Tate Modern: Jung modern

Abstract

After a handful of visits to the Tate Modern I Žnd myself thinking about archetypal images. What do we consider to be an archetypal image? On what grounds? Does modern art deliberately seek to avoid the ‘archetypal image’ because its universality has made it stale and clichéd? I feel that in a way it contains an implicit challenge to Jung’s anthropological, retrospective approach to the representation of the archetypal. While Jung looked backwards to alchemical imagery and ancient myths, modern art mocks, deconstructs and ultimately recontains the archetypal. Or does it? On second thoughts I think it is more demanding than that, challenging us to do much more of the containing ourselves. The frustration many people feel in relation to exhibits/installations at the Tate Modern arises from the lack of easily available containment (in Bion’s sense) that is on offer. Experiences of harmony and integration are not generally the aim. The Žne line between disintegration and de-integration (in Fordham’s sense) is not drawn by the artists – no promise of feeling safe with them. It is up to us to process our emotional and intellectual responses, even feeling ridiculed or nonplussed, so that de-integration rather than disintegration can occur. The Tate, if anyone, is our symbolic mother in this enterprise, helping admirably to make just enough sense of exhibits by supplying words that accompany each piece, but fall short of patronizingly ‘explaining’ it. Explanation is, of course, impossible but contextualization can help. PSYCHODYNAMIC COUNSELLING 7.1 FEBRUARY 2001