International Journal of Jungian Studies

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Aesthetic experience and analytic process

Mark Douglas Winborn

To cite this article: Mark Douglas Winborn (2015) Aesthetic experience and analytic process,
International Journal of Jungian Studies, 7:2, 94-107, DOI: 10.1080/19409052.2014.924424

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Published online: 16 Jun 2014.

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International Journal of Jungian Studies, 2015
Vol. 7, No. 2, 94–107, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19409052.2014.924424

Aesthetic experience and analytic process

Mark Douglas Winborn*

Inter-Regional Society for Jungian Analysts, Memphis, TN, USA

(Received 10 April 2014; accepted 12 May 2014)

In this paper, it is proposed that all individuals have an innate (archetypal) aesthetic
urge that is a central organizing influence for our actions, experiences, perceptions,
self-perceptions, and relationships. The attitudes towards aesthetics held by Freud,
Jung, and later theorists are reviewed. Drawing on ideas from aesthetic philosophy and
neuroscience, it is suggested that many of the experiences associated with analytic
process – such as the experience of depth, the emergence of meaning, transcendence,
coherence, narrative flow, or moments of meeting – can be viewed through the lens of
aesthetic experience. This aesthetic substratum is discussed in terms of analytic
narrative and interpretation as well as exploring the impact that various artistic
modalities, such as poetry and music, can have on analytic process.
Keywords: aesthetics; aesthetic experience; analytic process; neuroscience; aesthetic
universals; archetype; interpretation; narrative

Introduction
Aesthetics can be narrowly defined as a branch of philosophy dealing with taste, the
nature of art, and the appreciation of beauty. According to Glover (2009), the field of
aesthetics is primarily concerned with four interwoven areas: the nature of the creative
process, the experience of the artist, the interpretation of artistic creations, and the nature
of the aesthetic encounter. Aesthetic formulations are frequently applied in the fields of
art theory, literary theory, film theory, and music theory. However, the field of aesthetics
has broadened and there is significant debate about what constitutes the domain, or
domains, of aesthetics.1 Budd (2008, p. 17) indicates that aesthetic considerations cover a
large number of categories: ‘aesthetic judgments, aesthetic pleasures, aesthetic values,
aesthetic attitudes, aesthetic interest, aesthetic sensitivity, aesthetic properties, aesthetic
character, aesthetic appreciation, aesthetic responses, and so on’.
In this paper, I will focus more narrowly on aesthetic experience. Menke (2008, p. 66)
defines aesthetic experience as ‘a mode of self-reflection’ that forms a dialectical tension
with philosophical thought. For Hagman (2005, p. 1), aesthetic experience is ‘not a
quality of objects or sensations; it is an emergent phenomenon that arises in the
transitional psychological zone in which our creative engagement with the world is lived’.
Hagman goes on to emphasize that aesthetic experience is fundamentally subjective yet
connected to objective qualities of the phenomenon being engaged. From this
perspective, every aspect of our experience has an aesthetic dimension that organizes
affect and perception and thereby shapes how we register and engage the world around

*Email: mwinborn@comcast.net

© 2014 Taylor & Francis

 International Journal of Jungian Studies 95

us. The aesthetic experience of general and specific aspects of the analytic process will be
considered: from the smallest interactions to the overall impression of long-term analytic
relationships. These areas of aesthetic consideration include reactions to the consulting
room, gestures, narrative structure, interpretation, presence, appearance, tone of voice,
and imagery utilized. I will also explore how aesthetic experience colors the emergence of
other analytic factors, such as affect, meaning, and theoretical congruence – factors to
which the analytic practitioner is often more attuned.
The focus here is not on what analytic theory has to say about aesthetics. Instead, we
will explore how the concept of aesthetic experience can help us sensitize to and
appreciate the form, composition, line, color, and texture of analysis. The focus will be on
the aesthetic experience of the analytic process, rather than the overt integration of
various art modalities as an aspect of therapy. The concept of aesthetic experience will be
used as a means of exploring the movement or arc of the analytic process rather than
explicit judgments of beauty. Aesthetic experience includes more than simple evaluations
of beauty; even experiences that register as disagreeable or disturbing can be experienced
as aesthetic (Tomlin, 2008). For example, Connolly (2008, p. 130) points out, in an
exploration of the aesthetics of horror films, that the erosion of boundaries present in the
horror genre creates ‘an aesthetics of indeterminacy and uncertainty, principal character-
istics of the Sublime’.
Several years ago, I noticed that aesthetic considerations were more frequently
breaking into my awareness during analytic sessions and during periods of reflection.
I had difficulty recalling much emphasis on aesthetic issues during my analytic training.
In the course of writing this paper I queried several close colleagues, who had trained in
different locations, about their experience of aesthetics as an element in their training.
Three themes emerged from their responses. All agreed that aesthetics is a central part of
their analytic work, but not an explicit part of their training processes. However, they did
indicate that sensitivity to aesthetic issues was implicitly modeled by their better
supervisors. Based on these observations, we might wonder why aesthetic elements seem
to be implicit aspects of analytic training rather than a theme explicitly incorporated. To
lay a foundation for the exploration of aesthetic experience in the analytic process, the
next several sections will explore the attitudes of the psychoanalytic founders towards
art and aesthetics, evolutionary aspects of aesthetic responsiveness, the neuroscience of
aesthetic processing, and later trends in the intersection between psychoanalytic theory
and aesthetics.

Legacy of the founders

One reason for the limited focus on aesthetic experience in analysis can be located with
the founders of psychoanalysis. Both Jung and Freud possessed ambivalent or negative
views of aesthetics. Freud’s position about aesthetics, art, and culture was rather pessim-
istic and dismissive, considering this area mainly a ‘harmless and beneficent … illusion’
(Freud, 1933, p. 160). Freud articulated the first psychoanalytic approach to aesthetic
experience with his concept of sublimation (1905/1976) whereby he attributed all artistic
creative expression to the diversion of sexual libido away from direct object release,
proposing that this libido would become displaced onto other areas of cultural activity.
Art and aesthetic interests were seen only as a secondary byproduct of sexual libido,
lacking any inherent value or motivation. Later, in Civilization and its Discontents (1930,
pp. 82–83), Freud adopts an even more dismissive position on the role of aesthetic
interests:
96 M.D. Winborn

This aesthetic attitude to the goal of life offers little protection against the threat of suffering,
but it can compensate for a great deal. The enjoyment of beauty has a peculiar, mildly
intoxicating quality of feeling. Beauty has no obvious use; nor is there any clear cultural
necessity for it. Yet civilization could not do without it. The science of aesthetics investigates
the conditions under which things are felt as beautiful, but it has been unable to give any
explanation of the nature and origin of beauty, and, as usually happens, lack of success is
concealed beneath a flood of resounding empty words. Psychoanalysis, unfortunately, has
scarcely anything to say about beauty either. All that seems certain is its derivation from the
field of sexual feeling. The love of beauty seems a perfect example of an impulse inhibited in
its aim. ‘Beauty’ and ‘attraction’ are originally attributes of the sexual object.

Jung asserted that aesthetic response operates primarily through the perceptive functions of
intuition and sensation. Beyond typology, Jung had a strong interest in the symbolic and
archetypal elements of literature, poetry, and the visual arts, however his interest was
primarily associated with the psychological patterns being expressed through these artistic
media (Philipson, 1963). Jung’s ambivalent relationship with aesthetics has been
documented by John Beebe (2010) and Sylvester Wojtkowski (2009) among others.
Wojtkowski outlines what he terms Jung’s ‘art complex’ – pointing to a variety of
conflicting messages about the origins, manifestations, and process of aesthetics and art.
Jung has expressed particular discomfort with music (Almèn, 2008) and open disdain for
modern art (Wojtkowski, 2009). Wojtkowski also underscores Jung’s inner struggles to
come to terms with and understand his own artistic-aesthetic output, which he discusses in
both The Red Book (Jung, 2012) and Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1961, pp. 185–186):

I once asked myself, ‘What am I really doing? Certainly this has nothing to do with science.
But then what is it?’ Whereupon a voice within me said, ‘It is art’. I was astonished …
Obviously what I was doing wasn’t science. What then could it be but art? … I said very
emphatically to this voice that my fantasies had nothing to do with art, and I felt a great inner
resistance … Then came the next assault, and again the same assertion: ‘That is art’. This
time I caught her and said, ‘No, it is not! On the contrary it is nature’.

In Jung’s main essay (1921/1971, CW6, para. 490–491) on aesthetics, ‘The Type Problem
in Aesthetics’, we again detect Jung’s ambivalence about aesthetic experience:

Empathy presupposes that the object is, as it were, empty, and seeks to imbue it with life.
Abstraction, on the other hand, presupposes that the object is alive and active, and seeks to
withdraw from its influence … the essence of empathy is the projection of subjective
contents.2

In this formulation, the object of aesthetic contemplation had no qualities of its own but
was merely a receptacle for the projection of an individual’s unconscious contents or is
experienced as a powerful, threatening force that needed to be kept at a distance. There-
fore, Jung’s approach to art is more of a psychological nature than engaging the aesthetic
element of art (see Lagana, 2007). Where Jung (1950, CW15, para. 157) identifies an
instinctual element to the artistic process, he appears to remove the individual element of
the process of creation: ‘Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes
him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own
ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him’. While being
instinctually driven is not incompatible with individual expression, I believe this passage
underscores Jung’s tendency to emphasize the instinctual element of aesthetic expression
and to minimize the emergent phenomenon of individual creation.
 International Journal of Jungian Studies 97

Elsewhere, Jung (1921/1971, CW6, para. 194) reveals additional reservations about
aesthetics: ‘Aestheticism is not fitted to solve the exceedingly serious and difficult task of
educating man, for it always presupposes the very thing it should create – the capacity to
love beauty’. Jung (1916/1980, CW8, para. 180) also cautions that an ‘aesthetic
formulation leaves it at that [unconscious] and gives up any idea of discovering a
meaning’, revealing his suspicion of aesthetic approaches to unconscious material just as
he experienced with his own inner processes. The passages (1916/1980, CW8, para. 172–
179) that precede this highlight Jung’s tendency to polarize aesthetic experience and
hermeneutic experience (i.e. creation of meaning). Though he asserts (1916/1980, CW8,
para. 177) that the two processes complement each other in activating the transcendent
function, his overall line of reasoning presents these two processes as operating in
opposition, rather than perceiving them as two facets of an underlying integrated process
as contemporary research in neuroscience suggests.
Like many areas of our analytic history, the influence of our founding fathers and
mothers often has a deep and lasting impact on our self-perceptions, our valuation of
certain elements of the analytic process, and the areas of the analytic experience that we
attend to. Beebe (2010) asserts that the aesthetic attitude has been relegated to shadow
within analytical psychology and Hillman (1998) uses the term ‘aesthetic repression’ to
describe the failure, in contemporary psychological discourse, to address beauty. Our
founders have left us a perceptual legacy, for better and for worse, that sensitizes us to
certain elements of the analytic interaction while simultaneously inhibiting our capacity
to see and appreciate other aspects of the analytic encounter. As a result, those interested
in analytical psychology often have a significant interest in artistic expression but,
because of training and culture, tend to focus on symbolic themes or archetypal patterns
in works of art, music, poetry, literature, or myths.

Developments in aesthetics in psychoanalytic thought

In this section, some of the primary analytic theories associated with aesthetic experience
which followed after Jung and Freud will be reviewed. Unfortunately, throughout the
1960s the status of aesthetics and art continued to be dealt with as a mechanism
secondary to other psychological processes. For example, Hanna Segal interprets artistic
activity as being grounded in a reparative ‘wish to restore and re-create (the damaged
object)’ (1952, p. 197).
Only in the 1970s, with the work of Donald Meltzer (1973, 1988/2008), did theories
emerge that locate aesthetic experience as a primary process in its own right. Meltzer’s
contribution to aesthetics begins with the idea that love and hate of the mother are present
from birth, rather than developing in response to the state of infant dependency. He refers
to this tension as ‘the aesthetic conflict’ that the infant must find some means of
digesting. According to Meltzer, the first experience of beauty is in infancy and the first
aesthetic response is toward the mother, which Meltzer equates with ‘the dazzle of the
sunrise’. Ultimately, Meltzer sees the ‘apprehension of beauty’, internalized as the initial
experience of the mother, as guiding the way forward in development.
Meira Likierman (1989) extends Meltzer’s conceptualization by arguing that all that is
experienced as ‘good’ early in life is experienced first as sensory-aesthetic experience that
forms a buffer against bad experiences – a buffer that also has the potential to serve as a
bridge into an integrated whole-object experience of the depressive position.3 As
Likierman (1989, p. 148) puts it: ‘We endow all that we value with an unconscious
98 M.D. Winborn

aesthetic “halo”, so that the “good” is never conceptualized without accompanying

unconscious aesthetic phantasies’.
Within the Jungian world, the emergence of James Hillman’s archetypal psychology
ushered in an appreciation of aesthetics, especially beauty, as basic to maintaining the life
of the soul. Hillman extends these ideas well beyond the analytical situation into public
spaces, culture, and institutions. For Hillman (1983), a vital, sensitive aesthetic sense is
the means by which the human soul finds reunion with the world. In regard to therapy,
Hillman (1983, p. 48) feels that ‘the work of therapy is the evocation of the imagination’,
and that the fundamentally aesthetic nature of human beings has been neglected by depth
psychology. Hillman goes on to assert that the aesthetic nature of the world ‘displays
itself in sense events, to the senses, and the first reaction is to live a thing as a sense
image’ (Hillman, 1983, p. 145). As already mentioned, Hillman’s observations aren’t
restricted to the therapeutic situation; he indicates that ‘the special role of the
psychological citizen is the awakening and refining of aesthetic sensitivity’ (Hillman &
Ventura, 2007, p. 125).

Evolutionary aspects of aesthetics

According to Denis Dutton (2010) in The Art Instinct, art is largely culturally influenced;
but the art instinct that underlies and drives art is not. Dutton uses the terms ‘Darwinian
aesthetics’ or ‘evolutionary aesthetics’ to identify the fundamental aesthetic nature of
human experience. He points out (Dutton, 2010, p. 45) that ‘human evolution is not just a
story of hunter-gatherers coping with a physical environment but one of Homo sapiens
cooperating with each other to maximize species survival’. An argument is made that art
and aesthetics are rooted in sensory experience, but also that art and aesthetics reflect the
adaptive need for collective cooperation and communication. From this perspective, our
aesthetic tastes and interests are not a rational deductive system, but rather a haphazard
collection of evolutionary ‘adaptations, extensions of adaptations, and vestigial attractions
and preferences’ (Dutton, 2010, p. 219), which have evolved in a way that captivates the
human senses.
Ellen Dissanayake (1995) makes similar assertions in Homo Aestheticus. She locates
art and aesthetic experience in the construction of our innate psycho-biological makeup.
This innate makeup is reflected in our tendency to empathize with others and by the way
our affects become manifest. Our innate aesthetic responsiveness is also reflected in the
various predispositions of our brain functioning – such as spatial thinking, cognitive
universal sets, and the tendency for our brain functioning to be heightened when
confronted with analogy or metaphor. Like Dutton, Dissanayake argues that art and
aesthetic responsiveness is central to human evolutionary adaptation and that aesthetic
responsiveness is a basic psycho-biological component of every human being.

The neuroscience of aesthetics

Recent findings from neuroscience lend support to the hypothesis that aesthetic sensitivity
and creativity is an evolutionary adaption found in the psycho-biological makeup of
human beings. These findings suggest that the brain is adaptively optimized for aesthetic
response. Research presented by Changeux (2005) indicates that humans have a strong
preference for symmetrical faces over those that are less symmetrical. This is an aesthetic
judgment, but one that also has evolutionary implications, since symmetry in the natural
world is perceived as an indication of good health in the potential mate. This aesthetic
 International Journal of Jungian Studies 99

judgment emerges from brain structures that focus on identifying classes and similarity
(symmetrization) and brain structures that focus on identifying novelty (asymmetry).
Changeux discusses these interactive processes as ‘perceptual calibration by selection of
innate patterns’ (Changeux 2005, p. 8). This is in keeping with Jung’s assertion that
archetypal patterns influence perception.4
Other research (Vartanian & Goel, 2004) has shown that altering the compositional
qualities of paintings presented to subjects significantly alters the subjects’ preferences
and enjoyment associated with the paintings, but also alters activation of particular areas
of the brain and cerebral blood flow. This is congruent with research by Ramachandran
and Hirstein (1999; Ramachandran, 2009) that presents evidence for aesthetic universals
indicating that certain aesthetic forms are more likely to evoke a more powerful response
from the perceiver. I believe Jung would interpret Ramachandran’s findings as archetyp-
ally mediated experience – i.e., that there is an interactive perceptual situation in which
the innate predispositions of the perceiver interact with the form features of the stimulus
to evoke a somewhat universal pattern of response. Ramachandran refers to this as ‘peak
shift’ experience, but analytical psychologists would refer to the phenomenon as
archetypal potentiation. Often, this ‘peak shift’ phenomenon is associated with stimuli
that have somewhat exaggerated form features.
It is possible to see a relationship between Ramachandran’s research and Modell’s
(1989) reflections on the analytic setting. Modell introduces the notion of the analytic
frame as a form of non-ordinary reality – a reality that differs from the expectations of
ordinary discourse and interaction, and in which certain aspects of the interaction become
highlighted or exaggerated in contrast to ordinary social discourse, e.g. non-censorship of
thoughts, an emphasis on affective experience, and a heightened sense of privacy
regarding the interaction. This is an example of aesthetic experience entering into the
analytic process at a level that is not typically thought of in aesthetic terms.
Neuroscientific research also allows us to see that the brain reacts strongly when
encountering metaphor (Honan, 2011; Lacey, Stilla, & Sathian, 2012). Metaphor causes
the brain to become activated across both hemispheres and for this activity to move
deeper into the core emotional centers of the brain, which facilitates plasticity of neural
pathways. One study (cited by Honan, 2011) examined functional neurological shifts
associated with reading passages from Shakespeare that rely heavily on the metaphorical
use of language. The findings indicate that passages from Shakespeare elicit significantly
more activity from the brain than when reading passages rendered in contemporary prose.
Additionally, metaphorical passages elicit strong bilateral brain response and more
involvement of the emotional centers of the brain.
Damasio’s large body of research (e.g. 1994, 2009) serves as an overview of these
findings. His research suggests that art and aesthetic responsiveness regulate emotion, as
well as facilitating the exploration of our own minds and the minds of others (what
therapists would call empathy). Damasio argues that art is an outgrowth of the earliest
human sensory response to shape, vista, color, sound, vibration, and rhythm. He also
proposes that art has been central to human evolution – functioning to enhance expression,
communication, connection, and social organization.

Aesthetic parallels to analysis

This section will explore selected efforts to inform the analytic process through the
aesthetic lens of the arts. The focus here is on poetry and music; although literature,
theatre, dance, and the visual arts also offer rich possibilities.
100 M.D. Winborn

Poetry
One of the most effective examples of such an approach is found in the work of Thomas
Ogden. In a series of three essays,5 Ogden speaks to the importance of aesthetic themes in
the way we listen and interact in analysis. In his exploration of poetry, Ogden does not
use psychoanalytic concepts to interpret the meaning of a poem or to characterize the
motivations of the poet. Rather, he uses poetry as a way of learning to listen, perceive,
appreciate, and speak differently. He seeks to connect to the poet’s use of language,
timing, and tone in a way that brings out the complexity, richness, and movement of
human existence as fully as possible into the consulting room:

This paper does not represent an effort to apply analytic thinking to the field of literary
studies. Instead, I hope to make a small contribution to an awareness of the life of words
(and the life in words) that occurs in the analytic situation. Rather than attempting to look
behind language, the effort here is to look into it. (Ogden, 1997, p. 1)

Ogden (1998) discusses the sounds, movement, and texture of voice in poems by Robert
Frost and Wallace Stevens to illustrate ways in which the listener experiences the
speaker’s efforts to create a voice and bring himself to life through his use of language.
This layering of sounds and feelings voiced in analysis is discussed in terms of the
creation of ‘oversounds’ derived from the experience of analyst and analysand in the
jointly constructed unconscious ‘analytic third’. By listening in this way, the listener is no
longer primarily engaged in an effort to unearth what lies ‘behind’ the words and symbols
of a poem or ‘beneath’ the patient’s report of a dream or life event. Instead, Ogden
attempts to listen to the sound and feel of ‘what’s going on’ – that is, to the ‘music of
what happens’. This is achieved to significant degree in the analytic setting by means of
the analyst attending to their own internal reverie6 (Ogden, 1999). Reverie creates space
for aesthetic experience to emerge – temporarily interrupting the focused activity of the
analyst’s mind, which seeks to be therapeutic.
Ogden’s (1995) emphasis on the form and feeling of what is said moves us away from
‘What does this mean?’ toward an aesthetic experience that helps us know whether the
experience is alive or dead. This is in keeping with Hillman’s emphasis on an aesthetic
‘consciousness of form’ (Hillman & Ventura, 2007, p. 126) that allows us to move out of
psychic numbing, or an otherwise anesthetized relationship to life, which Hillman
believes is often characteristic of contemporary culture. Appelbaum (1966) takes a similar
approach when he speaks of the need for the analyst to find ways to listen creatively and
speak evocatively. This is different from an approach that seeks to understand, create
meaning, empathize, hold, or contain – although I would propose that an aesthetic approach
to analysis touches upon or enriches each of these other areas of analytic activity.

Music
Julie Nagel (2013), in her book Melodies of the Mind; Steven Knoblauch (2000), in The
Musical Edge of the Therapeutic Dialogue; and Gilbert Rose (2004), in Between Couch
and Piano, all speak to the musical aesthetic that is an ever-present undertone to the
analytic process. Nagel (2013, pp. 118–119) says, ‘The royal road to the unconscious has
converged – rather than diverged – at an aural and oral intersection that links music and
psychoanalysis … Music is an essential element in my psychoanalytic repertoire’.
Knoblauch (2000), drawing from his experiences with jazz, calls our attention to the
communication and connection occurring via the aesthetic and inherently musical nature
 International Journal of Jungian Studies 101

of the analytic interaction: melody, rhythm, tonality, timing, tempo, harmony, dissonance,
resonance, silence, improvisation, and accompaniment. In regards to improvisation,
Knoblauch (2000, p. 16) says: ‘It is this privileging of expansiveness, enrichment, and
protection from closure that psychoanalysis shares with the process of improvising in
music’. We can experience what Knoblauch is alluding to in almost any improvisational
jazz dialogue wherein the lead voice and accompaniment is passed back and forth
between musicians as they co-create new experiences and aesthetic interactions with each
exchange.

Aesthetic experiences in analysis

Aesthetic elements are always floating in and out of analytic encounters and relationships.
One patient, a musician, after many years of analysis declared: ‘We’ve cleared my mind
of so much junk that I’m now capable of thinking about beautiful things’ – referring to
his urge to begin composing music, after many years of being a performing musician.
Another patient recently said, ‘I’ve slid down the hole. It’s an ugly world. I don’t sit in
my tree swing anymore because I don’t see any beauty in the world’. Two weeks later,
I notice her looking at the illustrations from the Book of Lambspring hanging over my
couch. I ask about her gaze and she replies: ‘Since I’ve started painting, I like to look at
different art’. My silent thought was, ‘Beauty has returned to her world’.
In analytic settings there is also the aesthetic experience of the felt and observed:
light, furniture, decoration, temperature, arrangement, texture – all of which impact our
experience of the analytic process. Often I’ll have an aesthetic awareness of the smooth
flow of my pen across the paper while jotting notes during the session, the warmth of the
coffee or tea sipped in a session, or an appreciation of the shifting panorama of the sky
outside my window. There is also an aesthetic sense associated with how my analysand
and I inhabit the room – comfortably, or with physical tension; holding onto breath, or
relaxing into breathing; sitting on edge, or being comfortably held by the chair; energy
moving in the room, or energy stagnant and heavy. Naturally there’s also an aesthetic
response to the tone, rhythm, volume, or pitch of our voices. Sometimes there is a beauty
in the passing of time without the awareness of the passage of time or beauty in a
pregnant moment as a patient’s perspective shifts upon opening to a new perspective of
their world. There is the simple but profound beauty of sitting with someone who is able
to be present without artifice or self-consciousness, as well as a fragile beauty in someone
struggling with profound loss. There is beauty found in a dream that speaks so exquisitely
to the psychological need of the moment.
However, there are occasions when something that is aesthetically pleasing when
experienced with one person might be displeasing or unaesthetic when shared with
another – such as silence. There are other moments in an analytic session when a cold
shiver signals my aesthetic discomfort with some aspect of the situation even before I’ve
become consciously aware of that discomfort. I think of these responses as being
somewhat like the response to Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ or the dislocated
torsos of a Francis Bacon painting, both of which appeal and repulse at the same time –
creating an aesthetic tension that insists on acknowledgement and engagement.
There is great beauty, intimacy, affect, and symmetry in the simple act of two people
sitting together. An experience with an analysand comes to mind at this point. At the end
of a session, without speaking, I continued to sit in my chair and she continued to lie on
the couch – both of us seemingly musing without particular direction on the last thoughts
of the session. After several minutes, she simply sat up and said ‘Thank you for that’.
102 M.D. Winborn

Using the language of relational analysis, we might describe this as a ‘moment of

meeting’ (Boston Change Process Study Group [BCPSG], 2010); but it was also an
aesthetic moment that held a quiet beauty. These aesthetic moments – when noted,
registered, appreciated, and occasionally spoken of – all contribute something to the
implicit experience of being with another person that deepens, opens up, or enriches the
experience. Such aesthetic experience, using the language of Bollas (1989, p. 32), is a
‘being with, as a form of dialogue’.

The aesthetics of interpretation

The remaining space will focus on aesthetic aspects of interpretation and narrative.
Analysis, by its very nature, exaggerates certain aspects of the relational environment.
The incorporation of the intersubjective and relational perspectives into our contemporary
analytic thinking has shifted our emphasis even further, particularly in North America.
While this shift has introduced a more nuanced view of the relational field, it seems that
we’ve become increasingly suspicious of the act of interpretation. A caricature endures in
which insight through interpretation is seen primarily as an intellectual process. I suggest
that the aesthetic moment, often facilitated by the language of interpretation, is a bridging
experience in which insight and relationship are not in opposition but are rather two
facets of the same process – different avenues into a sense of connection; a sense of
understanding and being understood that facilitates new growth and integration. Bollas
(1978, p. 385) indicates that recognition of the aesthetic element of analysis doesn’t
detract from relational connection, but instead deepens relational experience:

The aesthetic moment constitutes this deep rapport between subject and object … the
epistemology of the aesthetic moment is prior to representational cognition, and speaks to
that part of us where the experience of rapport with the other was the essence of being.

Or as Schenk (1992, p. 137) points out: ‘One can see the experience of beauty occurring
through the presentational nature of language. In contemporary life, language is revealed
as a mode for the reappearance of beauty, as talking becomes cure through
psychotherapy’.
Without a creative focus on the use of language, especially in relationship to the
technique of interpretation, appreciation for the aesthetic possibilities of these interven-
tions will languish and old patterns of interpreting, out of a position of perceived truth or
correctness, will be perpetuated. Highlighting the close relationship between poetry,
visual art, and analytic interpretation, Rose (2004, p. 39) says:

The plasticity of words is seen in the fact that their separate aspects of physical sound,
intellectual content and affective weight may be elaborated almost independently. Poetry
recombines their physical attributes, emotional overtones and semantic meanings. In poetry,
words are the plastic, malleable media, just as spatial forms are in painting and time is in
music. The aesthetic plasticity of words that makes for dubious science can also make for
effective interpretation.

By again looking beyond the analytic context we can see interpretation in a fresh light,
renewing our appreciation for the power of language. In literature, neither the subject-
matter nor the underlying unconscious content of a work are sufficient to imbue a work
with aesthetic qualities. Hamlet would not live so powerfully in our souls if he had said
‘I have a conflict’ instead of ‘To be, or not to be’. As seen in the earlier section on the
 International Journal of Jungian Studies 103

neuroscience of aesthetics, our brains are optimized to respond powerfully to metaphor,

word play, and aesthetic contrasts. It is the particular composition of Shakespeare’s
language choices and use of metaphor, rather than stark linguistic meaning, that bring
Hamlet’s statement to life, allowing it to inhabit our imaginations. The sentence relies on
six simple one-syllable words that initially sound almost childlike, yet it communicates at
great depth about the fragile line separating life and death. With the ensuing declaration
‘That is the question’, Hamlet pulls us into deeper water – narrowing all questions down
to one existential choice, one universal predicament that confronts us all.

The aesthetics of narrative

Before the patient has even arrived in analysis, they have already developed a narrative or
personal myth which explains why they feel and act as they do; a narrative that is partly
conscious and partly unconscious (Covington, 1995). The patient’s aesthetic evaluation of
their narrative directly influences their sense of self and agency. We can think of narrative
as the larger canvas on which the analyst works in conjunction with the analysand,
whereas interpretation can be seen as one of the tools used in the co-creation of the
analytic painting. According to Hillman (1983, p. 108), a fundamental shift occurs when
we begin seeing therapy as an artistic process, i.e. to allow an ‘art fantasy’ to exist outside
of the existing fantasy of therapy. This is a shift that allows therapy to be de-literalized
and guards against the overvaluation of either therapy or art.
Spence (1982) indicates that what we are dealing with is a ‘narrative truth’, and that
our role is to understand how that ‘narrative truth’ is functioning within the patient and
influencing the analytic relationship, rather than trying to figure out what happened to the
patient. Spence (1982) argues that we shouldn’t think in terms of reconstructing the
patient’s history, but instead focus on construction – which he sees as an act of discovery
and creation. In working within ‘narrative truth’ the emphasis is on coherence, continuity,
fit, pattern recognition, and pattern making – areas of focus that are as much about
aesthetics as meaning. Spence suggests that analysts are better served by viewing
themselves as poets, artists, and aestheticists, rather than as archeologists who uncover or
as historians who document events. Rose (2004, p. 39) echoes this idea: ‘The tendency
towards regularity, symmetry, and completion in our perception of formal line drawings
might well be analogous to our tendency to rework the past in terms of our needs for
narrative flow, plausibility and certainty. In both areas, we might be dealing with the
aesthetic need for “good shape”’.
According to Beebe (2010), taste is utilized when revising one’s narrative and also in
educating one’s aesthetic judgment. Or as Hillman puts it, ‘taste … awakens the senses
and releases fantasies. Taste remembers beauty; it enjoys pleasure; it tends to refine itself
toward more interesting joys’ (Hillman & Ventura, 2007, p. 129). One patient, an author,
was having a novel reviewed by several literary agents who, each in turn, suggested
alterations to make the novel more marketable. He wondered which, if any, of the
suggested re-workings he should apply to his novel; and if he did, whether the novel
would still be the novel he had written. This aesthetic tension is also present in the
analytic setting – co-creating a new narrative that frees the patient from feelings of
ugliness about their own existence, but one that is still sufficiently familiar to be claimed
as their own.
104 M.D. Winborn

Conclusion
We each have an aesthetic sensibility that is collectively influenced, archetypally
potentiated, and intimately connected to our individual subjectivity. When conducting
an analysis, we implicitly evaluate almost every element on an aesthetic level. Our
analytic aesthetics, which are strongly influenced by the culture of our training,
significantly impact our sense of what analysis should feel, sound, and look like. Our
theoretical orientations are likely adopted because a particular set of theories conform to
an internal aesthetic ideal or provide a sense of aesthetic satisfaction. All analysts have
aims and ideals in analysis, even these are implicitly held (Sandler & Dreher, 1996).
I would extend this idea by saying that all analysts have an aesthetic sense they are
working from and responding to, even if they are unaware of it.
Analysis is a work, both active and receptive, in which there is a creative product
contributed to by both parties. Therapeutically, we could say analysis is a restoration of
an aesthetic response to life in which meaning plays an important organizing role.
Attention to the aesthetic elements of analysis brings the interaction alive, awakening our
psyches and stirring our imaginations. Aesthetics is a way to give ourselves over to
experience – a way of entering into experience, rather than thinking about experience.
Hopefully, these sensitivities become something that complement our other ways of
‘being with’ in analysis, rather than becoming one pole of a dichotomized set of opposites
where one mode of working analytically is inevitably seen as better than another mode.
There must be a moving back and forth between understanding and knowing, which are
related to meaning, and a creative response to the analytic situation which is the aesthetic
element. In the end, the process of meaning making is itself an aesthetic object rather than
a process unto itself.
Aesthetic appreciation is clearly present in the Jungian collective; but we would
benefit from more overt engagement with aesthetic experience, allowing us to become
more aware of implicit preferences and develop greater facility in incorporating aesthetic
considerations into our work. Others have made this observation previously, as can be
seen from the works cited in this paper. It is not just a rediscovery or re-emphasis of
aesthetic experience that is critical, but rather a new centering on aesthetic experience as a
fundamental pillar of the analytic process.
Perhaps it is the ephemeral quality of aesthetic experience that makes this shift in
awareness difficult and creates the need for an ongoing revisiting of the issue in the
analytic literature. It may be that the ephemeral essence of aesthetic experience destines it
to be forever lost, regained, and lost again. As mentioned in the introduction, it is often
difficult to come to agreement on what constitutes aesthetics and aesthetic experience.
As a result, an aesthetic sensibility toward analytic process is more difficult to ‘teach’
than analytic theory and technique. In fact, it is probably more productive to think of
‘cultivating’ an aesthetic sensibility than to think of ‘teaching’ an aesthetic sensibility.
Imagine an analytic training in which interactions with poetry, music, film, literature,
music, art, and dance are as central to the learning experience as Jung’s complex theory or
dream interpretation. Naturally, these art forms do find their way into the discourse of
analytic training; but most frequently this takes place under the guise of identifying
archetypal themes and processes reflected in the works of art.
Ultimately, an aesthetic sensitivity to our interior life, to the world around us, and to
our interactions with others is an essential aspect of living – not just for analysts, thera-
pists, and patients, but for all human beings. Hagman (2005, p. 1) asserts that aesthetic
experience is as central to human life as ‘sex, hunger, aggression, love, and hate’.
 International Journal of Jungian Studies 105

Aesthetic experience is fundamental to the way that we organize and experience ourselves
and our world.

Notes
1. For example, Tomlin (‘Contemplating the Undefinable’, 2008, p. 1) indicates that Wittgenstein
found aesthetic experience difficult to define and discuss in his philosophical investigations.
2. In this section, Jung is commenting on Wilhelm Worringer’s constrast between abstraction and
empathy as set forth in Abstraction and Empathy (1953) translated by Michael Bullock, London
(original – Abstraktion und Einfühlung, 3rd ed., Munich, 1911).
3. The concept of the depressive position is a psychological developmental state articulated by
Melanie Klein in which whole object relatedness predominates and in which object loss can be
tolerated and grieved.
4. ‘Archetypes are typical modes of apprehension, and whenever we meet with uniform and
regularly recurring modes of apprehension we are dealing with an archetype … The collective
unconscious is the sum of the instincts and their correlate, the archetypes … In my view it is
impossible to say which comes first – apprehension of the situation or the impulse to act’
(C.G. Jung, ‘Instincts and the Unconscious’ in 1948, CW8, para. 280–282). See also Jung’s
infrared ultraviolet light spectrum analogy, in which he identifies a continuum of experience that
bridges instinct and archetype, spirit and matter (Jung, ‘On the Nature of the Psyche’, in 1954,
CW8, para. 414).
5. ‘Some Thoughts on the Use of Language in Psychoanalysis’ (1997); ‘A Question of Voice in
Poetry and Psychoanalysis’ (1998); and ‘The Music of What Happens in Poetry and Psycho-
analysis’ (1999).
6. The term reverie was taken up by Wilfred Bion in reference to his model of the container and
the contained whereby the analyst serves as the container for the analysand’s psyche just as the
mother serves as the container for the infant’s initial experiences. In analysis, reverie is often
experienced as the dreamy interweaving between sleep and wakefulness, thought and non-
thought, waiting and engagement, the see-saw movement back and forth between the unknown
or dimly perceived and moments of understanding revealed (Winborn, 2014).

Notes on contributor
Mark Winborn, PhD, NCPsyA is a Jungian Psychoanalyst affiliated with the Inter-Regional Society
of Jungian Analysts, the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, and the
International Association for Analytical Psychology. He maintains a private practice of psycho-
analysis, psychotherapy, and clinical supervision in Memphis, Tennessee, USA; is the Training
Coordinator for the Memphis Jungian Seminar (a training affiliate of the I-RSJA); and serves on the
American Board for Accreditation in Psychoanalysis. His published works include Deep Blues:
Human Soundscapes for the Archetypal Journey and Shared Realities: Participation Mystique and
Beyond.

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