A Jungian Approach to Spontaneous Drawing A Window on
the Soul, 1st Edition
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Elwood, Patricia Anne, author.
Title: A Jungian approach to spontaneous drawing : a window on the
soul / Patricia Anne Elwood.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2020.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019016496 (print) | LCCN 2019981101
(ebook) | ISBN 9780367209704 (paperback) | ISBN
9780367209698 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429264535 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780429564024 (mobi) | ISBN 9780429559556 (epub) |
ISBN 9780429555084 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Jungian psychology. | Drawing. | Subconsciousness. |
Psychology and art.
Classification: LCC BF173.J85 E49 2020 (print) | LCC BF173.J85
(ebook) | DDC 150.19/54—dc23
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ISBN: 978-0-367-20970-4 (pbk)
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Contents
Acknowledgementsvii
Prefaceix
Introduction1
1 Jung’s journey to the soul 7
2 Structure and dynamics in drawings 13
3 Psychic energy or libido 43
4 Janie and “The Wall” 55
5 The symbol 69
6 The collective unconscious: instincts and archetypes 75
7 The transcendent function 79
8 Alfonso and “The Red Toad” 89
9 Totemism 101
10 Bobby and “The Fish” 109
11 The tree drawing 129
12 The house drawing 145
v
Contents
13 The person drawing 161
What to observe in a drawing 181
Conclusion 183
Index185
vi
Acknowledgements
I am so very grateful to those who have participated in making this edition possible.
First and foremost I thank Philippe Glatz, President of the Grangettes Foundation in
Geneva, for stepping across a psychological threshold and joining me in my world
of fantasy and perception. Without Philippe’s curiosity, understanding, insight and
support this edition would never have come to fruition.
I must also thank most sincerely Susan Tiberghien, the Jungian author and lecturer,
who accompanied my process from novice to writer with faith and encouragement.
I remain sincerely grateful to the graphic artist, Enzo Messi of Messi Associates in
Lausanne for his untiring support and input all throughout the process of production
of this book.
I must mention all those in my practice and teaching groups who have supported
my work and approach with unwavering confidence and who have permitted pub-
lication often of their most intimate drawings and personal stories.
Last but not least, I thank Janie, Bobby, Amy, Alfonso, Maddy, Martha and Billy and
all those who entrusted their dreams and drawings and for the joy we have shared
together in exploring what the psyche had to say about their lives and processes.
vii
Preface
Jung relates his experience of drawing class when he was a child in his Memories,
Dreams and Reflections:
My fear of failure and my sense of smallness in face
of the vast world around me created in me not only a
dislike but a kind of silent despair which completely
ruined school for me. In addition I was exempted from
drawing classes on grounds of utter incapacity.This in a
way was welcome to me, since it gave me more free time;
but on the other hand it was a fresh defeat, since I had
some facility in drawing, although I did not realize
that it depended essentially on the way I was feeling.
I could draw only what stirred my imagination. But
I was forced to copy prints of Greek gods with sightless
eyes, and when that wouldn’t go properly the teacher
obviously thought I needed something more naturalistic
and set before me the picture of a goat’s head. This
assignment I failed completely, and that was the end of
my drawing classes.1
When I was a child I used to draw trees with long, deep roots. I didn’t know then
that I was already seeking a deeper connection to the unconscious, that I was looking
for the security one finds in that deep-rooted connectedness with the “Self ” within.
ix
Preface
Today, even after several decades of analysing, when I come back to my original
instinct to draw I still draw trees with big roots, and I still feel a certain stabilising
effect. My first recognition of the effect of spontaneous drawing has remained with
me unchanged, intact, beyond time and events. I had discovered at an early age that
drawing leads to that other place and space beyond the ego in a natural way.
Often when mothers or fathers are waiting in the waiting room for their children
I ask them to draw something simple: for example, “While you are waiting, draw me
a tree.” They have most often responded with pleasure at re-finding spontaneity in
themselves, a space where they can let go and just “be” who they are in their own
originality. They rediscover the deep-rooted joy in the most immediate and unex-
pected place, in front of a white sheet of paper with coloured crayons and pencils.
When Jung embarked on a deeper exploration into his own unconscious at
38 years old, he felt the need to return to the young creative boy in himself. He
decided it was even necessary as a means of contacting his own spontaneous inner
self. He pondered: “The small boy is still around and possesses a creative life which I lack.
But how can I make my way to it? I had no choice but to return to it and take up once more
that child’s life with his childish games.This was a turning point in my fate, but I gave in only
after endless resistances and with a sense of recognition.”2
Returning to meet the creative child archetype within, as Jung describes, can
truly provoke a turning point. It is even a psychological fact that, very often in life,
when all has been achieved or when the energy invested in a certain direction gets
worn out, there emerges a desire to pick up the thread with some hitherto buried
potential which had awakened in childhood but which got repressed in favour of
other choices. The child, as an archetype, accompanies us all through life to the end.
Unfortunately as adults we lose access to our spontaneous creative childishness; but
presented with a blank sheet of paper and crayons, some instinct takes on life again,
allowing a natural freedom that premeditation cannot produce.
My own passion for drawings was sustained, not by any personal artistic talents,
but from the sheer awe in the limitlessness, the infinite variety, which I discovered
through this medium. The drawing, like the unconscious itself, is something very
close to us, and yet, like the unconscious itself, seldom recognised for what it truly
reveals, seldom understood.
I discovered Carl Jung’s ideas at 18 years old, when I was a student at Liver-
pool College at the end of the 1960s. Our curriculum included three semesters of
Freudian psychology but one afternoon our psychology professor took time out
to speak about Carl Jung and his collected works. The effect on my own psyche
x
Preface
was immediate. The message had come like a revelation, an illumination: Jung had
credibility for me that I had not hitherto experienced; it felt like an awakening.
I remember feeling a sensation of tremendous relief in learning that someone called
Carl Jung had understood what psyche and the depths are all about. I had found
Freud inspiring and loved to read through his literary genius but Jung had opened
a new door for me, a new dimension that has remained a source of reference
throughout my life.
Several meaningful coincidences, which Jung has called “synchronicities,” eventu-
ally led me to the Jung Institute in Zurich, where I took up my place on the benches
and where I completed two post-graduate programmes, the first in analytical psy-
chology for children and adolescents, the second in analytical psychology for adults.
From my beginnings in the Institute I was attracted to the magic of draw-
ings, paintings and all art forms that provide channels for unconscious expression.
I quickly perceived that spontaneous drawings contain some unconscious intention
and that this may be revealed at any age, with any cultural background. As Jung him-
self through his works had opened a new door, here I found myself again peeping
through another window.
Since I had no experience I was obliged to do what Jung professes: “let things hap-
pen in the psyche.”3 As an observer, I realised that this other mind which was speaking
through the drawings had an autonomy and direction of its own, which the con-
scious mind did not necessarily know anything about. However, once revealed, the
observer, as well as the person drawing, can only admit the reality of the findings.
Over the decades I had read books on the interpretation of drawings and had so
often felt unsatisfied; something was not quite right, like in a puzzle, where some
fundamental piece is missing. As I could not attribute any real credibility to what
I was reading I desired to seek further. Comparative studies were not sufficient: as
with the psyche itself, I needed a greater understanding; I needed a map, a valid
guideline, a means of apprehending the source and a comprehension of its dynamics.
As it became more and more obvious that on the hinterland of the drawing,
another mind was activated from which the drawing found its source, I sought to dis-
cover more about this backyard of the psyche. Carl Jung had the key, and throughout
the volumes of his collected works he made it accessible. This gradually became the
level at which I was inspired to perceive and explore.
The hinterland of all authentic expression is the unconscious itself, and therefore
in the spontaneous drawing there is inevitably a manifestation directly linked to the
unconscious.
xi
Preface
In my exploration and personnel understanding of the psyche as described and
experienced by Carl Jung I found my key to the door. Since a first “Eureka,” I dis-
covered that the spontaneous drawing is a pure expression from the unconscious,
and therefore its true comprehension is based on the deeper understanding of the
structure and dynamics of the psyche itself.
From that day onwards I perceive the drawing as a window on the psyche, on
the unconscious, one may even say, through the revelation of images from hitherto
unknown realms, a window on the soul.
Patricia Anne Elwood
Notes
1 Jaffé, A. and Jung, C.G. Memories, Dreams and Reflections, Vintage Books, 1989,
p. 29.
2 Ibid. p. 174.
3 Jung, C.G. Collected Works (abbrev. CW) Vol. 13, Alchemical Studies, Bollingen
Series XX, Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 16, para. 20.
xii
Introduction
This book is about the unconscious and how it expresses itself through the simple
and most effective practice of spontaneous drawing.
The word “spontaneous” comes from its Latin root, “sponte,” meaning “of one’s
own accord, freely, willingly; acting voluntarily and from natural prompting; coming freely and
without premeditation or effort.”1
Spontaneous drawing has had but little recognition as a tool to accessing the
deeper levels in oneself or in others. History reveals that this theme is hardly ever
considered in the discipline of psychology and even less in psychiatry. If it is ever
referred to, it usually only addresses children’s drawings.
In fact spontaneous drawing from a Jungian perspective is not confined to any
age group; it is universal and can be addressed to any person, of any age, sex, cultural
background or religion, and goes far beyond childish expression.
Within the various schools of art at the beginning of the 20th century many art-
ists, curious about the results produced through spontaneity, plunged daringly into a
psychic “no man’s land” with what were then modern modes of exploration.
The method of using spontaneous drawings as a tool for investigating the psyche
acquired some importance with the development of child analysis in 1920s. Prior to
this era there is no record of attributing any value even to children’s drawings. From
Palaeolithic times to the Renaissance we do not find any drawings by children and
to such an extent that we wonder if children ever did indulge in this mode of expres-
sion. Palaeolithic cave paintings dating back as far as 35,000 years were obviously
not spontaneous; they were stylised art forms which were invested with considerable
preparation and most certainly even complex ritualistic procedures.
1
Introduction
In the 1940s “Action Painting” introduced the value of the spontaneous artistic
action and still holds its ground today. “Art Brut” or “Outsider Art” was established
in the 1940s by Jean Dubuffet, a French artist who recognised this art form, but he
considered it more within the spectrum of uncultivated, rather than spontaneous, art.
What was important about Jean Dubuffet’s enterprise for psychology was the fact
that he took the art of the “outsiders” and the mentally ill seriously and investigated
it with fervour. Jean Dubuffet was interested in the non-culture-bound drawings
and art works of mostly anonymous characters. A famous collection is housed in the
Musée de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Jung and his collaborators propagated the method of spontaneous drawing and
spontaneous artistic expression as a real psychological tool for access to the uncon-
scious and its processes. In the Jung Institute in Zurich the “Bildarchiv,” or “Archive
of Images,” contains a huge collection of spontaneous art works dating from the time
of Jung.
What Goethe’s Faust claimed – “Now let me dare to open wide the gate past which
men’s steps have never flinching trod,”2 – Jung accomplished. Opening those gates for
Jung meant delving into the depths of his own unconscious, and his access was
through spontaneity. Jung himself drew, painted and sculpted all his life. Every stage
of his self-exploration was accompanied by the taking up of pen, pencil, brush or
chisel, and plunging once again into this zone of unknowing so as to allow the
unconscious to have its way through spontaneity. He admits he didn’t always know
where this would lead him, but he distinctly felt that despite a lack of rational under-
standing, he could follow the intuition that his drawings were highly significant.
During the period in his life when he lost all outer orientation he turned inwards
and began drawing mandalas daily.
Apart from Jung himself, who had persistently resorted to spontaneous activities as a
means of creating a valid channel for the expressions coming directly from the uncon-
scious, I have had two principal Jungian predecessors who have investigated the value
of the spontaneous drawing as a precious indicator for somatic and psychic processes.
Susan Bach, born in Berlin in 1902, worked essentially with severely ill children
and somatic situations. Susan had had a scientific background studying firstly crys-
tallography but she gradually became more convinced of the irrational reality that
spontaneous drawings offered.
In the 1930s as a refugee fleeing from the rise of Nazism in Germany she worked
in mental hospitals in London, where she pioneered a movement introducing art as
a therapeutic tool. She worked with children suffering from leukaemia and observed
2
Introduction
how the unconscious of the child perceived the illness through drawings. She soon
discovered that the spontaneous drawing revealed suggestions for prognosis and diag-
nosis in illness.
Susan believed that spontaneous drawings accurately reflect somatic and psycho-
logical states. She followed the concepts of Jung at a time when the proof of the
unconscious as a subconscious reality was being explored. Through her work she
contributed to proving that the unconscious was indeed a source and a reality.
The basics of her work and research were published in 1990 in a book entitled Life
Paints Its Own Span: On the Significance of Spontaneous Pictures by Severely Ill Children.3
Susan died in London in 1995.
In 1985 I was walking towards the Institute in Zurich when I was joined by a fel-
low on the path who inquired about my studies. I was on my way to my propaedeu-
tic exam and I had a collection of drawings in my folder. I told him what I was doing
and that my exam was about the interpretation of images from the unconscious. He
told me he was interested in that approach as well and asked to see the drawings
I had in my bag. As I unfolded them he exclaimed that they were in fact the drawings
he himself had collected throughout many years of inquiry into the unconscious.
We were both surprised by the synchronicity of our timely meeting. His name was
Gregg Furth and in 1988 he wrote a reference book in my field entitled The Secret
World of Drawings: A Jungian Approach to Healing through Art.4
We met again a few times over the years and later in London in 2002; he con-
firmed that he was delighted that I had still retained the passion for the approach
with drawings. Gregg had studied with Elisabeth Kübler-Ross and Susan Bach. He
contributed to the works of Kübler-Ross on death and dying. Gregg passed away in
2005. I felt he had very generously passed onto me the mission to carry the explora-
tion of spontaneous drawings further.
Originally I was inspired by the spontaneous drawing as a means of accessing the
unconscious as its possibilities are limitless, it is easily organised, the material needed
is minimal, it can be carried out anywhere, and is instinctively easy and attractive for
most people.
This book is meant to illustrate, through some concrete material, that sponta-
neous drawing provides access to the psyche and can even produce processes that are
unexpected for the conscious mind. It follows a Jungian approach and includes an
introduction to the psychology of Jung.
This work attempts to encourage others to access their unconscious through this
simple method. It is also meant to provide a tool for those working in the helping
3
Introduction
professions who need to refresh their therapeutic proposals, and as an alternative
to a purely rational approach. The fact that spontaneous drawing is accessible to all
beyond age, culture and religion, and often even beyond pathology, means that it may
be applicable in many domains. One specific aim is to provide an authentic direction
in analysis or diagnostic insight in certain pathological cases. It may be explored and
tested in an endless variety of fields.
The analysis of spontaneous drawings is a science and an art. As a science one
needs a basic understanding of the structure and dynamics of the psyche as well as
experience with symbolism and unconscious processes. As an art it requires expe-
rience and encompasses all the functions of the psyche, feeling, thinking, sensation
and intuition.
Jung says in his famous Red Book, which I prefer to call Liber Novus, as he himself
entitled it: “the wealth of the soul exists in images,”5 but he also goes on to say: “schol-
arliness is not enough, there is knowledge of the heart that gives deeper insight.”6 It is this
knowledge of the heart that one must open to, so as to be able to grasp the mind in
the background that is expressing itself through the drawing. This is an acquired art
that goes with self-development and empirical experience. Letting go of the think-
ing mind to reach the level of the irrational pre-logical mind is what Jung had to do
and which he advocates.
Jung prescribes:
I should advise you to put it all down as beautifully as you can – in some beautifully
bound book. It will seem as if you were making the visions banal – but then you need
to do that – then you are freed from the power of them. If you do that with these eyes
for instance they will cease to draw you.You should never try to make the visions come
again.Think of it in your imagination and try to paint it.Then when these things are in
some precious book you can go to the book and turn over the pages and for you it will be
your church, your cathedral – the silent places of your spirit where you will find renewal.
If anyone tells you that it is morbid or neurotic and you listen to them – then you will
lose your soul – for in that book is your soul.7
Notes
1 Extracts from Oxford Dictionary of Etymology.
2 von Goethe, J.W. Faust in MDR’s, part II, p. 188–189 (vintage edition, 1989).
3 Susan, B. Life Paints Its Own Span, on the Significance of Spontaneous Pictures for
Severely Ill Children (Daimon Verlag, Einsiedeln, 1990).
4
Introduction
4 Furth, G. The Secret World of Drawings: A Jungian Approach to Healing Through Art.
Published 2002 by Inner City Books (first published February 1989).
5 Jung, C.G. The Red Book: Liber Novus (Liber Novus), edited by Sonu Shamdasani,
translated by John Peck, Mark Kyburz and Sonu Shamdasani, W.W. Norton &
Co, New York, 2009, p. 232.
6 Ibid. p. 233.
7 Ibid. p. 216.
