Notes on Creativity: Jung & Nietzsche
I’ve been reading Jung’s Man and his Symbols and Nietzsche’s The Birth of Tragedy. These are books on very different topics, yet seem to have some parallel ideas about creativity, and made me reflect on my own creative process.
The Conscious and Unconscious Mind
Jung is so incredibly fun to read! I’m a man of extremes, so sign me up for anything that will make me oscillate between “this is complete bullshit!“ and “this is so interesting!“. Jung’s ideas of the conscious and unconscious were definitely in the second camp. Everyone has an intuition about the line between the conscious and the unconscious. The former is the sum of conscious thoughts — feelings, ideas, memories we are aware of, stirring, and dealing with in the moment. They are salient to us and we have control over them… or so we like to think. With our consciousness, we can construct a rational course of action and execute it. But what about all those memories, experiences, ideas, and thoughts that we are not aware of in the moment? Our psychic contents are certainly much much much larger than what we are aware of at a given moment. Jung would say they are stored in the unconscious. This unconscious is like a black hole that contains all our psychic content, all experiences, memories, imaginations. Essentially, the distinction between the conscious and unconscious parts of our mind is a differences between “intentional and unintentional contents of the mind. The former is derived from the ego personality, the latter, however, arises from a source that is not identical with the ego, but is its “other side”” (p. 22).
There is an interaction between the conscious and unconscious. Content from the conscious mind enters and is stored in the unconscious. Everything we ever experience, even if unconsciously observed, is stored in the unconscious. So the unconscious is like this storage of everything that happens to the conscious. More interestingly though, content from the unconscious can be brought back out into the conscious. One way is agentic. That is how one can retrieve a memory of an actual event we have experienced — the details of the memory, as some book written by us, lie dormant in the Large Library of the unconscious, waiting to be borrowed and read all over again. But this can happen in a less agentic way as well. Jung talks about how one of his patients was distracted by “an unexpected flow of memories from his early childhood“, which he realized later was triggered by the “smell of geese“ (p. 21), a smell strongly associated with his childhood on a farm.
The most interesting form of interaction to me — the root of creativity — is the visions from the unconscious! Jung claims that “certain dreams, visions, or thoughts can suddenly appear; and however carefully one investigates, one cannot find out what caused them“ (p. 65). This is not an easy point to swallow, but it is key in Jung’s theory of the unconscious. Jung claims that “just as conscious contents can vanish into the unconscious, new contents, which have never yet been conscious, can arise from it“ (p. 24, original emphasis). He names notable examples, like German chemist Kekulé and French mathematician Poincaré, who owed important discoveries to sudden pictoral revelations. Kekulé for example, dreamed of a serpent eating its tail, which he interpreted as a sign that the structure of benzene was one of a closed carbon ring, which appears in his Textbook of Organic Chemistry (1861).
Jung claims that the unconscious talks to the conscious via archetypes, like psychic impulses imbued with symbolic meanings. In Man and his Symbols, Joseph L. Handersen talks of some of these archetypes. Narrative archetypes like Death and Resurrection or archetypes of characters like the Hero or Mother, are some examples. I think forms and shapes and aesthetic patterns can be seen as such archetypes — in a previous blog I wrote how such archetypes of beauty may be used to construct worldly orders. These archetypes “create myths, religions, and philosophies that influence and characterize whole nations and epochs of history“ (p. 67). I won’t go as far as Jung to claim that the unconscious has an an agency of its own, that it communicates with us via dreams in order to restore some psychological balance that has been tipped too much in one or another extreme. But I do think that he’s onto something about these sudden pictorial revelations that can spring seemingly out of nowhere, and inspire creativity, from benzene molecular structures to religious myths.
This creative process of discovery that Jung talks about is something I can relate to. Let’s take my hibiscus kombucha cake recipe for example. I wrote that the idea for the cake came from a “fit of inspiration a few months ago” when I “had a vision” of the cake. The idea truly came to me like a vision, like a dream during the day, when I imagined a beautiful cake, each layer in a different shade of pink. I did not concoct that image — it sprung from my unconscious in its entirety, I did not imagine individual parts and then consciously combine them. Once the image was projected into my consciousness, the vision begged (ordered!) to be realized, to be shared. Then, the conscious mind came in… why was the cake pink? Hibiscus! That would definitely make it pretty pink, and has a strong floral fruity flavor that seems right for the vision… what if I made a hibiscus kombucha?! Ideas come and are accepted or rejected according to a simple rule: are they going to help me achieve my vision? The whole creative process is a conversation between the conscious and unconscious, with the unconscious providing the “blueprint“ of the idea, the archetype of my pretty little pink cake, which is then manifested by the conscious mind. The idea for the cake is like a vision from the unconscious that is then realized by the conscious mind. Now that’s dream interpretation!
These thoughts feel both disturbing and ecstatic. They are disturbing because the idea feels non-agentic. It’s mine but not really mine, it feels given. What (who?) gave it to me? It is unsettling, like there is someone within me who is not me. Paradoxically, it is also these given ideas — the visions! — that posses me the most. I’ve concocted a lot of boring recipes, weekly meal preps, with a formula that was used and re-used. Then, cooking feels like a chore. When I was creating my vision of my pretty little pink cake, I was flying, I was in service of something bigger than me, of my vision. How can something that I cannot take full authorship over, make me work in the kitchen with élan? Reading Jung, and thinking about my cake, lead me to some cliché platitudes. If this sprung from me, what else can? What all hides in my unconscious? Is there really like Jung suggests, a whole universe within? Everything that ever was and everything that ever will be is inside of me? And not just me! Inside everyone! All of us — Universes! This is the ecstatic part!
Now, onto Nietzsche’s ideas about traversing the worlds of the conscious and unconscious.
The Apollonian and Dionysian Drives
We will forgive Nietzsche for all his Westoid Greekcuckoldry in The Birth of Tragedy, calling the ancient Greeks “the most accomplished, most beautiful, most universally envied race of mankind“ (p. 3), or proclaiming that “the spirit of German philosophy flows from the same sources“ (p. 95). We’ll also forgive him for all the degeneration theorizing in this book too. And we’ll do all this forgiving because of Nietzsche’s idea of the Apollonian and Dionysian drives. This is one of those erotically exciting ideas, a way to see the world, a framework, a model, an ideology that immediately started coloring how I see. And Nietzsche is spitting here, the prose is obnoxious at worst, but ecstatic at best! Like a drunk Balkan uncle rambling on the slava table. It’s not “facts” or “logic“ that are winning this argument, no darling. It is conviction and vibes… and I’m vibing with Nietzsche — he’s my favorite incel after all!
Ok, the Apollonian and Dionysian. Nietzsche claims that “art derives its continuous development from the duality of the Apollonian and Dionysian” (p. 14). The Apollonian drive Nietzsche connects with logic, order, harmony, while the Dionysian drive is his conflicting and co-dependent half, the drive toward intoxication, chaos, instinct. You need both to produce art. Not your boring art, your Hollywood remakes, sequels, and prequels. But the kind of art that justifies existence — because “the existence of the world is justified only as an aesthetic phenomenon“ (p. 8). For Nietzsche, the Apollonian and Dionysian are “the vivid and concrete representation of two worlds of art, utterly different in their deepest essence and their highest aims, Apollo [he sees] as the transfiguring genius of principium individuationis, the sole path to true redemption through illusion. While in the mystical triumphal cry of Dionysus the spell of individuation is broken and the path is opened to the Mothers of Being, to the innermost core of things“ (p. 76).
In my reading of Nietzsche and Jung — the Apollonian is a drive toward the conscious and the Dionysian toward the unconscious. There is plenty of parallels. Just like Jung associates the conscious with the Ego-Self, so does Nietzsche associate the Apollonian drive with the principle of individuation — principium individuationis. Nietzsche explicitly associates the Apollonian drive toward the conscious mind as Jung might use it (p. 66, 83), and contrasts that with the Dionysian drive towards instinct (p. 66) or even literally one that produces “eternal archetypes“ (p. 86). This language maps straight onto Jung! Jung’s “other side“ across the conscious is the (collective) unconscious, the universal pool of ancient archetypes and symbols. Exactly what Nietzsche calls the “primal Oneness“ (p.17) or “universalia ante rem“ (p. 102) — ‘universals before the thing’. Given that Jung engages with Nietzsche’s writings in Man and his Symbols, I would not be surprised if Jung was inspired by Nietzsche, almost 100 years later, even if unconsciously!
If we are to apply Nietzsche’s framework to my cake making, we might say that the Dionysian drive, the chaotic loss of self, opened toward the unconscious and received the vision of the pretty little pink cake. Then, the Apollonian drive towards order, took that vision and manifested it through rational and conscious thinking. It is exactly this interplay between the Apollonian and Dionysian drives that generated the ultimate recipes — those are the drives facilitating the “conversation“ between the conscious and unconscious. Nietzsche also talks of the conflicting feelings in the Dionysian drive, about the “dread that grips man when he suddenly loses his way amidst the cognitive forms of appearance, because the principle of sufficient reason, in one of its forms, seems suspended. If we add to this dread blissful ecstasy which, prompted by the same fragmentation of the principium individuationis, rises up from man’s innermost core, indeed from nature, we are vouchsafed a glimpse into the nature of the Dionysian“ (p. 16-17). Don’t Nietzsche’s words here perfectly track the paradox of my cake idea? The fact that the idea is not mine, the dread at the loss of self, at not knowing where the image came from, versus the possession that is bestowed upon me by the vision, that blissful ecstasy of creation, of transcending myself. I like to think that I married Apollo and Dionysus when I made that cake, and indeed created art that justifies existence — mine at the very least.
But this marriage between Apollo and Dionysus is not always forthcoming, and in playing the guitar I’ve never been able to unite them. I am a self-taught guitar player, and I’ve always been happy to know the basics, to be able to cover some songs stuck in my head, to yell it out and be done with it. Never saw my playing as life-justifying art. Partly because of lack of ambition, partly because of lack of talent, I’ve settled in a pattern of playing that sentenced Apollo and Dionysus into solitary confinement. My left hand is the embodiment of Apollo, consciously playing a progression of chords on the strings, which I basically play mechanically through muscle memory, not musically by ear. I either remember the chord progression by heart, or cannot play it. On the other hand, my right hand embodies Dionysus, strumming the strings completely unconsciously, pulling ancient archetypes of rhythm from my unconscious, to mimic whatever rhythm of the song I am covering — always on beat, but never repetitive, guided by nothing but raw emotion and intoxication. Recently, I’ve felt the limits of my skills on the guitar. I’ve wanted to create, not just cover songs. I’ve been yearning to unlock a new level of musicality. Perhaps a good diagnosis of my problem is that my left hand needs to become more Dionysian, to play by ear, even if it is horrible to begin with, and my right hand needs to become more Apollonian, pluck instead of strum, be precise, ordered, and purposeful.
I like to think that if Nietzsche read this, he’d tell me “Socrates, make music!“ (p. 70). He’d tell me to embrace Dionysus, and point me to the Primal Mother, who beckons and proclaims:
“Be like me! The Primal Mother, eternally creative, eternally impelling into life, eternally drawing satisfaction from the ceaseless flux of phenomena!” (p. 80)
As I keep yearning for the Primal Mother, to be with Her, to be Her, I remember the day after I made the hibiscus kombucha cake, when 9 people were on my balcony, eating my pretty little pink cake, and living their best lives in community, and I think: one step at a time.
