Have you ever wondered why one story has touched you deeply, while another, a similar one, left you indifferent? Have you ever found it difficult to explain why a movie/TV show/videogame/song stuck with you for years? Have you ever contemplated the term: guilty pleasure?
When we interact with art, like when we dream, a lot is happening in the backs of our minds.
Psychologists theorize that dreams are visions of wish fulfilment concocted by the unconscious parts of our minds to help us stay asleep. Contemporary science tells us that that's when our brain processes experiences it couldn't fully grasp during the day. Whatever it is, then, dreaming seems awfully important.
I believe that so is art, for the very same reason.
Freud called the tensions we accumulate in our minds during our everyday lives cathexis. Catharsis is the term first used by Aristotle to describe the purification of emotions. A consumer's interaction with art is an interplay between those two that allows them to resolve their own inner conflicts.
Whether you've been enraged by the awful cathexis on which Game of Thrones has ended, relieved by the catharsis delivered by the superficially simple but deeply touching John Wick, or just stirred and confused by Lost Highway or any of David Lynch's Shadow-borne movies, by now you should know that the arts are not what they seem.
All works of art are a proposition of a dream designed by the artist for the consumer.
Really lousy narratives aren't just bad, they stir a tension within you, a particular cathexis, and fail to relieve the charge with a satisfying catharsis. The great ones, on the other hand, make you feel at peace with yourself.
Freud and Jung analyzed their patients' dreams. I want to analyze art to help the people drawn to it realize why they feel that way.
At risk of sounding audacious, I want this blog to help people connect with their unconscious.
I will be basing my articles on my own experiences interacting with art and what I've found in my research of anthropology and the psychology of self. Many questions that we have about culture and art have been answered already, with varying degrees of practicality, by the great researchers of the past. Instead of trying to come up with completely novel ways to explain its influence on us, we should reach for the works of Freud, Jung, and Lacan and search for conclusions we can apply to contemporary art to see if they match with what in our own minds we know to be true.
This is what I consider my mission: to show people how to benefit from art like they do from dreams, to design a framework for the kind of art that leaves people better off than they were without it, and share my discoveries as much as I can.
I work to make myself obsolete.
When we interact with art, like when we dream, a lot is happening in the backs of our minds.
Psychologists theorize that dreams are visions of wish fulfilment concocted by the unconscious parts of our minds to help us stay asleep. Contemporary science tells us that that's when our brain processes experiences it couldn't fully grasp during the day. Whatever it is, then, dreaming seems awfully important.
I believe that so is art, for the very same reason.
Freud called the tensions we accumulate in our minds during our everyday lives cathexis. Catharsis is the term first used by Aristotle to describe the purification of emotions. A consumer's interaction with art is an interplay between those two that allows them to resolve their own inner conflicts.
Whether you've been enraged by the awful cathexis on which Game of Thrones has ended, relieved by the catharsis delivered by the superficially simple but deeply touching John Wick, or just stirred and confused by Lost Highway or any of David Lynch's Shadow-borne movies, by now you should know that the arts are not what they seem.
All works of art are a proposition of a dream designed by the artist for the consumer.
Really lousy narratives aren't just bad, they stir a tension within you, a particular cathexis, and fail to relieve the charge with a satisfying catharsis. The great ones, on the other hand, make you feel at peace with yourself.
Freud and Jung analyzed their patients' dreams. I want to analyze art to help the people drawn to it realize why they feel that way.
At risk of sounding audacious, I want this blog to help people connect with their unconscious.
I will be basing my articles on my own experiences interacting with art and what I've found in my research of anthropology and the psychology of self. Many questions that we have about culture and art have been answered already, with varying degrees of practicality, by the great researchers of the past. Instead of trying to come up with completely novel ways to explain its influence on us, we should reach for the works of Freud, Jung, and Lacan and search for conclusions we can apply to contemporary art to see if they match with what in our own minds we know to be true.
This is what I consider my mission: to show people how to benefit from art like they do from dreams, to design a framework for the kind of art that leaves people better off than they were without it, and share my discoveries as much as I can.
I work to make myself obsolete.
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Thanks!