before: "But creative writers are valuable allies and their evidence is to be praised highly for they are apt to know a whole host of things between heaven and earth of which our philosophy has not yet let us dream. In their knowledge of the mind, they are far in advance of us everyday people, for they draw upon sources which we have not yet opened up for science." (Wood takes this quote from the book Art and Psyche: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics by Ellen Handler Spitz)
2. There's also a quote that I've always attributed to Joseph Campbell that apparently, was actually said by his wife, Jean Erdman Campbell: "the artist and the mystic are very much alive, although the mystic does not have a craft." Glad to have that corrected.
Bravo! This is why we need scholars on this earth.
Another thing I found interesting was when Wood briefly addressed the 'place' of Depth Psychology in our world. I absolutely love Depth Psychology and have always felt its approach is important for our culture... but as a faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, I've been troubled by its insularity. (Especially the Jungian wing... I'm sure every field has its zealots, but it often feels like a private club with its own secret exclusive language....and I'm not the first person who's said that.) So I found this statement by Wood enlightening:
"Depth psychology, so indebted to the arts, humanities, and to ancient healing and wisdom traditions, faces new challenges in the 21st century as neuroscience seeks to explain--and so often explain away--the mysteries of soul, creativity, and creative calling. xxxx [a well-known depth psychologist] has suggested that the time has come for depth psychology to bid farewell to its tenuous relationship with the sciences and align itself more closely with its true relatives: the arts and humanities." p. 32
Yikes - I don't agree. There's been recent groundbreaking research on the right brain and its powers that dovetail with what depth psychologists also tap into. I don't believe this research is trying to "explain away." To my mind, it keeps the mystery intact. I would point out Iain McGilchrist's amazing book The Master and His Emissary and Jill Bolte Taylor's books (My Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living) to name just two scholars in this arena. (McGilchrist calls the realm of the divine "Other" in his book. Taylor uses the term 'spirit,' 'Higher Power' and divine consciousness.) In my opinion, the only way for our world to evolve in a positive direction is for different fields of study to talk to one another. Maintaining an exclusionary stance isn't helpful.
As Brian Swimme writes in his new book, Cosmogenesis: [we need an] "ongoing conversation beyond the traditional boundaries that keep the sciences separate from the humanities...a university where all fields of knowledge are in conversation with each other [as] a pathway into the subtleties of knowledge."
Depth psychologists are well-placed to lead that conversation, since as Swimme points out in his book: when we study something [when we tell a story about something], we need to "include the storyteller."
1. It's been disputed whether Freud actually made the statement that "no matter where my research led, a poet had always been there first." Wood provides Freud's exact quote, which I have never seen anywhere before: "But creative writers are valuable allies and their evidence is to be praised highly for they are apt to know a whole host of things between heaven and earth of which our philosophy has not yet let us dream. In their knowledge of the mind, they are far in advance of us everyday people, for they draw upon sources which we have not yet opened up for science." (Wood takes this quote from the book Art and Psyche: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Aesthetics by Ellen Handler Spitz)
2. There's also a quote that I've always attributed to Joseph Campbell that apparently, was actually said by his wife, Jean Erdman Campbell: "the artist and the mystic are very much alive, although the mystic does not have a craft." Glad to have that corrected.
Bravo! This is why we need scholars on this earth.
Another thing I found interesting was when Wood briefly addressed the 'place' of Depth Psychology in our world. I absolutely love Depth Psychology and have always felt its approach is important for our culture... but as a faculty member at Pacifica Graduate Institute, I've been troubled by its insularity. (Especially the Jungian wing... I'm sure every field has its zealots, but it often feels like a private club with its own secret exclusive language....and I'm not the first person who's said that.) So I found this statement by Wood enlightening:
"Depth psychology, so indebted to the arts, humanities, and to ancient healing and wisdom traditions, faces new challenges in the 21st century as neuroscience seeks to explain--and so often explain away--the mysteries of soul, creativity, and creative calling. xxxx [a well-known depth psychologist] has suggested that the time has come for depth psychology to bid farewell to its tenuous relationship with the sciences and align itself more closely with its true relatives: the arts and humanities." p. 32
Yikes - I don't agree. There's been recent groundbreaking research on the right brain and its powers that dovetail with what depth psychologists also tap into. I don't believe this research is trying to "explain away." To my mind, it keeps the mystery intact. I would point out Iain McGilchrist's amazing book The Master and His Emissary and Jill Bolte Taylor's books (My Stroke of Insight and Whole Brain Living) to name just two scholars in this arena. (McGilchrist calls the realm of the divine "Other" in his book. Taylor uses the term 'spirit,' 'Higher Power' and divine consciousness.) In my opinion, the only way for our world to evolve in a positive direction is for different fields of study to talk to one another. Maintaining an exclusionary stance isn't helpful.
As Brian Swimme writes in his new book, Cosmogenesis: [we need an] "ongoing conversation beyond the traditional boundaries that keep the sciences separate from the humanities...a university where all fields of knowledge are in conversation with each other [as] a pathway into the subtleties of knowledge."
Depth psychologists are well-placed to lead that conversation, since as Swimme points out in his book: when we study something [when we tell a story about something], we need to "include the storyteller."
August 18, 2022
So many spelling and grammatical errors I can’t continue reading it. So disappointed.
August 8, 2022
The right book at the right time. This book provides a structured lineage of a very specific artistic disposition - giving insight and perspective.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews