Feeling distressed, we might engage with a creative medium within a contained space and be surprised to discover the reality of the living psyche, of unfamiliar content in the new creation, a message ‘from the deep.’ If we create the right circumstances, the inner child will come.
A traumatized child has difficulty in relaxing and playing. A playful approach to life’s difficulties allows one to play around with possibilities in difficult times, to adapt.
“Trickster makes this world,” he creates. (Lewis Hyde, 1998) Trickster sits on the ‘border;’ he ‘opens or closes’ the connecting door between our inner and outer worlds. He re-members or dis-members, symbolizes or dissociates us. (Kalsched, 1997, 197)
A symbol is an image of psychic energy, a complex fact, not fully understood by consciousness; it portrays “an objective visible meaning, behind which an invisible profounder meaning is hidden.” (Jacoby, 1957, 77) It contains conscious aspects as well as content from the unconscious. From a conscious point of view, it often appears as a paradox.
Jung described the Transcendent Function of the psyche like this: the conscious personality is goal-directed and has to adapt to the outer world; this is what it has to do. But this is often not beneficial to the whole or complete personality. Because it is mostly unconscious, it is not possible for the conscious personality to have this perspective. The self, the totality, then tries to restore the balance by way of the symbol, e.g. through a slip of the tongue, a dream image, or in symbolical creative work.
In symbolical creative work one may find a window on the unfolding, lifelong process of becoming. When relating to it, inviting it into one’s real lived life, it nourishes immature wounded aspects of the personality, in turn supporting the process of individuation, of growing towards greater maturity.
