[Carl Jung] describes in his Memories, Dreams,
Reflections how he went outdoors and almost each day would gather from a
lake a series of stones to stack. Without why and to play.
But stacking stones led to desire. He built a village made
of stones, complete with cottages, castle, and cathedral.
“What are you doing?” he asked himself. “I had no answer to
my question, only the inner certainty that I was on the way to discovering my
own myth. For the building game was only a beginning.”
The building led him to drawing and painting. He realized he
wasn’t “doing” psychology or psychotherapy. The former protege of one founder
of modern psychology was “doing art.”
“This sort of thing has been consistent with me and at
any time in my later life when I came up against a blank wall, I painted
a picture or hewed a stone. Each such experience proved to be a rite
d’entre for the ideas and works that followed hard upon it.”
- Carl Jung
When Jung hit a wall, he didn’t get blocked. He created into
and through the block.
Jung’s experience is consistent with what psychologists and
neuroscientists keep reaffirming about the way we human beings learn, ideate,
and create.
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