I recently had the pleasure of attending a Martha Graham dance performance in Aspen, where I live, and was deeply touched by the depth of the emotion and passion in the dances: "Appalachian Spring,” written with Aaron Copland, and “Errand into the Maze.” I am not someone who grew up in the dance world, as there was very little of this art form in Los Angeles where I lived for most of my life; art performances there were seen mostly through the entertainment and music industries. We had LA Opera and LA Philharmonic, but rarely dance that was formidable in other cities. Lucky for me, I was introduced to this powerful art form by my partner who is a ballet enthusiast from New York City.

My reaction to this modern form of art has been stunning. Learning something new is always a challenge and a pleasure, and it came at the right time. This is a pure blending of the physical with the psychological, living in balance with the body, spirit, and soul. I was involved with movement therapy in the Jungian community, but dance is different. Rather than focusing on one’s own active imagination through the body, dance is a collective imaginative experience that engages each one of us separately, like an active imagination on a collective level that we can witness and participate in. The sense of depth is built into the dance scores. It is created from the source of raw creativity in the psyche and pours out through the body of the dancers in a way that touches one deeply, like a Beethoven piano sonata, bypassing the rational mind and piercing the soul. We feel the passion of the dancers.

Curiously, my partner was reading a new biography on Martha Graham and ran across a number of quotes from Jung. I knew nothing about her and was surprised to learn she had a library of Jungian books and had been in analysis with Frances G. Wickes, who writes in her book, The Inner World of Choice, “The ego must decide to step across the threshold into the perils of the unknown that lead to greater self-knowledge or to retreat into the safety of the known” (p.291). Graham probed her own inner landscape, incorporating her Jungian viewpoint of archetypes and mythology, anima and animus into her choreography. In the 60’s, she was surrounded by artists exploring the same depths. Mark Rothko, for example, delved into myth and the roots of the unconscious mind, naming pieces of his art, “Antigone,” “The Sacrifice of Iphigenia,” “Oedipus,” “Altar of Orpheus” (p. 291).

Graham’s dances were named, “Night Journey Myth,” “Cave of the Heart,” “Errand into the Maze”—all full of mythic/archetypal themes. One feels the pull of the unconscious in these pieces, recognizing the path of suffering and transformation, as the creative impulse is expressed in such a beautiful way. One is impacted deeply on a soulful level, full of passion and feeling. It is an experience of the psyche at play and a reminder to include the body and music in our own individuation journey. Both have a huge impact on the psyche, removing us from the logic and rational thoughts of our daily lives, inviting us into the domain of passion and feeling.

Jung took this path in 1913, documented in The Red Book, when he was called by the Spirit of the Depths to descend into his inner world, into the unconscious, to renew his relationship with his soul and discover his passions and imaginations in the psyche. He was called away from the Spirit of the Times, which was the rational, scientifically minded, everyday world, focusing on the outer world rather an inner world. Going inward, he encountered the experience of himself and all the characters, both helpful and repellent, within his psyche. Later in his journey he realized he needed to make something with his own hands, he needed the physical experience in the body, not just thinking and feeling. Hence, he began sculpting, playing in the sand, and focusing on building his tower at Bollingen. He explained, “From the beginning I felt the Tower as in some way a place of maturation-- a maternal womb or maternal figure in which I could become what I was, what I am, and will be. It gave me a feeling as if I were being reborn in stone. It is thus a concretization of the individuation process.”

The Spirit of the Depths calls us in many ways. There are Jungians who have focused on music and its impact psychologically, like Melinda Haas with her studies of Mahler, or Wendy Wyman who focused on movement therapy, or the art of Susan Bostrom-Wong, to name a few. Music, dance/movement, art, architecture — they demonstrate the importance of the creative endeavors that spring from imagination. It is an important message to remember as we live our busy lives, making sense of the chaos around us.

Nancy Furlotti, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst living in Aspen, CO.  She is a past president of the C.G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, where she trained, and a founding member and past president of the Philemon Foundation, which published Jung’s Red Book, among other volumes.  She established the Carl Jung Professorial Endowment in Analytical Psychology at the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA and the Erel Shalit Carlsberg Foundation Research Fellowship in Behavioral Neuroscience at Oxford University.  Both endowments focus on understanding happiness and resolving trauma.

Dr. Furlotti has written numerous articles and co-edited several books, including The Dream and Its Amplification with the late Erel Shalit. She lectures internationally on Jungian topics, such as dreams, mythology, trauma, the feminine, and the environment.  A long-standing interest of hers is Mesoamerican mythology, specifically the Quiché Maya creation myth, the Popol Vuh.  Her book on this subject is forthcoming.  Her company, Recollections, LLC, edits and publishes the writings of first-generation Jungians, most recently Erich Neumann’s two-volume manuscript, The Roots of Jewish Consciousness.