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Office, Therapy, Aesthetic Perspective
MY OFFICE, THERAPY AND THE AESTHETIC PERSPECTIVE
RUNNING HEAD: Office, Therapy, Aesthetic Perspective
David Johnston
ABSTRACT
I first discuss the nature of the aesthetic perspective and its relationship to beauty. Following that, I interweave a description of my art, my therapy room and my way of doing therapy from the aesthetic perspective. I add a felt-sense of the subjective time and season of my room. I then indicate that my therapeutic message is “esse in anima” or “being in soul” and care of the Self. I end by noting that, for me, concealed behind the aesthetic perspective is the religious and ethical attitudes along with an intellectual search for truth.
MY OFFICE, THERAPY AND THE AESTHETIC PERSPECTIVE
Introduction
In this paper, I describe my experience of my therapy office indicating how it relates, in essence, to my approach to therapy and to what I bring to therapy. My bias, at least for this exercise, is aesthetic, which means that I write not only about my own aesthetic experience of my office, but about myself as an artist, and about some of my paintings. In addition, I suggest, or imply that my approach to therapy, indeed to life, is profoundly aesthetic.
The Aesthetic Perspective
Sri Aurobindo [1970], India’s great 20th Century poet, seer and prophet of beauty writes that:
“Art galleries cannot be brought in every home, but if all the appointments of our life and furniture of our homes are things of taste and beauty, it is inevitable that the habits, thoughts and feelings of the people should be raised, ennobled, harmonized, made more sweet and dignified.” p. 50
These beautifully expressed words have long been deeply etched in my mind and represent a principal driving force in my life. They have been a major influence in my choice of office space and in its decoration. Moreover, I am an artist and over the years, art and a search for beauty have become an intrinsic part of my being. I paint and my paintings fill the walls of both my home and my office. As well, within the limits of a modest budget, all the furnishings in my office have been chosen with taste and care.
Aesthetics is the field that concerns itself with the discernment of beauty [and ugliness] and its expression. It concerns itself, therefore, with the arts, humankind’s principal vehicle for aesthetic expression. In a world driven by the values of commerce and applied science, and one that is increasingly taking on a narcissistic-cum-borderline reality, claiming one’s life is organised according to such principles may seem like a questionable assertion.
Indeed, although the contemporary arts may represent an interesting experiment there is, in my opinion, with some notable exceptions, little concern for beauty. There is rather, expression of subjective life values, often dramatic and often that excite desire, usually of a questionable nature, or artistic expression of ideas or mind values which are, in the broad sense of the word, of a political nature with a didactic purpose. Both these forms of expression are what Joyce [as reported in Campbell, 1986] calls improper art.
In its essence, however, art [painting, poetry, music, dance, etc] or what deserves that name is an expression of universal beauty [Sri Aurobindo, the Mother, 1970]. The principal purpose of art, in this case, is to manifest beauty and to facilitate entry into that awareness. It is as if art is a kind of portal that invites or draws viewers, listeners, etc., into a universal field of the sensual experience of beauty.
The word aesthetic, in its Greek root meaning, has to do with sense perception which, as Hillman [1981] points out, is of the imaginative heart. Likewise, Campbell [1986, p. 123] notes that it is based on the Greek aisthetikos [“perception”], “aisthanesthai,” [“to perceive, to feel”], implying that not only sensation but the evaluative function of feeling is activated in the aesthetic experience. For the ancient Greeks, to experience beauty was to experience the Divine in manifestation, the poikilia [Armstrong, 1987]. According to this way of thinking, the sensuous, feeling experience of the Divine is the experience of beauty. If one assumes that the Divine is fully involved in all aspects of creation, this suggests that beauty can be experienced anywhere and at all times. But this implies that the perceiver is open to that experience and this is surely not always the case. The ancient Greeks, therefore, spoke of special moments of “Divine Enhancement of earthly beauty” [p. 48].
There are unique moments, for instance, during the setting of the sun, or during a thunder and lightening storm, or while immersed in the numinous experience incited by an attractive landscape, that beauty seems more accessible. There are moments when a great piece of art draws us hauntingly into its aesthetic essence. There are moments, that is to say, that in sensuously experiencing objects or moments in the external world that beauty is subjectively awakened in our hearts and souls. Although the external object or scene, in itself, is aesthetically pleasing, there is something about the experience of the moment itself that is of ultimate importance.
There are other times that the subjective experience of beauty, it seems, opens up on its own, and everything regardless what, becomes imbued with its nectar. Does this mean that any stimulation of the senses, visual or otherwise, or any self-referral to a felt-sense is necessarily beautiful? Not according to my experience, not at all. It takes a subjective receptivity and soul discernment. It takes, that is, according to the Mother [1970], Sri Aurobindo’s colleague and co-worker, an opening to the universal, at the place where Keat’s (1966, p. 316) observation that “Beauty is truth - truth is beauty” is fulfilled.
I am an artist and I spend a considerable amount of time and energy differentiating my aesthetic sensibility and appreciation of beauty. I bring this to the furnishings of my office and to my practice of therapy, both of which interweave in a piece. In a profound sense, it is perhaps this more than anything that I bring to therapy. Even my personal approach to Jung, whom I consider to be my psychological and spiritual master, is primarily aesthetic, value laden with gratitude and love for the gift he has given me.
My Art, My Office and My Approach to Therapy
My art is both a dialogue between the conscious ego and the collective unconscious and the result of such a dialogue. The images are driven by intuition and come laden with meaning, which is to say, with intelligence. The intuitions behind the images are not mental abstractions, however, as they are intimately connected to life and the life plane. They not only involve life, but come with consciousness. My art consists of symbolic representations containing images of underlying patterns of behaviour, which can be related to in an immediate and contemporary way. It is accordingly, an art of transformation, an art that bears directly on the felt-experience of the transformation of my own nature, of my “lived world” [Brooks, 1991, p. 85]. It is also, I believe, an art that participates in the profound cultural transformation that is taking place today.
Perhaps, as Sri Aurobindo [1970] writes, painting is the most sensuous of all the art forms. But, some paintings are more sensuous than others. In fact, although my art is essentially of an intuitive nature, its relationship to life is expressed in its sensuous quality. The colours are vivid and intense and the forms strong and solid, rendering the intuition or idea, in an artistic sense, fully embodied and concrete.
My art is embodied in several other ways as well. The very fact that the images have been transposed from my inner vision to canvas is the first. Their framing, which has the effect of enhancing the art by way of refined spatial definition, is the second. Their being displayed, as if to invite aesthetic appreciation, is the third. Their “embodiment” in my life and way of being is the fourth.
All this I bring to my practice and art of therapy. Although paintings simply are, without any intended didactic purpose, by their nature, they instruct. They instruct primarily because they come, not only with image and power to still the emotions, but they also come with idea. Inasmuch as they are living archetypal symbols they come, in addition, with the effective power of transformation.
In order to give the reader an experiential felt-sense of what I am suggesting, I will now discuss the intuitive meanings I have found to be concealed in each of the paintings in my office, which one may relate to by contemplating the attached pictures [appendix]. Painting one portrays illumination [lamp], and inner knowledge [books] (Exhibit 1). Painting two suggests purity [white], healing naturalness [green] and intensity [red] in life (Exhibit 2). Painting three indicates transformation through consciousness [right angle and balance] in life [serpent] (Exhibit 3). The fourth suggests meaning [head] through descent to the unknown [black top and nose tip] for fertile [black tears] resolution (Exhibit 4). The fifth symbolizes meaning [head] through shadow or the unknown [black] (Exhibit 5). The sixth painting emanates a sense of harmony between surface-to-depth receptivity [the horizontal lemiscates] and vertically thrusting energy [phallic shapes] (Exhibit 6). The seventh piece depicts a relationship between the “I” or ego consciousness [the violet figure] and the “not I” as the many coloured melody of life [the coloured moon shapes] (Exhibit 7).
Unlike all the other pieces, the eighth is on the floor, which is significant in itself. It suggests that the wholeness [mandala] that one relates to in a personal and human way [the human-like figure in the centre is not found on intellectual mountain tops but more humbly, on the very ground we walk on] (Exhibit 8). The Number 10, which is inscribed on each circle qualitatively, refers to a higher order of differentiated unity (Exhibit 8A). On the back of the painting’s container is etched out descending numbers from 0-10, indicating that wholeness requires not only ascent but a descent as well, which here is depicted as lying in the unconscious (Exhibit 8B). The ninth piece indicates death [the goddess’ face] for vibrant new life [the serpent like shapes and lines], along with a contemplative witness consciousness [the “Sherlock Holmes” figure smoking a pipe] (Exhibit 9). The tenth piece symbolizes creative impulses [the dwarves] and strength of perseverance and endurance [the giant] along with relatedness [red] and life [green] (Exhibit 10). Finally, the eleventh piece, which consists of a series of four paintings, suggests a union of spirit [Jung, the spiritual psychologist] and matter [Capra, the physicist] [painting one] (Exhibit 11). The artistic representation of the collision of sub-atomic particles [the V shapes] [paintings one, three and four] suggests a quantum mutation in the structure of consciousness [the turning point] [painting one], involving both the individual [.], and relationship to the community [.] [.] [paintings three and four].
There are three other paintings that I have just recently placed in my office. The first, piece 12, indicates that the path of the heart [heart shape], involving the unknown and mystery [black centre] and high value [gold shapes], leads to consciousness [sun] of contents [fish] of the unconscious [water] (Exhibit 12). The second, piece 13, suggests illumination or light [yellow], the alchemical citrinatis, on feminine or yin-like self-absorption and wholeness [black circles], the albedo or condition of receptivity [white square shape] and the rubedo or return of life energy [red circular shape] (Exhibit 13). The third painting, piece 14, combines a sense of earth-ground [brown mandalas], relationship to a transcendent principle [gold fish] of wholeness [the upper mandala] and phenomenological involvement of wholeness [four little fish] in the process of life over time [wavy lines] (Exhibit 14). Finally, piece 15 indicates the need for firm psychological boundaries [solid frame] at which time a descent of solidified spirit [grey modelling paste] allows ethical freedom, beyond conventional limits [thrusting right angle triangle] (Exhibit 15).
So we have it. With the exception of the one painting that stands on the floor, they are placed on the walls around my rectangular office in a rhythmic flow. These are my paintings and a sense of their meaning. There is, of course, much more to them than what I have indicated. Their deepest truth, which unfolds over time, sinks into mystery even for me.
My paintings often have the effect of inducing me into an in between space, a metaxy between ego consciousness and the world of the archetypes, which comes with a felt-sense of intimations of timelessness. It puts me into a state of being, where I experience a kind of continuity from the past through the present into the future. Whatever else these painting do aesthetically, they often carry me back into myself without divorcing me from this world of physical reality. They do this to me and I have reason to suspect, to some degree, they do this to my clients also, at least to some of them.
Indeed, many of my analysands tell me how much they like my office. They use such words as “it is beautifully decorated,” “it is rustic,” it is “like a movie” and so on. Someone recently declared that a wonderful essay should be written about it! It is not just my paintings that create this atmosphere it is the office itself, a relatively long rectangular shaped room, like a native long-house, with one wall of irregularly shaped bricks. It is also the tye-brown coloured oak desk, book cases and coffee table, the deep blue heritage rug, the rich antique flavoured curtains, the green plants and fresh colourful vase of flowers and the other little touches here and there. It is, in addition, the comfortable tactile Skar love-seat and easy chair that comes in hues of blue, mauve, grey and off-white as well as the two cushions from Hungary, both black with intricate designs stitched in rich vibrant colours. Finally, it is the fresh painted mat black gas heater, which adds charm to the atmosphere. It is the aesthetic gestalt.