Music as Image

Analytical psychology and music in film

Benjamin Nagari

• Éditeur: Routledge
• Année: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317526353
• Édition: 1
• Sujet: Psicología
• Sous-sujet: Salud mental en psicología

Through a theoretical and practical exploration of Jungian and post-Jungian concepts surrounding image, this book moves beyond the visual scope of imagery to consider the presence and expression of music and sound, as well as how the psyche encounters expanded images – archetypal, personal or cultural – on both conscious and unconscious levels. By closely examining music in film, Nagari considers music's complementary, enhancing, meaningful, and sometimes disruptive, contribution to expressive images.

Chapters present a Jungian approach to music in film, highlighting how 'music-image' functions both independently and in conjunction with the visual image, and suggesting further directions in areas of research including music therapy and autism. Divided into three cumulative parts, Part I explores the Jungian psychological account of the music-image; Part II combines theory with practice in analysing how the auditory image works with the visual to create the 'film as a whole' experience; and Part III implements a specific understanding of three individual film cases of different genres, eras and styles as psychologically scrutinised 'case histories'.

Music as Image will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of applied psychoanalysis and Jungian psychology, music, film and cultural studies. With implications for music therapy and other art-based therapies, it will also be relevant for practising psychotherapists.

Part I The psychological image

DOI: 10.4324/9781315722900-1

Introduction

This part makes the case for understanding the nonvisual image in general, and music-image, in particular, as a psychological concept. The main route of this investigation will use C. G. Jung’s analytical psychology¹ to explore both traditional Jungian and contemporary post-Jungian takes on this subject of image.² In order to pursue this line of research, it is necessary to exhibit and clarify some of the main Jungian concepts that relate to the idea of image, which is a central pillar of the entire archetypal basis of analytical psychology and which runs through the philosophical to the practical and applied aspects of Jung’s psychological theories.

1 To be distinguished from Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic school. 2 A great interest in film analysis based on the understanding of Jung’s work has been growing in the last decades. Many Jungians and Jungian-influenced scholars have contributed to this field, based on the following aspects of Jung’s ideas on image. Among the post-Jungian writers in this field we find Hockley (2003 & 2007), Iacino (1994 & 1998), Izod (2006), Singh (2009), Coleman (2010) and Hauke and Alister (2001), to mention only a few. This section will exhibit those ideas on which the foundations of Jungian film analysis are based.

Initially termed primordial images (1912) and later renamed dominants of the collective unconscious (1917), these images cum dominants were finally defined and renamed by Jung as the archetypes of the collective unconscious (1919), of which he says:

I have chosen the term “collective” because this part of the unconscious is not individual but universal; in contrast to the personal psyche, it has contents and modes of behaviour that are more or less the same everywhere and in all individuals. It is, in other words, identical in all men and thus constitutes a common psychic substrate of a suprapersonal nature which is present in every one of us.

(Jung, CW 9I, para. 3)

These archetypes ‘reside’ in the depth of the lower layer of the unconscious, named by Jung as the collective unconscious above which resides the personal unconscious. Jung’s archetypes, somewhat (but not entirely) resembling Plato’s Ideas, are thus the blueprint of humanity carried forward for endless years of existence via those images/dominants/ideas, being the building blocks of the ‘psyche as a whole’.³ These fluid notions of apparently confusing terms already show Jung’s inclination to treat images beyond their visual quality only, stepping towards the realm of abstract and shapelessness.

3 Psyche as a whole is an expression, used by Jung and others, to denote the interactivity of all of the elements inside this unit (psyche). This ‘as a whole’ model will be later used here for units other than the psyche, e.g. a film on its entirely interacting inner elements/images.

Dealing with the abstract alongside the concrete, and rational side by side with the irrational, there is no wonder that Jung’s definitions and ideas changed over time and include contradictions and partial explanations. Yet, going through his extensive writings we can find a solid basis to support his ideas, even when they appear abstract, irrational, complex or compound. One of which in need of more compound coherence is his interpretation of the concept of Image.

Chapter 1 Jung, image, archetype and complex

DOI: 10.4324/9781315722900-2

“The image is a condensed expression of the psychic¹situation as a whole, and not merely, or even predominantly, of unconscious contents pure and simple” (Jung, CW 6, para. 745; original italics). Originally formulated as a concept, the image was experienced as a companionate psychic presence (Samuels, Shorter & Plaut, 1986, p. 72). Although mainly expressing unconscious contents, the image is not solely so as it corresponds with the momentarily constellated conscious situation of the psyche. “This constellation is the result of the spontaneous activity of the unconscious on the one hand and of the momentary conscious situation on the other” (Ibid.). Jung postulates that it exists in a state of reciprocal relationship, as it can start “neither from the conscious alone nor from the unconscious alone” (Jung, CW 6, para. 745). This reciprocity between the two opposites brings forth affect and emotion into imagery.² From this perspective the image is a container of opposites standing in contradiction to the symbol, which is a mediator of opposites.³ As such, it does not adhere to any one position, but elements of it can be found in others (Samuels et al., 1986, p. 72). Jung conceptualised the image as endowed with a generative power which was psychically compelling and whose function was to arouse. For him, “the image is always an expression of the totality perceived and perceivable, apprehended and apprehensible, by the individual” (Ibid., p. 73).

1 The term ‘psychic’ refers to the grammatical form denoting ‘of the psyche’ and shall be used throughout as such. No mystical reference intended whatsoever. 2 The terms affect and emotion can be extremely confusing in Jung’s writing; sometimes equating, sometimes replacing and at times complementing each other. It is this book’s understanding that affect is the trigger (external or internal) that causes us to be ‘moved’, while the emotion is the outcome, our psychic and/or somatic response to the ‘movement’ triggered by the affect. It is possible to be affected without producing an emotion; yet, emotion being created as a response to affect may manifest itself without its producer’s awareness. 3 The concept of opposites will be explained in Chapter 2.

To quote Samuels again, “Images have a facility to beget their like; movement of images toward their realisation is a psychic process which happens to us personally. We both look on from the outside and also act or suffer as a figure in the drama” (Ibid., p. 73). This suggests the Jungian understanding of image-making (imagery and, as we will see later on, imagination) as being a dynamic process that involves the rational alongside the irrational and the conscious together with unconscious; it is a process which is independent of the sign, one which opens the door to perceptions beyond the visual appearance, casual or scientific. In this sense it is not a semiotic system, but rather a system that embodies and carries its own history and psychological experience. Jung notes that “It is a psychic fact that the fantasy is happening and it is as real as you – as a psychic entity – are real. If this crucial operation of entering in with your own reaction is not carried out, all the changes are left to the flow of images, and you yourself remain unchanged” (Jung, CW 14, para. 753). This suggests a blurring between fantasy and reality, and other imagery including linear and nonlinear,⁴ rational and irrational, conscious and unconscious dynamics. Hence, fantasy is an image-driven psychic truth.

4 Linear: Corresponding with a continuous time/space flow; hence ‘real’ reality. Nonlinear: Corresponding with a nonstable/interrupted flow of time (and/or space).

In defining ‘image’ Jung professes to mean that:

When I speak of “image” … I do not mean the psychic reflection of an external object, but a concept derived from poetic usage, namely, a figure of fancy or fantasy-image, which is related only indirectly to the perception of an external object. This image depends much more on unconscious fantasy activity, and as the product of such activity it appears more or less abruptly in consciousness, somewhat in the manner of a vision or hallucination, but without possessing the morbid traits that are found in a clinical picture.

(Jung, CW 6, para. 743)

Here he also refers to his idea of the plurality of the term ‘reality’ by distinguishing between ‘sensuous reality’ and ‘inner image’.⁵ The latter “has the psychological character of a fantasy idea and never the quasi-real character of a hallucination”, and it never takes the place of reality. It is not a projection in space, “although in exceptional cases it can appear in exteriorized form” (Ibid.).

5 As the dichotomy of ‘reality’ and ‘fantasy’ is confusedly defined in different ways throughout Jung’s writing I shall refer to it in terms of ‘linear reality’ (the external, here-and-now reality, adhering to continual and cumulative flow – hence linear) and the ‘psychic reality’, being the ‘inner’ psychological reality which includes fantasy.

Following, using the internal and external distinction of realities, we may find a connecting point between them:

Although, as a rule, no reality-value attaches to the image, this can at times actually increase its importance for psychic life, since it then has a greater psychological value, representing an inner reality which often far outweighs the importance of external reality. In this case the orientation (q.v.) of the individual is concerned less with adaptation to reality than with adaptation to inner demands.

(Jung, CW 6, para. 744)

In terms of the ‘acting’ image in a given time and under given conditions, we may be tempted to treat the visual image as relating to external reality (linear) and the nonvisual as representing the inner, nonlinear reality. Thus, a linear, visual image may be perceived and ‘seen’ as a consciously and finally resolved outcome of the process, while the nonvisual image is an in-process unconscious idea, not yet resolved. In looking into dream material, we can recall these two types of images; one relating to ‘real-life’ images, characters and objects we are familiar with from everyday life and stemming from our own personal unconscious, then mingling with the second type made of irrational, nonsensical characters, objects and ‘non-realistic’ metamorphoses. Here other nonlinear image-aspects such as time and space inconsistencies may be involved, thus making dream images to be interpreted by us as irrational and/or illogical.⁶

6 The implications of dream-like imaging will be dealt with in Part II in conjunction with film image-type and how the two interact.

One of the main reasons for the rift between Jung and his former mentor Sigmund Freud was because of their different views concerning the structure of the unconscious. While Freud was digging deep into a layer of unknown material underneath the conscious mind, Jung followed suit, only arriving at radically different levels. Freud’s model of the unconscious was of a layer underlying the matrix of the ‘known’, serving as a receptacle of all rejected, repressed and traumatic experience of the individual; they are repressed in order to offer psychological relief/escape until they are brought up to consciousness – thus resolution – often through the therapeutic intervention of psychoanalysis. Freud’s unconscious can sometime...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I The psychological image: imaging and imagination - a Jungian perspective
• Part II Music as image: the encounter of visual and nonvisual in film
• Part III Close encounters of the musical kind: an analysis of the music-image in three films
• Finale (Conclusion)
• Bibliography
• Filmography
• Index