Creative Objects

When writing or composing in the past,  I had no conscious sense that my creativity was connected to a deeper therapeutic process. I merely saw my artistic creations as products of my ‘passion’, or more prosaically, as products of my job as a freelance writer.

But over time, I began to discover writers and thinkers (for me, initially, Leo Tolstoy and Johann Goethe) who observed that making art was more than just the creation of ‘things in the world.’ That under the surface layer of creation there was a deeper layer. One where a therapeutic transfer of unconscious inner material was taking place. A transfer from somewhere lost and hidden, into a place of  greater conscious awareness and understanding.

As I gradually came to accept this idea, I too began to see my creative objects (songs, scripts and books) differently. They were indeed – as these luminous literary minds suggested – telling two stories.

The first was the surface ‘in the world’ artistic story. One motivated by a desire for money or recognition.

But the second – sometimes quite hidden in metaphor and opaque language; sometimes hiding in plain sight – was telling quite a different story. It was gradually piecing together some of my deepest ‘lost’ feelings  in relation to difficult and painful events from my past.

This re-emergence of suppressed emotions via the creation of transitional objects was to have a profound and beneficial effect on my life. One that I would sometimes relate to others. But it was not, however, until I came to the work of the English psychotherapist, Donald Winnicott, that I happily learned that there was an established psychotherapeutic language and framework to describe this process.

Winnicott labelled these objects we create to access our unconscious material  (e.g. books, songs, art, diary – really, anything),  as “transitional phenomena” or “transitional objects.” That is, they act as “transitions” or  “travellers” between the inner and outer parts of ourselves. And the same as Carl Jung, Winnicot not only viewed these “transitional objects” as being highly beneficial to the ongoing psychological health of individuals but also that as a therapeutic method it was accessible and relatable to most people.

The message of both these practitioners (and the timeless writers centuries before) was that being creative – that is, actively fuelling transition – is an essential and valuable part of living.