Viewing the Soul as a Painting

Abstract

C. G. Jung never published his painted opus, The Red Book, or the art-based methodology that he learned in creating it, instead teaching this process to his advanced patients in analysis. Yet, “despite the fact” that he “so often travelled this path with individual patients,” Jung (1933) lamented that he had not “succeeded in making the process clear to a wider circle and in working it up in a form suitable for publication,” something that was “accomplished only in a fragmentary way” (p. 72). This art-based and art-informed study gathers these scattered fragments and assembles them as stepping stones to recreate the soul’s illuminated pathway. Following Jung’s example and his advice to patients on how to create their own painted opus, I travelled Jung’s path and lead others on this individuation journey to find our “own way,” as Jung (2009) instructed (p. 125). Focusing on Jung’s summary statement from The Red Book as a lens: “It [soul] is not to be thought; it is to be viewed. It is a painting” (p. 547), this dissertation views the soul as a painting to formalize and publish his art-based methodology. In bringing Jung’s path to a wider circle, the study takes a step toward redressing his regret that he “failed” in his “foremost task, to open people’s eyes to the reality of the soul and the buried treasure [The Red Book] in the field” (as cited in Russell, 2013 p. 5).