Every creative person is a duality
Modern Man in Search of a Soul
“Every creative person is a duality or a synthesis of contradictory aptitudes.
On the one side he is a human being with a personal life, while on the other side he is an impersonal, creative process.
Since as a human being he may be sound or morbid, we must look at his psychic make-up to find the determinants of his personality.
But we can only understand him in his capacity of artist by looking at his creative achievement.
We should make a sad mistake if we tried to explain the mode of life of an English gentleman,a Prussian officer, or a cardinal in terms of personal factors.
The gentleman, the officer and the cleric function as such in an impersonal rMe, and their psychic make-up is qualified by a peculiar objectivity.
We must grant that the artist does not function in an official capacity-the very opposite is nearer the truth.
He nevertheless resembles the types I have named in one respect, for the specifically artistic disposition involves an overweight of collective psychic life as against the personal.
Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument.
The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purposes through him.
As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is ” man” in a higher sense-he is “collective man “-one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic life of mankind.
To perform this difficult office it is sometimes necessary for him to sacrifice happiness and everything that makes life worth living for the ordinary human being. ~Carl Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, Pages 168-169.
