Chapter 13 Return to Indigenous Art Forms: Potential for Healing

In: Collective Structures of Imagination in Jungian Interpretation
Author:
Josefa Bayes-King
Search for other papers by Josefa Bayes-King in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Close

Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):

$40.00

Abstract

In a pre-verbal society, the body was the pen and paper. This paper addresses issues of how different cultures manifest psychological issues at the collective and individual levels, with a focus on the role of dance as a means of deep communication. Indigenous Australians embrace the collective, traditionally gathering together with their tribe or “mob” for both celebrations and mourning, whereas Western psychology has focused upon the individual. Dancers such as Mary Starks Whitehouse and Martha Graham, who analyzed with Jung, incorporated his work into their creativity, including aspects of active imagination. Indeed, Martha Graham found that dance provided body/mind healing for those who had been traumatized by war and rape. The central theme of dance as an important and primal form of communication is further elaborated in the context of Indigenous Australians, who developed complex means of communication based on dance, which were passed on through generations and transcended barriers of oral language. One of the advantages of dance is the ability to combine and adapt patterns of expression dependent on context, including emotional nuance and response to current environmental or societal circumstances. Over the past 200 years into the present, many Indigenous communities and individuals have suffered various trauma and loss of soul as a result of the principle and reality of White Australia. These fundamental human means of expression are accessible to modern societies but require guidance in their interpretation and assignment of meaning, particularly in relation to structured description of unconscious responses to the complexities of contemporary life.

  • Collapse
  • Expand

Metrics

All Time Past 365 days Past 30 Days
Abstract Views 282 91 3
Full Text Views 6 0 0
PDF Views & Downloads 15 1 1