Deleuze, Jung, and the Impressionists, Part 4 of 4
The Depth of Creativity
Individuation
Jung described individuation as a balancing or equilibrium of conscious and unconscious forces resulting in realization of the self.
But Jung’s individuation need not be viewed as a closed holistic process, a series with an endpoint, a final balance of opposing forces of the unconscious and conscious domains.
Jung’s individuation can be seen through a Deleuzian lens as a process that is open and continuous, involving a multiplicity of forces:
virtual — pre-individual — unconscious — conscious — actual
Individuation from a human perspective is never a process complete; but instead an ongoing process of creativity producing on ongoing flow of creations as temporal events.
The Self as Open Creativity
In the world of art, the process of creativity is never complete. The work of art is an image created, but something always remains beneath sensation: unspoken, unarticulated, resistant to the act of judgement.
The artist connects, creates, then disconnects and reconnects.
For those who can dip their toes in the sublime and experience the pure aesthetic, beyond the good and evil of a dogmatic, representational image of thought, the canvas opens up onto an immanent plane: unchartered territory that exhilarates by providing a glimpse of the virtual.
Likewise, the self is a fold in an origami individuation process, unfolding and refolding, individuation never complete.
The self is a temporary effect always in a process of evolution in which cosmic forces and psychic forces are encountered and the new is created in the open whole. The self is an open whole, a multiplicity de-centered and displaced; never a closed whole, nor a union of oppositions, that has come to a final resting place.
Life is a process involving equilibriums and disequilibriums, ongoing movement, a wave of multiple virtual forces continually shifting, rising and falling, in a struggle of the will to power.
The Becoming of the Psyche
Becoming is the force of individuation: continuous, temporal. Becoming involves interactions of the unconscious and conscious, a process of folding and unfolding both the psychic and the cosmic, creating the dynamic self, not a static subject.
The psyche is not foundational or structural or transcendent.
The psyche is not deterministic or teleological. It is rhizomatic, unstructured, immanent; it is experimental and open.
The genesis of the psyche is a fluid process that evolves, consciously and unconsciously. But its genesis and evolution takes place here, in immanent the field, accessible for all those who dare to experience all of reality.
The ego, persona, shadow, self, anima / animus are signposts only; the ego nothing more than an identity pole, a fleeting subjectivity floating on a sea of psychic energy that never ceases to transform.
The self is an assemblage of the unconscious and conscious, virtual and actual. Actualized, but in a state of flux, at all times subject to internal and external forces of change: permutations, momentary balances between the unconscious and conscious. Not compensatory nor in opposition, but instead multiple forces of pure creativity and creation, the renewal and return of life.
Neuroses and psychoses are temporary imbalances caused by a clogging up of process, psychic energies repressed by the oppression of a static actuality.
The only integrity of the self we can speak of is nothing other than pure flow, pure differentiation in a-causal time.
Radical Freedom
We’ve stepped temporarily into the psychological, Jung’s world, and we will return. What is important to emphasize at this point is:
thought without an image = enchantment with reality = participation in vitality
We’ve followed some sketches, imprints, tracks, and trails of the unconscious and connected them with the virtual; psychic energies as flows and folds. And the vision we are left with is of the virtual proto-genetic self in flux, and the stop-motion actualized self, the Dionysian and Apollonian as a continuum with curves and cusps.
The open collective unconscious and momentary conscious singularities are the One and the Many from a human perspective, a continuum of open intensities encountering momentary equilibria.
We inhabit a wilderness of experience and thought that is the fabric of the psyche and cosmos.
Through intuition and living symbol we can palpate the mystery of the immanent intensities of this life, and map a return to the experimental, to a vision of renewal:
We can create art and thought that is remarkable, that illuminates and enchants:
Art and thought that puts us back in direct unmediated connection with reality as becoming.
At the center of the labyrinth not a Minotaur, but the power of life, imprisoned and bursting to set free. And beyond the maze, the beauty and paradox of radical freedom. If we dare to open the psyche on an immanent plane.
Fulfillment
Experience and thought immersed in pure difference is creative. It is creation of the new and experimentation in the open whole. Creative thought affirms life, produces fulfillment. We are creative thinking creatures; we need our thinking to produce creatively, or we will be unfulfilled.
To live fulfillment we must embrace the continuous flow of experience and thought as difference returned. We must articulate new language that flows, and conspires to create new thought.
Experience is deep. To be fulfilled, we must reach down into experience and access the creative, the forces that affirm life.
We can’t directly experience the virtual; it is pre-sensory, pre-individual. But we can get in touch with the intensities inside us and all around us. We can open up to the being of the sensible that permeates everything, including ourselves.
We can explore new ways of experimenting with our world and our place in it, and in so doing strike a chord with that within us and around us that naturally evolves, transforms, and creates fulfillment. We can immerse ourselves in the flow of life. We can re-imagine the universe, all of life, as becoming.
Creativity is a process. It moves and becomes:
Fulfillment is not in the creation, but is in the act of creating.
Our imagination is our power to create and experiment. We can engage in the creative experience of life and find fulfillment if we let ourselves be driven by our power of imagination and affirmation in the flow.
I hope you enjoyed this article. Thanks for reading!
Tomas
Please join my email list here or email me at tomas@tomasbyrne.com.
Excerpt from my forthcoming book, Becoming: A Life of Pure Difference (Gilles Deleuze and the Philosophy of the New) Copyright © 2021 by Tomas Byrne. Learn more here.
