Methodology: Art
My Take on Memoir — Visual Art
Writing a dissertation was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. It was a huge feat to grapple with so much and present an original interpretation. By the end, I was a wreck – out of balance, out of touch, drained. When my friend Mary asked me what I wanted to do next, the words tumbled out of me: “I want to write things that are beautiful and true.” After all the refereeing and rewriting to pass muster with the credentialing experts on my committee, I felt the absence of finer elements in my work.
Also, in tackling that huge writing project, I often felt that other parts of me were smarter than my thinking mind – like intuition and spirit. And there were other aspects – feeling, body – that were proscribed altogether. I had to rely on my intellect alone, and it often felt frustratingly slow to master the material and get with the program.
Looking back, I think I was hungry for access to the realm of the unconscious – intuition, imagination, shadow, unbounded creativity – the oceanic aspect of the psyche in which the conscious mind exists more like a small island. Whereas the conscious mind wants to deal in externals, the mechanics of things, the unconscious allows us to go deep into the mysteries.
So, as I began transferring my training to personal history, I intuitively knew that I wanted to extend the vocabulary of narration beyond words to include images. Artmaking.
The art journal pages I feature in my work are products of Rakefet Hadar’s SoulPage Method. Her process combines 7 elements — intention, background, color, line, text, image, magical coincidence — based in Jungian psychology, positioning the artist to lead with intuition at every stage. In fact, your conscious mind stands by as witness while the unconscious lifts the veil to its storehouse of treasures – all those things rumbling beneath the surface of the ordinary mind. What surfaces is extraordinarily fascinating and often surprising.
What you produce shows you who you really are and what you really care about, deep down.
Whereas Rakefet is an art therapist with the aim of self-awareness and mental health, I think her method is also useful in the discovery process for memoir writing:
Personal Symbolic Language
Learning what your unconscious is carrying, which might not otherwise have made it fully into consciousness, can supply not just depth but perspective and cool imagery for your writing, which you would not have generated using your conscious mind, alone. The surprising results of going through this art journaling process can also open greater access to emotional content around some memories.
Archetypes: Language of the Collective
More than this, sometimes the images, patterns or arrangements of the composition will feature archetypal elements. This allows you to delve into this ancient shared language, seeing your story enfolded in greater human experience: the collective unconscious. Drawing from mythology, folklore, fairytales, you can learn about this connection between your life and the appearances of archetypes in a way that you can use to amplify and enrich your writing.
Personal Growth
Delving into the unconscious to bring up buried, forgotten or repressed aspects of yourself powerfully serves the integration of conscious and unconscious minds. This integration is central to what Jung has identified as the key labor of personal growth: individuation. Working in the SoulPage art journaling method not only serves the goal of writing an amazing memoir, but supports you in becoming the whole, evolved, integrated human that you want to be.
I learned the SoulPages method in a 9 month training course with Rakefet Hadar and received her certification as a SoulPage Facilitator and Mentor in 2022.
