Art and Returning the Notion of Soul to Psyche

Let me begin by saying what I always say when asked to condense the entirety of my studies in mythology and depth psychology into a small package: “If you want a healthy soul, do your art.”

Although I’ve never heard the concept plainly spoken like that, for decades its theme has been lurking in the background, pervading the rooms of all the seminars and classes, the pages of the articles and books. And regardless of the breadth or disparity of topics, the association of art and psychological well-being arise with remarkable frequency.

You may have noticed above that I reworded what was originally “healthy soul” to “psychological well-being.” This is not an arbitrary conflation but rather a necessary maneuver to accommodate the more practically-minded—and for whom I often rephrase my original rendering to: “If you want a healthy psyche, do your art.” Really, I do this simply to give the concept a more realistic “from the neck, up” kind of gloss. After all, what’s a soul, anyway?

Ironically, the Greek word psyche translates literally into “soul,” but that aspect is all but forgotten in common Western usage. There are, however, two exceptions to this that I can think of: mythology and depth psychology. On that note, whenever the word psyche occurs in this piece, feel free to associate it with “neck-up content,” but know that I intend to mean, equally, soul—which I will address in more detail below.

Sadly, many who hear my little “healthy soul/do art” formula will shrug their shoulders and say things like, “So you’re saying it’s good to be creative? Well, that’s nothing new.” Or, “Yeah, didn’t Columbia do a study on that? painting lowers blood-pressure or something?”

Fair enough. In a world like this, it is clearly a necessity to honor the practical. After all, time is ticking, we’ve got lives to manage. Agreed! But bear in mind that one-sidedness in practical matters confines psyche to the shallow water when it is in the deeps that she thrives.

Art for art’s sake

And I speak here of the process alone, without any concern for the product or quality thereof. It is the “doing” that is so crucial—something about the conscious giving-of-oneself to the task that makes it personal, that adds depth. Perhaps this partially explains why Jung was so adamant (if not downright aggressively insistent) that his paintings were NOT art.

I can only guess that, for him, his “rendered imagery” was more of what could be called a journey into the soul. Or, if you prefer, a journey through the contents of the psyche—through both the conscious and (especially) unconscious strata—and all to the purpose of, in his own words, “kindle a light in the darkness of being” which we can also call, simply, individuation (Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 326).

I ask myself, however, am I reducing the making of art to therapy? As in “art therapy?” In part, yes. But I think that by making therapy the focus, one paradoxically flattens the depth of its affect. I’m really attempting to touch something deeper, less prone to the compartmentalization of thought or the reach of words—but again, I’ll get to this, or rather try to, when I get to soul, below.

Nonetheless, for now, I think it’s advantageous that the notion of “therapy” be moved out of the center (in an effort to invite more of its affect!), and that the resulting void be filled with notions of soul. While, as a fringe benefit, let’s just remember and appreciate that healing is an inescapable consequence of making art—call it “therapy-blind-to-itself,” or “inadvertent therapy” because as all artists know, when you do your art you cannot run fast enough to escape the sense of well-being that accompanies it.

Some words towards soul

So, there is something richer at stake, beyond even the healing—or wellness-virtue—but not so far beyond as to be a matter of pure being which just conveniently slides the whole question into the transcendent or ontological. Besides, that would be a conceptual and philosophical move, and not an artistic one. Rather, as artists (which by the way is everyone, whether it’s gardening or how you fold the laundry), we want to stay within the confines of matter, the realm of “stuff,” right here in this so-called mundane miracle called life on Earth, with all the complexities and problems and enigmas that accompany it.

The soulful artist is less concerned with conceptual explanations or solutions to problems than with heeding the drive to explore the unknown.

The soulful artist is less concerned with conceptual explanations or solutions to problems than with heeding the drive to explore the unknown. I’d even venture that when the artist has made the unknown familiar, they do not make residence there, but pull stakes and venture on to new uncharted territory. As mentioned above, psyche/soul thrives in deep water. It is her myth—and her means of making myth.

In his Pathways to Bliss, Joseph Campbell addresses this soulful drive in artists as “mythic-seizure,” which he contrasts against the rational:

The beginning of a mythic world or a mythic tradition is a seizure—something that pulls you out of yourself, beyond yourself, beyond all rational patterns. It is out of such seizures that civilizations are built … [and] the work of any artist who has given his life to producing these things … come[s] from mythic seizure. (p. 153)

But let’s not dismiss the practical—so, time for a definition-attempt at soul. In response to this impossible question I offer a direction that has much helped me, inspired by the work of depth psychology’s three chief heavyweights (in my opinion): Jung, von Franz, Hillman. In lieu of abstract denotations, which essentially tell us nothing about anything (as far as the soul’s concerned), these three frequently go at it by juxtaposing soul with spirit. Please mind that these are merely general “directions,” replete with exceptions, and quite far from any kind of precise finality. That said: spirit is up; soul is down, just as our notion of heaven is up in the sky, while mortal life is down here on earth. Spirit connotes height, ethereality, transcendence and light, whereas soul connotes depth, gravitas, matter and darkness. Spirit connotes ontological “being” removed from matter (more or less), whereas soul’s concern leans into matter. To employ the four elements (as metaphors): Spirit rises like air and burns like fire; whereas soul deepens into earth and pours down like water.

To conclude this egregiously brief gloss of “what soul is,” and to provide a concrete sample from the perspective of art, consider the depth and magnitude of soul in African-American poet Langston Hughes’s extraordinary 1921 poem “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”:

I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the

flow of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the Mississippi when Abe Lincoln

went down to New Orleans, and I’ve seen its muddy

bosom turn all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

The myth in soul

As the soul leans into matter and the field of life (perhaps in the business of carrying spirit into creation), likewise myth leans into soul—and pours back out of it. Let us say the soul exudes myth, like residual mist from a waterfall or warmth from the sun, giving us—the blind—a means of tracking it. And for some reason we come closest to seeing or touching it (so to speak) when it’s expressed in the graver terms I provide above.

In short, it seems the soul needs (to some degree) “troubled” water—or in the words of Hughes, “muddy” or “dusky.” This is what I like to call “the messiness of myth”—the complexity, heaviness, and even oddness that affirms its accuracy to life. Perhaps it renders a familiarity that psyche can readily embrace and integrate. Perhaps, also, it renders a familiarity she can hone upon in her imaginative power.

In like fashion, we can embrace the messes of life that come and we can hone our souls upon them. Yes, there’s something about the mess that stirs the soul and offers the artist in all of us the opportunity to engage and do our art.

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MythBlast authored by:

Craig Deininger has been a regularly featured writer for the JCF since 2018. He has taught at many institutions including Naropa University, Studio Film School in Los Angeles, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he earned an MFA in Poetry. He also earned an MA and PhD in Mythology and Jungian Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. He has balanced his scholarship with a long history of (what he calls) "fieldwork," ranging from commercial fishing in Alaska, building trail for the Forest Service in the Rockies, commercial farming in the midwest, years of construction and landscaping across the country and, of course, countless outdoor misadventures in backpacking, rockclimbing, mountain biking, and the like. He ranks himself in the top 99% of the world population in the art of digging a hole with a shovel and acknowledges his inflation for thinking this. His poetry has appeared in several literary magazines including The Iowa Review, and his first book of poetry Leaves from the World Tree, was co-authored with mythologist Dennis Slattery and published by Mandorla Books.

This MythBlast was inspired by The Power of Myth Episode 2, and Pathways to Bliss

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