Act And Image - The Emergence Of Symbolic Imagination, Warren Colman

An exploration of material becoming living presence in the art object.

Jungian Analyst Warren Colman explores the formation of Archetypes as derived from human engagement with their social and material environment. This is a phenomenological approach which sees psychic life as emergent from embodied action in the world, in contrast to a classical Jungian perspective which would view archetypes as pre-existent, either 'inborn' biologically, or metaphysically a priori.

As I understand it, according to Colman first there is engagement with the world, from which the capacity for symbolic imagination can develop, and only then can the possibility of a concept like archetypes arise. Colman describes his views and research as essentially being that of a developmental perspective.

By any account, this places the things of the world and our cognitive interaction with them a priori to symbolic imagination. If these interactions constitute the thinking process itself, it makes no sense to postulate some other realm of the "possibilities of ideas" (archetypes) from which symbolic thinking is derived.

Rather, the practice of embodied thinking is prior to the emergence of symbols, and it is only through the use of symbols that anything like "archetypes" can come into existence, perhaps as the emergent regularities in symbolic patterns or the way in which thinking is implicitly structured by the particular symbolic systems into which each child is inducted, especially via language. — p.86

Whilst I make use of developmental theory in my work, I would not claim that to be my whole outlook. However, there is much in Act And Image to recommend it for people holding a range of views, because what Colman manages very skillfully is to keep a sense of mystery and wonder alive.

It seems this isn't a reductive 'nothing but' developmental approach, rather one that follows the thread through to something much more expansive. For example, the author's thoughts about the brain have much in common with some of Iain McGilchrist's ideas, and that (somewhat paradoxically) rather than materialists ascribing too much significance to matter, it is more like they don't value it enough.

If consciousness arises from matter, there must be something conscious in all matter. Can it really only be the brain in its finished form that is the seat of all consciousness?

One of the most fundamental assumptions of the Cartesian legacy is that the mind exists "in the head" and, latterly, this has become increasingly identified with the brain. This frequently results in absurd claims that attribute agency to the brain as if it is the "real" actor in the human drama. So, for example, it is said that "the brain makes sense of things and, when it is unable to do so in relation to such questions as 'why are we here' it resorts to superstitious beliefs."

The implicit image here is the brain as a sort of malfunctioning computer that is attempting to act beyond the limits of its programming. This replicates the mind-body split as a brain-body split, although there is also a wisp of a ghost in the machine that is supposedly asking the computer-brain questions it can't answer, questions that "don't compute."

It may be objected that this is simply a figurative way of speaking but such figures of speech are persuasive and easily elide the fact that brains do not think, people do — pp.62-63

In psychotherapy sessions I often observe a tendency for people to defer an experience to "my brain". This seems to be when there is a sense of something out of conscious control, that happens automatically. In that moment it is not 'me' that is doing something, but only 'my brain.' Of course, the brain really is performing many functions, so it is true in one sense. However, there is always a lot going on in terms of brain function, and it is notable that I have only ever heard people saying this in relation to something that is undesirable to experience, or difficult to accept as belonging to oneself. For example, I never hear anything along the lines of "I dealt with a situation really well because my brain...," or, "I was enjoying (an experience) because my brain..."

For me this book really gets interesting when Colman discusses the evolution of the capacity for symbolic imagination. This description is quite in tune with how I perceive art, or, more specifically art images that are 'embodied', that is to say they have a sense of soul and life about them.

...concrete iconic symbols are what they represent; the imaginal element is intrinsically interwoven into their substance as the perception of energies, forces, powers, spirits, and the like. In cosmologies that do not divide up the world between animate and inanimate or material and spiritual, the world is alive with these forces.

Painted images too have living force and significance...totemic and animic images are not mere depictions of events, either real or imagined, but re-present them in their true (spiritual) guise as a way of revealing deeper meaning. They are not representations, however, in the sense of mere representations, and, in that sense, they might be better regarded as presences in their own right that..enact and bring forth reality. —p.176

Whilst working on an image I am often considering the point at when it will be completed. This is usually when I feel it has a certain quality of aliveness to it. Working in something approaching a devotional manner, the art object is not necessarily intended to be 'about', or to represent something (whether that be a specific place, an idea, a theme), but to embody something closer to a presence. In this sense it might be thought of as being akin to what is described here as the 'thing-in-itself'.

The 'Lion Man' Colman refers to (shown on the books cover) is the oldest known figurative image in the world, the 40,000 year old Lion Man of Hohlenstein-Stadel in Germany.

Even though the Lion Man may have partaken of lion-like qualities which we still recognize today, we should remain cautious. Thousands of years of lion images and symbols have themselves created meanings that may not have been there before and these meanings exist in cultural contents that are very different from the hunter-gatherers of the Upper Paleolithic.

We can recognize our common humanity in our response to this figure, but there is no pre-existent form which is manifested by it or which can be appealed to as its source. It is a work of symbolic imagination and, as such, remains uniquely itself in all its materiality and mystery. It is no mere image of a lion-man, it is the thing itself.

Kant's "thing-in-itself" to which Jung appealed as a correlative to archetypes is not to be found elsewhere in some unknown realm but is repeatedly expressed in the materials activity of embodied human being making sense of the world in which they find themselves.

We do this by means of symbols which both create and are created by an imagination that is made possible by the capacities of our brains but whose contents are not reducible to the brain. In short, symbolic imagination is an emergent feature of human being in the world. —pp.201-202