SYMBOLIC EQUATIONS

IN CREATIVE PROCESS
Reflections on Hindu India*
RENALDO MADURO, San Francisco
Every creative individual owes all that is greatest in his life to fantasy-
the dynamic principle of fantasy is play.
C. G. JuNG (22)
INTRODUCTION
MoDERN ANTHROPOLOGY is experiencing the revival of interest in two very
traditional, yet in many ways unexplored, psychological and cultural
categories: mythological and religious symbolism. Recent attempts to
describe and analyse symbolic structure, content, and process in ritual
social contexts, however, often do not ask crucial questions related to
depth psychology {C SPIRO 41). It seems important to emphasise that a
comprehensive grasp of central cultural symbols requires a studied appreci-
ation of intrapsychic processes and meanings in relation to interpersonal
dynamics.
A holistic view of both symbolic content and process considers that
symbols arise out of a dynamic unconscious and have complex meanings
on at least three different levels of abstraction and interpretation: (r) the
sociocultural, (2) the personal, both psychological and biological, and (3)
the transpersonal (archetypal), considered to be important by Freud, but
developed and elucidated most trenchantly in terms of the archetypes in
the works of Jung, and later by Levi-Strauss and others. Each level raises
important questions related to degrees of specificity in attempts to interpret
symbolic phenomena cross-culturally by empirical analysis. In holistic
perspective, the meaning of any particular symbol or symbolic motif
would in some ways always include, to paraphrase the anthropologist
Clyde Kluckhohn, what is like all other men, like some other men, and
like no other man. Thus we may say a culture activates, selects, and
*Eighteen months of field work in India (1968-70) were made possible by a grant from the
Foreign Area Fellowship Program. Support for additional research and the preparation of
this article was generously provided by the Foundations' Fund for Research in Psychiatry
(Grant 72-538) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (Grant
No. HD 00238).
002I-8774(8o(oxoos9 + 32 $o2.oo(o 59 cl' 1980 The Society of Analytical Psychology
6o R. Madura
structures symbolic archetypal themes etho-syntonically, yet for the
individual, always the locus of culture, these are never understood
and emotionally experienced without some personal twist (MADURO &
WHEELWRIGHT 35).
Complex symbolic motifs accompanying creative expression in any
society reflect the natural interpenetration of culture and personality. The
study of these motifs may highlight cross-cultural variation and difference
(e.g. stimulus diffusion), or point up similarities and 'universals'. In general,
the latter have been neglected until recently when the study of symbolic
structure, process, function, and content has necessitated a return to a
scientific consideration of the concept of psychic unity within anthro-
pology and psychology. This shift in theoretical focus has, in many cases,
included the accelerating rediscovery of Jung and his hypotheses as they
relate to contemporary interest in a healthy synthesis of all psychoanalytic
schools. It is suggested in this paper that findings related to the child symbol
among Hindu folk painters in India are typical or nearly universal in the
Jungian sense. Only future field investigations by others in different parts
of the world can bring data to bear on this problem area. Hopefully this
paper may stimulate others interested in creative process, and the serious
application of Jungian psychoanalytic theory to anthropology, to consider
the significance of the psychocultural issues raised more quantitatively than
it has been my intention to do.
In dealing with artistic creativity as a research domain, we must from
the start distinguish between at least four distinct yet tightly interwoven
perspectives: (I) creative products, (2) creative personality attributes, and (3)
creative process. At the same time we have an obligation to look at (4)
sociowltural factors that either foster or inhibit the manifestation of a
specified kind of creativeness in a particular setting. Previous creativity
research designs have shared a common (perhaps American) bias: a pre-
occupation with creativity as product, output, achievement, or contribu-
tion. Nearly always the locus of evaluation of such products is external to
the individuals under study. Thus one may argue that what is studied has
more to do with aesthetic value systems or economic incentives than with
creativity per se.
This paper will focus on only one affect-image related to Hindu folk
theories of creative process: the child symbol. I will present data based on
I8 months of field work in Nathdwara, a small pilgrimage centre in arid
Rajasthan, western India. This town is the headquarters ofPushtimarga, an
influential Hindu Vaishnava sect devoted to strict non-violence and to the
worship of Shri Nathji, an idol believed to be a 'living' seven-year-old
Divine Child form of Lord Krishna on earth. Some I 55 Brahmin folk
painters (no men, 45 women) belonging to two different subcastes (jati)
live and work around this numinous cult institution; as a community
within a community, they form an integral part of the sacred temple
Symbolic equations in creative process 6r
complex. Painting in this ritual context, the artist's role is sacerdotal, and
his artistic endeavour part of sacred mystery. For a comprehensive psycho-
cultural account of this group and analyses of symbolic expressive be-
haviour, readers are referred to Maduro (34).
Psychocultural data from rural India which bear on how the notion of
creativity is defined, regarded, and personally experienced will be presented
in relation to meanings of the child symbol. A case for the importance of
taking into account cultural, personal and transpersonal meanings will be
made. These levels of meaning are considered separately for purposes of
exposition, but assumed to be inextricably interrelated.
I have carefully chosen only one symbolic motif-that of the 'playful
Divine Child'-because during the period of my research activity in India,
this symbol appeared more frequently in the dreams, waking phantasies,
projective test responses, and free associations of highly creative artists
than any other. Several other extremely important symbols, such as the
mother goddess (shakti) and her divine male consort Lord Vishvakarma,
god of creativity and patron of all the arts, have been explored in detail
elsewhere (Cf MADURO Jl, 33, 34).
Moreover, I have deliberately limited the scope of my interest to the
area of symbolic equations, hoping to show how experiences of them in
infancy (when they are the rule) find expression later in the culture patterns
of adult Hindu life. I must assume readers are somewhat familiar with
distinctions that Jungians make between image, sign, symbol, and symbolic
equation (Cf STEIN 42, FoRDHAM 9). It is suggested here that the creative
Hindu painters I studied arc more integrated than the others in the sense
of having a greater capacity to make use of the unstable deintegrative
phases in their lives. During these deintegrative phases creative painters are
able to link up with unconscious infantile phantasies, nuclear anxieties,
defences, and feelings and to make use of them-rather than become en-
tangled or overwhelmed and immobilised by them. They are marked by
an uncrippled capacity to participate in the symbolic process because they
have access to symbolic equations (also referred to as archetypal deintegrates
and self-objects) with their roots in infancy. These self-objects have per-
sisted, become symbolised after the depressive position has been more rather
than less successfully negotiated, and have then entered the culture patterns
of collective consciousness. Finally, selected developmental issues related
to transitional objects, transitional phenomena, the nature of regression,
and phallic-genital stage organisation will be noted.
62 R. Maduro
I
SYMBOLIC MEANINGS OF THE CHILD: ETHNOGRAPHIC DATA
In a comparative study of personality processes and attributes among
Hindu folk painters, 155 members of a Vaishnava painter community
ranked each other along a continuum into one of three groups: Group I,
'most/highly creative', Group II, 'less/moderately creative', or Group III,
'least/non-creative' (MADURO 33, 34). The analysis of life history materials,
projective test results, and free associations found highly creative Group I
men to be distinguished by: (1) an extremely rich phantasy life and rapport
with deep inner states of non-ego awareness; (2) a great tolerance for
ambiguity; (3) a noteworthy capacity to form very complex symbolic
identifications, fusions, displacements, and condensations in a striving
toward wholeness and psychological balance; and (4) more :fluid and
permeable inner and outer ego boundaries with a strong ego core requiring
less unconscious defensive manoeuvres (e.g. repression, projection, isolation
of affect, denial, etc.) than less creative painters.
More specifically, unlike most devotees who tended to worship an
idealised picture of the mother-infant relationship, creative Group I men
were not so devoted to this inaccessible ideal. They did not need to
idealise as much because they did not need to get rid of the 'bad mother'
by primitive splitting mechanisms. Presumably the depressive position had
been achieved enough so that these creative Hindu artists could, like their
counterparts anywhere, tolerate ambivalence toward the mother imago.
This is directly related to their greater capacity for symbol formation and
participation in the symbolic process (FoRDHAM 9). Artistically creative
individuals were marked by greater intrapsychic freedom than those who
had not accepted the challenge of individuation in life.
CHILD KRISHNA=UNIFYING CULTURAL SYMBOL
Creative painters reworked and attached complex personal, interpersonal
and transpersonal meanings to certain central cultural symbols provided
by their Hindu Pushtimarga subculture. They did not imitate these
symbols slavishly, but reinterpreted or reinvigorated them in some
unusual and idiosyncratically stylised way. In one painter's words: 'We
give the forms of unconscious imagination new life or new form.' Painters
in touch with creative unconscious processes, as well as the needs of
their social groups, provided more intricate unconscious and preconscious
symbolic associations to images which were mere stereotypes and artistic
Symbolic equations in creative process
cliches for less creative painters. This was especially true of the child
symbhol. 'I' b I' h h 1 f
T e most Important Ivmg sym o m t e p antasy IVes o creative
painters, in contrast to non-creatives, is the mythological image of the
playful Divine Child, the _or Krishna Creative
painters report that to create IS hke playmg, and that m spmt they are
children. One highly creative Group I painter explained during a tape-
recorded life history interview:
PTR: The chief characteristic of the creative artist is that he is totally immersed in his
work. Like the great Mahatmas and Rishis, the creative artist is subjectively in-
volved. He sees only whatever it is he is creating. He is possessed by that process
and besides this, he cannot attend to anything else. Even when a person comes and
sits down in front of him he won't even see him. He continues to work in rapture,
and he simply doesn't know what else is happening. He goes on working, thinking,
and playing at his work. I mean, even when another man is sitting in his presence!
RJM: So you say art is something like playing?
PTR: That's all! If it's not play, then what else is it? It's art and for the creative artist it's
play. It is a toy-he is making it-and he just places it in front of him, just as if it
were a toy. Then he gets pleasure out of creating it. His interest is fulfilled in making
a toy. That which has been formed from his innermost depths (andhru11i atman),
when he places it before him, then the creative artist feels great joy. He feels: 'Ah,
yes ... Oh ... I have created this thing!'
It feels exactly the same as playing to me, and I take it as my childish play-
that which I did in my childhood. For example, this boat which I have made. I
was playing with it when I made it. Oh God! Was I ever! And I never gave a
thought to how much money I was spending on it at the time. I created it! So then,
it was created in the spirit of play-in the form of play.
RJM: Do you remember having any dreams in which children appear?
PTR: Oh yes, of course, these do come to me-dreams of children playing. In the dream
-1 often feel that, 'Oh come on friend, what should I do next in this work of art
or that work of art in which I am engaged in real life?' And then in the dream the
answer occurs to my mind; 'Not like this, but create it like this!' When such child
dreams occur to me, it suddenly strikes my mind, and the new idea seems to suit
or fit me. Then the work of art turns out to be good. Sometimes I have dreams of
small boys and girls when the appearance of new ideas for paintings are growing
in my mind.
Indian culture in general places a high regard on playing. For example,
it was play, not work, that created the world during the dance of Lord
Vishnu. In this particular myth, work and a stern command from God
did not produce the earth-no 'Let there be Light'. The creative painter
quoted above shares this cultural attitude toward play with others of his
profession, but for him it goes even further. As for the child, work and
play form a unity; they are not mutually exclusive categories of experience.
Creative Group I painters elaborate on phantasies of regression to
childlike or more primitive levels of psychological awareness. They also
recall their childhood memories much more clearly and easily than those
less creative; extremely creative painters repeatedly describe themselves as
R. Madura
having been 'more mischievous', 'extremely playful' and 'naughty like
the infant Krishna'.
On the Rorschach, and in TAT stories, creative painters consistently
use the child image more frequently than less creative artists. In response to
TAT Card 19 (MuRRAY 39, 'clouds overhanging a snow-covered cabin'),
the painter rated 'most creative' by 96 per cent of his fellow artists im-
mediately affected a childish gurgle at the sight of this stimulus. He
beamed, shook his head in affirmation, and responded spontaneously in a
stream-of-consciousness style which characterises much of his daily
conversation and waking phantasies:
Card 19
This card is done in modern art style. These are male and female toys. They are toys
belonging to girls and boys. Toys are all strewn about here and there. And somewhere else
a cave has been constructed. But what is this? It's like the toys which girl and boy children
create-isn't it just like that? From over in this direction water is flowing. It flows by
over here. This is a bridge. And here the clouds are rising, and clouds are descending
from over here. It's like that. Isn't this just the way children create things? And just the
way children play? This has all been created in just that way. This is done in modern
art style.
The same artist, like other Group I creative painters, gives a large
number of Hch (childish), Myt (mythology), Dch (childish dependency),
and Pch (positive childish) responses on the Rorschach Inkblot Test.
Although it is not my purpose to analyse test responses statistically, it is
noteworthy to add that, in contrast, Group II and Group III painters often
block on this ambiguous card, suggesting intolerance for ambiguity.
The image of the playful divine child is of paramount cultural sig-
nificance to Pushtimarga thought and practice which fixes almost exclusively
on the first twelve years of Shri Krishna's life. Shri Nathji himself is
believed to be a living seven-year-old Divine Child who can be viewed
eight times each day 'at home' in the main temple. In addition to daily
temple worship outside the home, nearly every Pushtimarga family
maintains a shrine to the infant Krishna. Each day a small metal or clay
figure is sung to, bathed, dressed, and rocked to sleep in a cradle-swing as
if it were alive. Devotees play with small 'houses' constructed of wood and
doth, in much the same way that children play with dolls, moving the
child god from room to room, and performing important rituals. They
coo and fondle the statue with delight-absorbed in 'the Lord's service'.
Of such great living force is the archetypal image of the Divine Child in
everyday life at Nathdwara.
As a culturally patterned 'dominant ritual symbol' in the anthro-
pologist Turner's sense (Cf. TuRNER 43), the child Shri Nathji idol
instigates social action while it is at the same time a sacred focus in inter-
action. In the context of everyday life and daily temple ritual processes,
the child symbol renews Pushtimarga society and belief in its underlying
Symbolic equations in creative process
values. Groups of devotees mobilise around the idol at temple 'viewings',
worship before it, and perform symbolic activities near it. They also add
other symbolic objects to it. The coming together ofPushtimarga devotees
gives power and meaning to the social group as a whole, and in the way
that Durkheim (5) and generations of social scientists who have followed
him have clarified, the shrine is very important as a 'collective social
representation'. As such it is a place where the group can express aspects
of itself to itself because the daily rituals centring on the child image
function to facilitate social solidarity (spirit of the group's common identi-
fication, 'collective effervescence' involving strong affect), social cohesion,
and unity.
As a unifying dominant symbol, the child god is clearly distinguished
from other sacred images, signs or ritual objects by three major empirical
properties highlighted by Turner (43); (1) condensation, (2) a unification
of disparate meanings, and (3) polarisation of meanings (bipolarity).
Turner's concept of a 'dominant ritual symbol', so widely discussed at
present in modern anthropology, seems to have much in common with
Jung's 'living symbol', and indeed Turner cites Jung often. For both
Turner and Jung symbols are by definition ambiguous, essentially 'un-
known' in a conventional sense, represent many things, actions, and
phantasies by a single formation, and reflect analogous qualities with
wide conscious and unconscious associative links. The generality of the
'dominant' cultural symbol enables it to bracket together the most diverse
ideas and phenomena, including Jung's notion of the bipolarity of all
archetypes: the archetype as having one pole rooted in instinctual bodily
experiences, the other in potential phantasy images associated with inner
psychic reality as well as higher cultural achievements, artistic endeavours,
and spiritual life.
Although the image of the Divine Child Krishna is provided culturally
and important for nearly all Hindus, creative painters seem to be especially
fascinated and captivated by the symbol. Several Group I painters, for
example, likened the child image to a seed (bij). One put it this way:
'There is a belief in our locale that after the four eras (yugas) the whole
world will be dissolved in the sea. The only thing that will remain is the
living Divine Child form (bala swarupa)-the seed.' Here the child stands
for both the beginning and the end. Another Group I creative painter who
often spoke of playing like a child during his artistic work quoted a popular
Hindu saying: 'One cannot enter the door of heaven unless he is like a
pure child.' In probes, other painters assured me that the main significance
of the child image was that it is a personification of purification: 'The
child is free from all malice, hatred, and so on.'
66 R. Maduro
CHILD= PENIS
In addition to painter phantasies relating the child to play and everyday
Pushtimarga ritual activities within the social structure, the image is associ-
ated with archaic unconscious phantasies, feelings and thoughts related to
body images. The child, Shri Nathji, for example, has a phallic significance.
In portraits he is clearly outlined in phallic shape; in free associating to the
idol six painters hit upon the unconscious child=penis equation; and on a
number of important ritual occasions, the child is bathed in curds, milk,
(symbolic substitutes in painter phantasies for semen) and ghee (clarified
butter)-a practice usually associated with Shiva phallus (lingam) worship
throughout India. On special days, the idol is not only the object of
libations, but becomes itself the fecundating phallus: milk and curds are
believed to issue from the inner sanctum where the child=penis stands
awake and erect. Priests of the inner sanctum throw white and yellow-
tinted curds on devotees entering the temple in a ritual attempt, they say,
'to cure and to purify'. By noon the temple walls and floors are covered
with this 'auspicious' and 'life-giving' substance.
Even the town's name, Nathdwara, provides further evidence for the
unconscious meaning of the child worship: 'Gateway/portals to the
Lord/child' (i.e. dwara, portals=legs ... to the nath, Lordfchild=penis).
We find added support for a penis=child equation in Hindi-Mewari
slang, where words for penis include 'little brother' and 'the little one'.
Freud has discussed these symbolic equivalents (FREUD 10). Finally, the
flying (often winged) phallus is a mythological theme found in many
parts of the world, and one with which depth psychologists are clinically
well acquainted (Cf. ALsTON 3 and HALLMAN 15 on Peter Pan). In this
connection, it is important to mention here the very commonly held
belief (socialised phantasy) in Nathdwara that Shri Nathji flies back and
forth to his birthplace in Mathura District-through the darkness of every
night while the town sleeps. In taking his night sky journey, the hero-child
Shri Nathji, like the sun, sinks down again 'into all-enfolding and all-
regenerating night' (luNG 20, p. 355).
Both Freud (ro, n) and Jung (20, 23) have drawn our attention to the
child=penis equation in the unconscious, although it was Jung who
discussed the child symbol at great length. Before passing on to deeper
archetypal dimensions of this symbolic motif, I will briefly continue to
consider psychobiological issues with special reference to typical Brahmin
child rearing practices and infantile experiences.
Two important aspects of a child's mental functioning are his ex-
hibitionism and his phantasies of grandeur and omnipotence. On one level
of symbolic analysis, involving the personal unconscious, Shri Nathji
darshanas (viewings) would appear to be closely related to narcissistic-
Symbolic equations in creative process
exhibitionistic strivings-tensions which have remained undischarged and
blocked. Within culturally prescribed limits, unconscious symbolic
content is allowed to break through to expression. Repressed instinctual
investments, the exhibitionism of the child, become temporarily re-
sexualised and energy is discharged. Thus the child image, described
by so many devotees as the personification of perfection, and purity, is
more understandable: to identify with, and worship, the phallus=child
on exhibition is a return, in part, to the grandiose phantasies of infantile life
when omnipotence, omniscience, perfection, and the prolonged symbiotic
relationship with the mother described in detail elsewhere (MADURO 34)
as mamta are rekindled and re-experienced.
For most male painters, Shri Nathji viewings involve sentimental and
idealised mother-child obsessions. The worshipper is asked to identify
simultaneously with two complexes: (1) the child Krishna as an infant
(often painted on a leaf sucking the big toe of his right foot), or as a seven-
year-old son, and (2) the mother of Shri Nathji, Yashoda. In worship
services feminine identification is furthered in that the devotee identifies
with the mother Y ashoda and would seem to take the child narcissistically
as a sexual object; he is to love Shri Nathji as his mother loved him. These
phantasies and conscious ideals involve shifting child-parent identiftcations
in which sex role confusion and primary identity with the mother
(separation-individuation) conflicts appear.
'Wanting to remain a child' is a popular theme in life history records
and in explorations of what the Shri Nathji image means to individual
painters. A folk saying explains: 'Only the pure child can enter the door
of heaven.' Only when the adult re-experiences himself in Shri Nathji
viewings as an infant-boy can he have his mother all to himself again.
Painters corroborate this when they say the singular importance of Shri
Nathji viewings inside the temple is to 'rekindle mamta', passive dependent
states in which the infant 'longs for the mother's milk and receives it
generously'. Thus, 'to remain a child' can mean to bathe in motherly love
and care-in passive dependency where ego boundaries are not yet
strongly defined, and without responsibility-less disturbed by guilt,
anxiety, or castration fears related to developmentally later phallic-genital
conflicts. This can, however, be viewed as a culturally patterned
idealisation of the developmentally earlier mother-infant relation-
ship.
It is widely held that 'no child knows or understands anything about
good or evil before the age of about seven', and that until then, 'the child
is pure and understands nothing about sex (vasna kama), and so on'. Thus,
to return symbolically every day to this state of power and childlike
'innocence' during the worship of Shri Nathji may also be a way of
repetitiously acting out the past trauma of difficult separation from the
mother complex-an attempt at belated mastery over an unresolved
68 R. Maduro
libidinal attachment to the mother. 'Only a child', according to one painter,
may keep 'secret' ties to the mother.
Central to phantasies of wanting to remain a child is also a narcissistic
over-estimation of the male genitals-an erotic self-cathexis involving a
great number of variety of masturbation phantasies experienced inside the
temple at darshanas-brief, crowded public viewings. Consequently, the
phallus comes to represent all pleasure-giving attributes of the body, as
depicted in the thick black phallus-shaped outline traditionally painted to
frame the idol, and in the actual phallically erect shape of Shri Nathji's
body. In these circumstances, the adult regresses to experience the child's
love of his own body/self; his own sexual organ becomes again highly
valued-loved as a primary symbol of his entire body (C LEWIN 29) that
can, under certain conditions, offer defensive protection and withdrawal
from mature object relations in the environment. The child is then a
narcissistic self representation (C FoRDHAM 7, p. 64), associated in
phantasy life with what one painter called 'a glorious, all-powerful penis
that could if it wanted to, spread/spray faeces and urine all over the place',
as well as the life-giving semen alluded to above.
Primal scene phantasies are also key in understanding the sexual excite-
ment (phantasies and activities) reported by painters while they stand before
the idol, or in and around other parts of the temple precinct. 'Looking at'
the idol may cause much sexual excitement and what painters call 'unasked-
for erections' because it is a fetishistic object-essentially a phallic mother
representation (a bisexual breast=penis equation).
CHILD= BREAST
Psychoanalytic data collected in Nathdwara on the child=penis equation
include many observations and phantasies related to feeding rituals and the
archetypal image of the breast. Prasad is the sanctified food of Lord Shri
Nathji. It is prepared by a host of Brahmin cooks attached by heredity to
the temple complex and distributed eight times a day when the Divine
Child is 'viewed' by the public. These public viewings (darshanas) last only
ten or fifteen minutes and are highly surcharged with anxiety and religious
fervour centred round 'receiving divine grace'. Every day in Nathdwara
huge quantities of food are prepared and offered to the deity. It is common
practice in Hindu homes to offer the gods food before taking it oneself
Food offered first to a god who has symbolically 'eaten' of it is called
prasad, sanctified food of the god. It is both a treat and an honour to feast
on prasad; it is in fact considered to be the actual body of the living god,
and a Pushtimarga devotee incorporates power, grace, and bliss associated
with the omnipotence of Shri Nathji in the same sense that a Christian
hopes to benefit from a communion wafer. After viewing of the idol,
prasad is sold to pilgrims and distributed to temple employees in lieu of
Symbolic equations in creative process
cash payment for services. It is commonly believed that eating too much
prasad will harm a devotee, 'make one sick in mind and body', or 'poison
the body'.
Ideas clustered around the symbolic meaning of Shri Nathji's prasad
(tasted food) fall into at least two categories which deserve brief mention
here:
(r) Prasad is believed to be 'the actual sanctified body' of Shri Nathji
himsel Shri Nathji is a living seven-year-old child and is often referred to
as an infant, yet he also at times in phantasy becomes a powerful father
figure as well-a mature incarnation of the god Vishnu, linked directly to
the temple High Priest whose birthright is to possess the idol and be him-
self worshipped as divine. As such he is a very omnipotent 'person' to
draw on, or as one painter put it, 'to get power from. We believe that
special grace and divine power flow from the god Shri Nathji to us when
we gaze upon his presence.' In standing for the adult father form of Lord
Krishna, Shri Nathji prasad-eating phantasies and rituals are directly related
to repressed homo-erotic themes, the seeking of masculine power, the
father=penis, through oral incorporation. Prasad eating rituals in this case
symbolise the dividing up and incorporation of the father's penis ( Cf.
CARSTAIRS 4) in an effort to attain an added measure of sought-after
patriarchal consciousness, masculine identity: in phantasy one is what he eats.
Moreover, as Melanie Klein (26, 27, 28) and others have stressed, oral
incorporation of the penis may not only reflect attempts to resolve Oedipal
conflicts, but be a defence against pre-oedipal impulses to devour greedily,
sadistically attack, and destroy the mother's 'bad breast', i.e. that which
was withdrawn after a period of prolonged goodness and oral satisfaction
in what Pustimarga devotees call mamta. This socialised splitting phantasy,
then, may also serve as a culturally constituted ego defence mechanism
against persecutory anxiety, generated by unconscious destructive impulses
and directed against the otherwise idealised mother's breast; it is also a
defence against the wish-fear to merge ego boundaries with the mother,
which could mean annihilation. Massive projective identification with the
breast (which is tantamount to fusion) would appear to imply antecedent
oral incorporative events (GoRDON 12, LEWIN 30).
From another point of view, it is important to recognise the potentially
positive nature of a defence provided it does not become entrenched: to
experience persecutory anxieties can have an adaptive value when it
operates in the service of preserving the good-enough (but not perfect)
internal object, as distinct from the object which was idealised during the
paranoid-schizoid stage of earlier infancy, when splitting predominated.
The existence of persecutory anxiety as such is not necessarily a sign of
psychopathology, since functionally speaking it serves an important
cultural role. Whatever destructive consequences are derived from it seem
to get resolved within the cultural construct itself by idealisation.
70
R. Maduro
(2) Thus in addition to the child=penis equation, phantasies of a
child=penis=breast equation are in evidence. To eat prasad is to seek
nurturance from, and union with, the mother's full good breast, to return
to her body (JuNG 20). Interestingly, the most highly-valued and highly-
priced prasad at Nathdwara is sweet and made from milk. At some temple
festivals the idol is called 'milk-giving', and painters emphasise 'receiving
life and divine grace'. Moreover, painters paraphrase local Mewari folk-
tales when they say the curtain shielding Shri Nathji before it is pulled
open officially to begin a darshana symbolises the fold ofhis mother's sari
hiding her breast. As is the custom among discreet Hindu women, Yashoda' s
sari hides the child at her breast from public view (fear of envy?) until the
auspicious moment when the public is invited to partake vicariously of
her life-giving goodness. In associating many men confuse (equate) the
flat curtain with a breast image, and painters describe emotional experiences
of 'bliss, gratitude, satiation', and getting back to 'mother's milk' thought
to be 'absolutely necessary for life' during darshanas (also 'getting' or 'taking
in' external 'supplies of divine grace'). Isakower (18) and other (e.g.
ALMANSI 2, WILLIAMS 44) have discussed the flattened-breast image in
relation to infants falling asleep, attendant hypnagogic imagery, a mother's
face and eyes, and oral satiety. In this belief there is a symbolically over-
determined condensation of the penis=child and the essentially bisexual
penis= breast equations. To eat the body of Shri Nathji (child=penis) is at
the same time to incorporate orally the good breast of Yashoda which,
however, may turn suddenly bad and persecutory if a devotee becomes
greedy and eats too much prasad. In this case idealisation of the mother as
a part or whole object is not adaptive or functional. It does not work,
since ultimately it stimulates and intensifies destructive greed and fears of
retaliation (prasad which has become 'poisonous').
Whether we view the child symbol as essentially phallus=father or
breast=mother (the image, in painter phantasies, is both) darshana rituals
in all cases could reinforce archaic phantasies of omnipotence and fusion,
just as they might ego-defend devotees against persecutory and depressive
anxieties generated by their own destructive devouring impulses, or provide
reassurance that demands for continued nurturance will be met.
As a fetishistic object supposed to possess magical powers and to be of
special erotic interest, it can symbolise the female phallus, and its devotional
use represent part of a phantasy denying the danger of castration suggested
by the anatomical difference between the sexes. It is quite possible that the
self-effacing humility and meekness underlined in Pushtimarga Vaishnava
philosophy are unconsciously designed to conceal, for many, those
phantasies of omnipotence which are permitted to thrive for so long
without frustration in the socialisation experience.
Symbolic equations in creative process
71
CHILD=FAECES
Yet another association to Shri Nathji remains unmentioned: child=faeces.
While symbolic connections between faeces and child are at first less
evident than penis=child, painters provided a great variety of anal-erotic
material in amplifying associations to the child symbol. Anal preoccupa-
tions were pronounced among Group I creative men who quite explicitly
linked anal concerns to the creative process. One painter remembers: 'At
the exact moment of bowel movement, a new idea for a painting was
born.' Another referred often to getting intuitive flashes 'just as I hear the
faecal mass (tatti-watti) hit the ground'. Finally, an extremely creative
artist was virtually obsessed with bowel movements and well-known
throughout the painter community for his 'meditating while at latrine'.
After nearly 14 months of psychological investigation, he confessed
emotionally to a private ritual involving faeces and shoes:
For many years I have been playing a practical joke on people. I have for a long time been
secretly defecating in visitors' shoes.* My habit is to steal the shoes while people are inside
somewhere visiting and to fill them up with my own excrement. Well, I defecate in them!
Ha-ha! And afterwards I throw the shoes over an embankment or usually I bury them
in the ground. I have done this bit of mischief since my childhood-from time to time-
and nobody can guess who is the responsible one for these acts: 'Oh! Now where have
our shoes gone? Are they here or are they over there?' Ha-ha ! There were times when I
also placed a large cucumber or other vegetable in the shoes.
Creative men are characterised, in their own words, by impulses to
'give out'-'to produce'-'to give birth to something artistic as a work of
love'. In these self-descriptions, and in both destructive or reparative
phantasy productions, the child=faeces equation is striking indeed. Jones
(r9) refers to Jung and Freud as providing sound clinical examples of this
unconscious equation from data collected in the West; he writes a con-
vincing summary of genetic considerations:
The association between children and faeces comes about in the following way: In the
young child's spontaneous phantasy the abdomen is merely a bag of undifferentiated
contents into which food goes and out of which faeces come. The knowledge that the
foetus grows in the mother's abdomen-a fact easily observed by children without its
being realised by grown-ups, and later forgotten-leads to the natural inference that it
grows out of food, which is perfectly correct except for the initial pair of cells; and then,
since the child has no knowledge of the vagina, he can only conclude that the baby
leaves the body through the only opening through which he has ever known solid
material leave it-namely the anus. This 'cloacal' theory of birth again has its germ of
truth, for the vagina and the anus were originally one passage, in pre-mammalian animals.
The baby is thus something that in some special way has been created and formed out of
faeces; faeces and children are, after all, the only two things that the body can create and
produce, and the impulse to do so is remarkably similar in the two cases, especially to a
young child whose feelings about its excreta are not yet what ours are.
*In India one removes one's shoes (leather is defiling) before entering a home or temple and
places them off to one side of the entrance until the time of departure.
72
R. Madura
These symbolic equations mentioned by Jones have become so much
accepted in analytical circles today that they may hardly need to be
mentioned. For a much more sophisticated, up-to-date, and developed
conception of symbolic equations in the context of modern Jungian
psychology, Fordham's 'Symbolisation in infancy' chapter is especially
useful (FORDHAM 9).
In a cogent paper, Freud remarks: ' ... the conceptions faeces (money,
gift), child and penis are seldom distinguished and are easily interchange-
able' in the unconscious (FREUD I 1, p. r66). On the penis=faeces equation
he adds: 'The faecal mass, or as one patient called it, the faecal "stick",
represents as it were the first penis, and the stimulated mucous membrane
of the rectum represents that of the vagina . . . penis and vagina were
represented by the faecal stick and the rectum' (Ibid., p. 169) ' ... Faeces,
penis and child are all three solid bodies: they all three, by forcible entry
or expulsion, stimulate a membranous passage, i.e. the rectum and the
vagina' (Ibid., p. 171).
The principle involved here is that in the unconscious, and in early
infancy and childhood, similarities are emphasised and differences ignored.
In these relatively fluid early phases of development involving deinte-
grative activities, one part of the self can easily be equated with another
part; all symbolic equivalents (self-objects) are derived from the primary
self and therefore equal. Fordham discusses the characteristics that give
rise to symbolic equations when he writes:
It may be postulated that, as a result of archetypal activity combined with manageable
instinctual frustration, the first state of consciousness is dream-like, and in it emphasis is
laid on the grouping of experiences in terms of their sameness. The self-object tends to
select sameness so that apparently very different objects are treated as though they were
identical, a characteristic that persists (emphasis added) very clearly and will be illustrated
at length in the case of Alan (FoRDHAM 9, p. zo).
The symbolic equation (self-object) is an archetypal deintegrate in
search of an environmental fit and reflects a quality of the primary self-it
is related to the primary self although it may also be conceptualised as a
special aspect ofit. Perhaps an amoeba-like image (see Fig. r) will illustrate
what is meant when, as Jungians, we assume that symbolic equivalents
(self-objects) reflect the primary wholeness of all experience. It is assumed,
therefore, that to the infant self-objects are not experienced as separate yet,
but to adults are separated. Self-representation and symbol formation are
later developments.
It is not difficult, then, to understand why painters, especially more
creative ones, emphatically connect anal interests with artistic work and
creative production. While the child=faeces equation was expressed
frequently and easily, the penis=faeces equation alluded to by Freud seemed
much less accessible to painters. Only two men associated 'faeces' directly
with the black stone-like masses piled up around phallic-shaped Shri
Symbolic equations in creative process
73
Fig. r. Separate self-objects (archetypal deintegrates) with a common source (i.e. the primary
self) which symbolic equations reflect.
Nathji in portraits; others referred to 'the child surrounded by rocks ...
coming out of rocks ... appearing from the rocks ... the earth ... a cave
... a womb'.
Thus, the meaning of the child symbol is highly overdetermined.
Added to the primary importance of the phallus and breast are the archaic
and less accessible images of faeces.
That Pushtimarga, with its emphasis on the playful Divine Child,
should have inspired so many creative schools of Rajasthani miniature
painting is related to the force of the child symbol. Creative painters of
Group I were themselves much more playful and humorous than others,
and more than a few were particularly known for a good sense of humour,
comical quirks, and childish pranks. The equation in their lives of creative
work with play means that in a somewhat self-controlled and constructive
way they have the ability to be childlike-to regress to more primitive
levels of psychic functioning in order to experience what the average and
non-creative painters ordinarily deny themselves access to. Thus, from a
Jungian point of view, a creative instinct is filtered through the archetypal
symbolism of the divine child, a process facilitated by the creative intro-
version of libido in the service of the ego as well as of the self (wholeness).
Jungian theory points to the same central theme in the inner life of the
creative person: the playfulness of the child, and the artist's ability to
identify with this image and experience the associated affect. These men
arc less defensive and more open to following their curiosity and playing
around with seemingly incongruent elements. They are open to the free
child in themselves, open to new awakenings, new symbolic identities, and
the growth potential indicated by the appearance of the child in phantasy
life.
Jungian theory widens and deepens our analysis; it has developed the
idea of the child to a great extent (Cf. JuNG & KERENYI 25). Jung draws
attention to what creative Nathdwara painters reveal in artistic projections,
life histories, and psychological test results: that the child image may also
stand for the archetype of the self, the process of individuation or self-
actualisation, and symbolic rebirth by a creative regression to (symbolic
74
R. Maduro
incest with) the mother imago (JuNG 23). In other words, merging with
the unconscious may be a creative experience of symbolic death and
rebirth (Cf. GoRDON 14).
ARCHETYPAL CHILD=POTENTIALITY FOR GROWTH AND SYMBOLIC REBIRTH
Children in phantasy life may stand for potentiality because they are on
their way to developing into something else. Babies may stand for wholly
new ideas that are born out of the unconscious and therefore are not yet
known, as against the mere juggling of old ideas into forming what
appears to be new ones. But original ideas are growths, not constructions.
They gestate and when ready are born. And this is the difference between
creativity and imitation. It seemed quite natural to creative informants
that artistic creativity should have developed with such vitality at Nath-
dwara where the supreme symbol of creativity is worshipped: Shri Nathji,
the Divine Child.
From a dynamic viewpoint, the commonly expressed desire to become
a child again may mean that creative painters more in touch with the child
in themselves seek a return to the security of early mothering, not to over-
come reality and concretely, incestuously, cohabit with the forbidden
mother, but as Jung has rightly pointed out, for symbolic rebirth (luNG 20).
One must symbolically (not literally) enter into the mother in order to be
reborn through her-through contact with the mother, or the feminine
unconscious matrix of ego consciousness. With good reason, the inner
sanctum in which public viewings of the child god takes place is called 'the
womb chamber' (garbha-griha). Jung develops his point:
The symbol creating process substitutes for the mother, the city, the well, the cave, the
Church, etc. This substitution is due to the fact that the regression oflibido reactivates the
ways and habits of childhood, and above all the relation to the mother; but what was
natural and useful to the child is a psychic danger for the adult, and this is expressed by
the symbol of incest .... The effect of the incest-taboo and of the attempts at canalisation
is to stimulate the creative imagination, which gradually opens up possible avenues for the
self-realisation of libido (JuNG 20).
Among the many symbols Jung cites as referring to libido unconsciously
attached to the mother-imago, the motif of entwining is stressed: 'The
entwining trees are at the same time birth-giving mothers' (Ibid., pp. 242-
245). It is also possible to say that the coniunctio or entwined (creatively
coupled) parental opposites are symbolised by this 'birth-giving' motif,
since a creative mental or physical act is implied. Significantly, the Shri
Nathji child=penis=breast form is nearly always painted as if he were
entangled; a snake winds its way around his portraits, or he holds a kind of
vegetative stalk which entwines him. Moreover, the most popular form
of Shri Nathji done for pilgrims shows the god standing in a cave (a
mother symbol) with rocks piled protectively on all sides; this recalls the
Symbolic equations in creative process
75
myth of the miraculous rock-cave birth of the hero-child at Mathura when
Pushtimarga was founded. Thus the creative Nathdwara painter may
identify with Shri Nathji to become a child again, not to recapture
narcissistic-exhibitionistic infantile power, but to experience rebirth, new
psychological direction, growth. Jung has shown us that it is more a
question of symbolic transformation requiring teleological explanation
than of simple causalities, at least where positive transformation is at work.
In other words, symbols may not be reduced only to concrete body parts
and physical experiences. An archetypal analysis would require a point of
view which is perhaps one of Jung's greatest contributions to psycho-
analysis as a whole: that symbols not only look backward in time, but also
forward.
Crucial to our comparison of highly creative and less creative folk
painters here is the distinction Jung makes between two kinds of 'child-
likeness': one which is neurotic (negatively regressive), and one which is in
touch with the transforming archetypal power of a 'living' child symbol
(progressive). I will return to touch on this point later.
Lacking the transpersonal archetypal quality, the religious experience at
darshanas becomes bondage to the mother-womb, to the regressive pull of
the unconscious, or inJung's words, merely 'habitual, infantile dependence,
which takes the place of, and actually prevents, the struggle for deeper
understanding' (JuNG 20, p. 232). Painters distinguished from the others
because of their lack of creativity report such bondage as, 'I feel as if I
must go to the temple. I should, so I do, otherwise my in-laws will get
angry and look down on me. I go through all the tantra-vantra rituals, but
often my mind is elsewhere.' Or as another 'hack artist' known for his
mediocrity put it: 'I go to the temple because it is habit, and I do believe
with strong conviction that ifi don't go my luck in life will run out. It is
my fate as a Brahmin to have to go, but today I take no pleasure from it.'
For creative individuals, the child in his phallic form may represent 'the
creative power which "draws" things out of the unconscious', and the
child containment in a cave may, from a teleological stance, signify 'the
latent state that precedes regeneration'. Jung continues:
So long as the child is in that state of unconscious identity with the mother, he is still one
with the animal psyche and is just as unconscious as it. The development of consciousness
inevitably leads not only to separation from the mother, but to separation from the parents
and the whole family circle and thus to a relative degree of detachment from the un-
conscious and the world of instinct. Yet the longing for this lost world continues, and,
when difficult adaptations are demanded, is forever tempting one to make evasions and
retreats, to regress to the infantile past, which then starts throwing up the incestuous
symbolism (Ibid., pp. 235-236).
In general, whoever breaks and separates psychically from the mother
always longs to get back to her under stress. The difference between
creative and less creative painters is one of direction or aim that libido
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takes: in the case of the former, it is growth-oriented and involves the
transformation of libido through return to the motherly source-ground of
all unconscious inspiration, intuition, creative insight and synthesis, while
for the latter it is more often anxiously defensive, regressive, and dammed
up in a non-growth fostering way. The seemingly strange longing to
remain a child, then, takes on this added transpersonal future-oriented
dimension in the case of Group I painters.
Thus the child, according to Jung, is a symbol of futurity, or the future
hope of psychic differentiation, integration and potential growth through
symbolic death and rebirth. In light of what has been said, the image of the
'seed' presented earlier seems like a most fitting counterpart. Since the
child is a symbol for futurity, the town's name, Nathdwara, may also be
considered in the light of initiation symbolism: 'Gateway/portals to the
Lord/child' (HENDERSON 16).
II
DISCUSSION
According to Hindu folk psychology, he who possesses the creative faculty
in all its fullness is in touch with the realm of 'divine forms' and 'affect
images' (bhavana, rupa) of the unconscious or unmanifest mind. He is also
said to be of practised vocational excellence. Moreover, this special kind of
artist-the creative artist-is often believed to be under the influence of the
mother goddess, Saraswati.
Artistic tradition teaches that it is only through his self-discipline and
contemplative searchings that the Hindu painter can at last reach a stage
where, as subject, he merges with an inner object or emotional state he
would like to render into concrete form. He may then experience what is
considered psychic wholeness, the transcendence of all opposites and life
contradictions, 'balance'. The artist is believed to experience the penetra-
tion of psychic reality that exists independent of his personal existence
alone.
Thus for the artist beauty can exist in the abstract and in ideal form.
Painters often say with a sense of urgency that it is the 'duty' of a truly
creative artist to contact this level of reality within the depths of himself,
to strive to make it manifest, and indeed to become one with it, integrate
it through meditation and self-actualisation. The artist is enjoined to
recreate or reactivate what is already latent in his unconscious mind
(adrashta, the samskaras). This is recognised as a task for middle and later
life (MADURO 32).
It is not surprising to learn that Nathdwara painters recognise a special
Symbolic equations in creative process
77
group of creative men who, in one artist's words, 'are innately endowed
with the quality of Saraswati', when we remember that the daughter and
female consort of Lord Vishvakarma, god of creativity, is the popular
mother goddess Saraswati hersel For while Vishvakarma is the Seer, an
Eternal Awareness and Male Witness (Maha Purusha), Hinduism argues
that it is always the divine mother-a female component of the personality
-whose natural energy (prakriti) actively creates. It is the female energy or
cosmic principle which does the work-creating blindly in the sense of
mother nature, receiving, incubating and giving birth to new life and
originality.
While stressing identification with the father figure, Lord Vishvakarma,
Nathdwara painters seldom fail to mention the significance of mataji or
devi (the mother goddess) and her creative energy and influence too. Al-
though the death-dealing attributes of the mother goddess are recognised,
matriarchal consciousness (NEUMANN 40) is cited as an important source of
inspiration, and as creative energy available from a creative unconscious.
Male artists say that creative potential is actualised or activated when
this female power or energy (shakti) can be integrated symbolically with the
male principle. Therefore the concept ofVishvakarma-Saraswati, expressed
so often by Nathdwara painters, contains one of the most important
psychological principles related to artistic creativity and its popular con-
ceptualisation in India: that energy made available to the human psyche
for creative expressive symbolic behaviour comes through the union of
opposites, or more precisely, from the tension caused by the polarisation
of psychic opposites contained simultaneously in the mind. Symbols of
polarity are well-known in every art form the world over: male-female,
light-dark, good-bad, right-left, heaven-earth, father-mother, sun-moon,
thinking-feeling, and so on. In Hindu psychological theory there is a
concern with the idea of the duality of one, with psychological opposites,
and for this reason the female element is never left out or discarded inten-
tionally for a strictly patriarchal model of human consciousness and
personality dynamics. Nor is the satanic dismissed in religious art, as though
it could be banished.
The role the female element plays in art and during the creative process
is clearly and positively stressed in this folk model of creativity based on
uniting the opposites in onesel As in life, so also in art: the goal is to
achieve a balance and harmony (sattva) between two inherent tendencies of
the mind, the inert (tamas) and the active (rajas).
According to this model of creativity, any mental life producing energy
for art must involve psychological growth and transformation through the
confrontation of differences, the opposites. The cultivation of an artistically
creative personality implies no less than this. Informants very often summed
up the whole concept with a shrug: 'Pleasure and pain (sukh-dukh) will
always, naturally, accompany each other!' From the moment a sperm
R. Madura
fertilises an ovum, something new-a third original something-has
emerged. It is believed to be the same with artistic creativity: the con-
frontation of differences and polarities gives rise to a previously hidden
symbolic third factor, something which is of greater importance than the
two opposites from which it sprang. Nathdwara painters call this dhvani
and dhvanit. The child symbol, a union of opposites, assumes great im-
portance here. It performs whatJung (2r) has referred to as 'the transcendent
function' in symbolic process (GoRDON 13).
In order to sustain this process as a lifelong experiment in psychological
growth and integration, the artist must undergo a long and arduous period
of training which can involve no small amount of personal suffering. As
one of the most perceptive and creative painters put it: 'In order to have
success, the creative artist must confront and unite the psychological
opposites in himself, no matter how antagonistic to each other they are.'
And he adds: 'How can this be possible except in later years-after a painter
has become somewhat wise.' Therefore, the creative artist may not regress
in a negative way, but because of his training and discipline find ways of
integrating infancy and childhood experiences into his adult self-experience.
Hindu psychology has for centuries given philosophical shape to this
idea in its detailed elaboration of the Tantric Shiva-Shakti cults where
male-female energies unite in cosmogonic procreation (ardhanarishvara).
That creative artistic energies originate from the tension generated by the
polarisation of psychic opposites is a widely accepted notion among
Nathdwara painters, many of whom claim to have experienced just that
in their lifetimes. To be descended from God, 'the Heavenly Father and
Architect of the Whole Universe', Vishvakarma, is to be infused at the
same time with inspiration from the creative unconscious comprised
essentially of power from the Divine Earthly Mother, Maha Devi, or
Maha Maya.
The notion that psychological conflict between opposites results in
natural growth and healthy balance, a process oflifelong individuation, is a
common folk theory of the psycho-genesis of creative energy. In con-
nection with this it should be noted that Group I painters, with few
exceptions, are marked by an intense concern of psycho-philosophical
issues; they verbalise and place much greater value on intra-psychic
experiences and rapport with subjective feelings states. The life and thought
of creative painters suggest that creative expression goes hand in hand with
the process of individuation and self-development, especially in later life.
Art in its deepest sense, as creativity, is a process involving personal growth.
Related to the complexity and intensity with which creative painters
experience mythological symbolic identifications as psychic models for
creative behaviour and thought, is their tendency to richness of inner
phantasy life. They are generally in touch with their unconscious processes
-with primary process, or what Jung called 'undirected' thinking.
Symbolic equations in creative process
79
Creative painters place a positive value on working with phantasy
materials-with original stimuli as opposed to cultural stereotypes-and
are less crippled by emotional preoccupations. The creative artist is
distinguished by a far greater differentiation of his internal world than
others (C MADURO 34).
Creative painters report a fascination with dreams, phantasies, and
visions. They are men who respect the irrational promptings of the psyche.
They are captivated in imagination by the symbolism of the Divine Child.
THE COMBINED PARENTS: THE ARCHETYPAL CONIUNCTIO
The systematic collection of psychoanalytic data in anthropological field
research suggest that the importance of the uniting child symbolism is
based on unconscious phantasies of the combined parents in the act of
coition: the archetypal image of the creative conjunction, the union of
male and female opposites giving rise to the child. I will now hope to show
that what starts first in early infancy as a pre-symbolic bisexual breast=
penis equation, later becomes represented and symbolised in the transitional
object and all healthy transitional phenomena, and in adult sexual inter-
course where symbolic equations persist. It is a return not only to the
mother imago, therefore, but to the coniunctio representing the synthetic
activity of the archetypal self as precursor to ego integration that makes all
the difference in creative process. Even at the most rudimentary stage of
ego development the mandalic archetypal image of the breast, as breast
plus nipple, can represent the self as union of male and female opposites.
The creative act rests, ultimately, upon a rich phantasy life experienced in
infancy and childhood, where it is associated with a bisexual breast=penis
image of the mother (who in other terminology, is part-object), and with
the primal scene, Jung's syzygy; out of that richness grow later whole-
object relations with the archetypal image of the mother. It is to these un-
conscious phantasies and illusions that creative Group I male painters return
in order to reexperience and to play with, and out of which they eventually
regain or create, something truly new and symbolic.
Imaginative painters internalise the creative functions, the high sacer-
dotal status, and the personality attributes of their divine ancestor figures,
Lord Vishvakarma and the goddess Saraswati. For them the Vishvakarma-
Saraswati myth is a psychic model-a culturally provided symbolic motif
with deep roots in the collective unconscious mind-through which these
painters are expected to channel and structure their innately acquired
creative drive during artistic self-expression. The union of male and female
energies in the mind of the artist (compare the entwining and coniunctio
motifs discussed earlier) forms a bisexual model for creative expression and
symbolic transformation; in addition to Vishvakarma-Saraswati, it is
emphasised daily by Pushtimarga sub-culture with the veneration of
So R. Maduro
Krishna in union with his female consort, Radha. The archetype of the
creative of male-female opposites has been extensively studied
by Jungians as a self-representation (Cf. ADLER I, JuNG 24) and by others
(e.g. MoNEY-KYRLE 38). Creative painters, therefore, form a strong
identification with the central self archetype of individuation when they
'serve' the Divine Child, the product of this union of two psychic opposites.
At the deepest level it is my contention that creative men are in touch with
energy from an activated archetypal self image of the good breast. Behind
this mandalic self image is a powerful drive toward growth and individua-
tion. Energy for creative expression derives, then, from the self, not the ego
(Cf. MADURO & WHEELWRIGHT 35). Jung gives special emphasis to the
somatic pole of the archetypal self and developmentally early experiences
of the body ego when he writes: 'The symbols of the self arise in the
depths of the body and they express its materiality every bit as much as the
structure of the perceiving consciousness' (JuNG 22).
As a poignant symbol of creativity, the Divine Child is a truly numinous
'living' force in the lives of painters. The identification with, and the
internalisation of, Lord Shri Nathji and what this child god stands for
psychically is facilitated by Pushtimarga culture which fixes almost
exclusively on the earliest playful years of Krishna's life. Sacred temple
rituals highlight the Divine Child motif and the infant's cultural experience
at the breast. Pushtimarga subculture provides symbols, mythical models
for creativity, and patterns of child rearing practices and infant care that
constitute the building blocks (ego ideals) of personal identity.
THE TRANSITIONAL OBJECT AND TRANSITIONAL PHENOMENA
With the male-female coniunctio in mind (i.e. breast=penis; or mother-
father), an important developmental question arises in relation to the
positive function of illusion in symbol formation: could the transitional
object be all the self-objects discussed above (i.e. breast=penis=child=
faeces) and lead on into culture?
This question assumes great importance, as it is generally accepted,
following Winnicott's (45) well-known contribution, and those of others
(Cf. FORDHAM 8, 9, HENDERSON 17), that the transitional object may be the
first true 'living symbol' and self-representation in the Jungian sense. For
example, Ford ham writes:
The transitional object appears at any time between the ages of four months and one year;
it lasts a variable time and is relegated 'to limbo' as its contents and meanings become
exhausted and assimilated into the area of mental functioning delineated by it; dreaming,
play, fantasy, thought and the creative activities characteristic of any particular child.
Thus it is like a symbol in having a life of its own, and it can die; it is also truly symbolic
in containing opposites (FORDHAM, p. 22).
Fordham would maintain, following ideas developed by Jung and
Symbolic equations in creative process 81
Winnicott, that symbolic play and active imagination both stem from the
same source: from the primary self's deintegrative activities. Indeed when
Winnicott (45) speaks of 'primary creativity' I believe he is referring
directly to the archetypal inner world, an area of potential creation in the
mind; in this area of the mind personal experiences are necessary but not
sufficient from a Jungian point of view. Fordham explicitly links these ideas
to the transitional object: 'Symbolic play may be thought of as stemming
from the transitional object. It is creative and is the place where progressive
individuation and self-discovery are furthered. It contributes to the child's
making a living relation with others and expresses the source from which
artistic, religious, philosophic and other creative forms of self-expression
begin' (FORDHAM 9, p. 24).
It is my purpose here to suggest areas for future cross-cultural investiga-
tion relating the role of transitional objects and transitional phenomena to a
general developmental theory of the role of illusion-disillusionment
(MILNER 37). I would prefer to narrow the scope of my discussion to stating
simply that I believe the divine child symbol (Shri Nathji) does bring
together all the symbolic equations (self-objects) already mentioned. It
stands for the breast, penis, and faeces and is also related to that inter-
mediate transitional zone of experience in development which, strictly
speaking, precedes the first real object relation to the breast. For example,
the baby-child Krishna can be a soft or hard doll (toy) which is fingered
and sucked and played with auto-erotically; it is also allowed to become
dirty and smelly, when as prasad it may be covered with flies, rot, etc. As
prasad, the child god is also sucked, drunk, eaten, digested, and evacuated
as faeces. It is also extremely valuable.
For less creative painters and individuals suffering from various degrees
of psychopathology, it may more or less function always as a cultural cliche
or fetichistic object-as a universal infantile delusion about the existence of
the maternal phallus. This delusion can persist as a key characteristic of
adult sexuality. In contrast to this malignant form of relationship to the
child god, more integrated individuals, and especially highly creative
Group I painters, relate to the child idol and the total symbolic environ-
ment surrounding it, as an intermediate (transitional) area of valuable
shared illusory experiences which may ultimately lead out (forward) into
artistic creativity, profound religious and philosophical feelings, and the
integration of powerful archetypal activity spontaneously released during
unstable periods of deintegration. For creative painters the transitional
object is represented by the divine child and his culturally provided sacred
space where the capacity to suspend disbelief (as when one goes to the
theatre) is socially acceptable and even encouraged through devotional
acts. Creative painters with the capacity to recontact the area of creation
between inner and outer realities can experience a widening out into
'feeling lost in play' (might one say, 'relegated to limbo'?), and the creation
82 R. Madura
of higher cultural achievements (Cf. WINNICOTT 45). Here the creative
experience of the divine child symbol depends on a healthy universal
experience of the illusion of a potential maternal phallus, which is another
way of saying it may accompany the activation or release of new arche-
typal potentiality gestating within the psyche.
For the least creative painters, the experience with transitional
phenomena does not widen out and develop into an intermediate zone
honouring the positive value of illusion-the intermediate area between
subjective psychic reality and external objective reality. Perceptions and
experiences (conscious and unconscious) are continuously challenged or
reality tested. Less creative men remain more tied to the concrete symbolic
equations. It would be more accurate to say that the transitional object
for them is more related to the fetichistic delusion of the maternal phallus,
to addiction, lying and stealing, and to obsessional rituals that lack the
unifying attributes of the living symbol and the symbolic 'as if' attitude
which is a later developmental achievement. For less creative painters the
child symbol remains simply a cultural given; for creatives it is a given
(provided by external reality, Hindu culture), but it is also felt to be created
via illusions (projections, phantasies) which eventually enrich the religious
and artistic life of the individual and the community.
PHALLIC-GENITAL STAGE ORGANISATION
Following Winnicott, Fordham, and many others, it is generally accepted
that the patterns of transitional phenomena set in infancy may persist into
childhood and adulthood. We may say with regard to symbolic equations
which are central to experiences of the self in early infancy, for example,
that they persist beyond infancy in at least the following three ways in
Nathdwara:
1. Actual physical objects go into actual physical acts
This may involve some degree of regression, but not necessarily in any
pathological sense, when the symbolic equations become organised around
the phallic-genital stage of psychosexual development-when they become
related to sexual intercourse.
Thus all the symbolic elements of infancy get organised into the sexual
intercourse of adults later in development. It would take us too far afield
here to attempt any review of the literature in order to document the many
complex issues related to this assumption. Therefore it must be taken for
granted that readers are somewhat familiar with the clinical evidence in the
West to support the following unconscious associations to sexual inter-
course collected in Hindu India:
A. Feeding breast=penis
Feeding aspects of sexual intercourse include universal phantasies of
Symbolic equations in creative process
a life-giving penis= breast which feeds and protects the woman and
her hungry internal babies/children with semen/sperm (milk);
moreover, the breast=penis which feeds the man who may suck,
bite or chew on the woman's breast during foreplay and actual
intercourse.
B. Faeces
Faeces are associated with the baby=penis phantasies already
discussed above. They can be more cogently related to phantasies
of a good creative, or a bad degrading, experience during sexual
intercourse between two adults.
One phantasy, observed clinically in working analytically with
men, involves the idea of'cleaning out a woman'. Although it may
feel very different from a woman's point of view, there is sufficient
evidence to suggest that this common (universal?) phantasy among
men emphasises intercourse as a degrading, ugly experience, or as a
joyful, reparative, awesome experience: the male wishes to 'clear
out all the shit inside a woman', or 'to make her clean of all the
shit=penises' felt to exist in her insides. I encountered this ugly
phantasy most often in Hindu or Western men who talk about
'fucking the shit out of a prostitute'. With regard to this primal
phantasy involving the beautiful or purifying act of coition between
archetypal earth-mother and the sun-god-father, Meltzer writes:
In its deepest, most basic, primal meaning the woman is in distress and in need and
in danger; the man is her servant, her benefactor, her rescuer. She is in distress at the
plight of her internal babies, in need of supplies to make the milk for her external
babies and in danger from the persecutors her children have projected into her. She
needs good penises, and good semen, and must be removed of all the bad excreta.
She will be content, satisfted, safe while he will be admired, exhausted, exhilarated-
triumphant (MELTZER 36, p. 84).
C. Baby
Adult sexual states of mind include the phantasy of making or
finding a baby during a good intercourse. The sexual act is a
qualitatively different experience when making a baby is a real
possibility, as without contraception, or when partners consciously
wish to initiate a pregnancy and childbirth.
I have only touched upon some of the most common phantasies en-
countered during a deep analysis, and on men more than on women. Data
collected in Nathdwara support all of the above phantasies. Among the
Hindu painters studied, kissing was rarely reported and was spoken of
anxiously as 'contaminating ... disgusting ... You Westerners do that
more ... It's in your films, never in ours ... Kissing is not for us much'.
Men were almost unanimous in preferences for breast-sucking and fondling
during foreplay and intercourse; there are many culturally patterned
R. Madura
phantasies about men needing 'to feed' women who are said to be 'hungry
for sex all the time', and 'who can dangerously drain away too much life-
giving semen and make men sick and lacking in creativity'.
In connection with semen=milk phantasies, I would like to add a brief
note on male preoccupations with the potential loss of semen. In another
place I wrote:
With regard to sexual experience in general, Hindu painters maintain that the physical
act in the here and now, with its recognised creative end, is exactly analogous to the
psychological and spiritual creative process in which the artist is seen to engage. All four
stages of creative activity described in Patanjali's Yoga Sutra are found in the sexual
analogy: a selecting or fixing on the object, the effort to achieve union, the interval of
suspense, and the creative climax. Creative process will be examined in the following pages;
here I wish to point out only the popular folk concept that creative activity of any kind is
directly analogous to the sexual act itself. The sexual climax on earth, a union of opposites,
is believed to be only a reflection of some greater cosmic or archetypal process outside the
field of personal experience.
The painters' attitudes toward semen were often linked to themes of psychic function-
ing in general, and to artistic creativity and prana life force in particular. Many of the
informants associated loss of semen with a lack of creative energy, or prana, and with an
overall physical and mental weakness. The fear of losing one's semen was strikingly
widespread and, so far as I could tell, no less pronounced among the more creative painters.
Hindu folk beliefs and world view support this fear by explaining that it takes 40 or
So days of'balanced food' (niyam se) and 40 drops of'good strong blood' to build up only
one drop of semen. Moreover, the painters believe that semen is stored in the head and
utilised efficiently from there to maintain mental processes of all kinds. They point to a
direct relationship between containing their semen and producing creative painting. All
agreed that a man cannot have sexual relations which involve seminal discharge more
than about two or four times a month if he hopes to be at all creative and 'to have a quick
and strong mind'. Strong willpower, harmonious psychological balance, longevity, and
'the absence of fearful nightmares' (bhayanak sapne) were also associated with the idea of
saving semen. During a life-history interview, a 36-year-old painter (SL) shared the
following flashback to his worrisome adolescence:
RM: Why did you say that you worried a lot during your adolescence (yuvawasta)?
SL: I used to worship Hanumanji (the monkey god) a lot in those days and go to the
gymnasium for physical exercises to keep my mind off hand practices (master-
bation). I knew I could never paint very well or learn to write well if I didn't
take care of my body, and especially the semen which could give me mental
power (dimag shakti). I was very worried all the time lest I lose my semen or
destroy it in some foolish way, etc. I was having so much stress and anguish in
those days because I feared my father's anger if I didn't perform my painting
duties well.
RM: So what happened in the end? Did you masturbate or not?
SL: No! I mean-yes-you see, I mean I had lots and lots of wet dreams (swapna dos),
and they used to panic me. Also, after bending down along the side of a roadway,
sometimes I would lose semen after I finished urinating.
RM: Do you think the wet dreams had any effect on your creativity and artistic per-
formance while you were still painting at home along with your father?
SL: Yes, friend-there were many days when I felt very weak mentally-and very
worried, sick all over the body-when I would go to beg Hanumanji and Shri
Natji for help in my troubles. And in those days I tried to drink lots and lots
of milk, and I ate well too. But still, you know, sometimes these wet dreams come
Symbolic equations in creative process
all of a sudden. We have no control over them, and they harm us. But a man
cannot be quick in mind, have a good memory, or be original in his ideas or
imaginative (kalpnashil) it he doesn't watch out for saving his semen. Just take a
look at all those holy men, the ascetics who live all alone in the forests and jungles
doing penance (tapasya). They know all about this thing, and therefore they live
for such a long-such a very long time! And they are able to perform all these
mental exercises and difficult magic (jadu) because of their continence.
The conservation of semen is a major everyday concern which occupies much conscious
attention, especially for students and adolescents. To be creative artistically, or to do well
mentally at any challenging task, means to maintain a certain amount of 'thick, white,
high-quality semen'. Milk, curds, sugar, and salt are said to help replenish one's supply
of semen.
Our informant mentions Hanumanji, the fabled monkey god, who in the service of
Rama wins back Sita from the demons of Ravana in Lanka. The kama notion of artistic
creativity can involve Hanumanji, another culturally provided positive ego-ideal, who is
worshipped in times of any mental stress. With regard to art, the myth of Hanumanji is a
folk model for the sublimation of animal instincts, for as a mythological figure of great
importance, the monkey god is a symbol of strong character and will-power. As a hero
in the Ramayana epic, he stands for the integration and control of instinctual drives, on the
one hand, and for spirituality and expanding ego-consciousness, on the other. He is a
symbol of the will to power and egotism (the narcissistic self driven to its ambitions)
because, like Icarus, he often tried to fly too high. Over and over again, the monkey god
was given power by the gods but misused it for personal ends, and each time the gods made
him suffer a humiliating fall. Finally, he attached himself to the service of the god Rama,
and once his power was channelled in this way, he lived a full and useful life. The moral
of the Hanuman myth is that personal power is no good unless wielded in the service of
God and others: the punishment for overweaning pride, hubris, is always nemesis.
The monkey god is a symbol of perfect sexual control, chastity, and willpower. He is
famous for his physical strength and mental acumen, having avoided the loss of semen by
abstaining from sexual intercourse. In the mythical paradigm, there is a folk model for
psychological transformation, the conversion of sexual drive into creative process-akin
to what we call 'sublimation' in the West, and a unifying symbol transcending the spirit-
matter opposites (MADURO 34).
I have tried to outline how the symbolic equations of infancy discussed
earlier in this paper in relation to male Hindu painter phantasies may, from
a developmental perspective, persist into the transitional area of experience
characterised by the transitional object and phenomena stemming from it,
as well as into later oedipal dynamics. With the passing of the Oedipus
complex, the symbolic equations become related to adult sexual intercourse
and adult sexual activities of all kinds. Only a few aspects of adult sexuality
in Hindu India have been selected for mention here.
2. Symbolic equations may also persist in a second way: they may be symbolised
(not remain equations) and as representations e11ter Hindu culture patterns
They then may produce phantasies and acts that generate art. Creative
artists are able to use what has become symbolised and represented in the
culture and not regress like less creative painters do. The disciplined creative
act, like the sexual act, goes into the work of art (regression in the service
of the ego and of the wider self).
86 R. Maduro
3. A third way in which symbolic equations of infancy may persist into adult life
is essentially neurotic and negatively regressive
This may occur as a retreat to earlier phases of instinctual organisation, or as
ego regresswn.
Less creative or non-creative painters are not able to experience creating
or recreating symbols found in Hindu Pushtimarga culture. Here it is
important to return to Jung's distinction between two ways of being
'childlike', and to the complicated concept of regression.
There is an important difference between feeling 'childlike' and being
infantile, and this distinction is useful in comparing groups of painters.
More integrated painters with a capacity for deintegration are not infantile,
but they may be extremely playful and childlike. To be childlike as an
adult implies a relationship to the child archetype, rather than an identifica-
tion with it. The quality of relationship is only possible for an adult who is
no longer a child in ways that reflect infantile fixations oflibido, and so the
difference relates cogently to our theme. Only among grown-up people is
it possible to speak of being childlike and of a child archetype. Creative
childlike painters can use what is symbolically represented in the culture
and not regress. The capacity to be childlike, in the positive sense that
Jung speaks of it as a process of growth and discovery, is different from
regressing to the infantile in psychotherapy or analysis where the unfolding
of a transference neurosis is facilitated with the adaptive significance of
regression and therapeutic goals in mind (FoRDHAM, F. 6).
Less creative painters are more likely to express pathological mani-
festations of regressions, by defensively returning to earlier forms of mental
organisation to ward of anxiety and guilt.
CULTURE AND ARCHETYPES
The Divine Child is a symbol of new life and direction. It is an archetypal
form (i.e. typical or nearly universal) of great importance, as the history of
world religions and comparative mythologies can teach us. We may note
the significance, for example, of the timely appearance of the Christ child,
the baby Buddha, Moses in the bulrushes, or Krishna, to name only a
few well-known myths. These hero-child images assumed widespread
symbolic importance at times in history when societies were revitalised
through contact with alien peoples, or when intrasocietal strife and decay
appeared to threaten group existence (e.g. the current popularity of the
child god from India touring the West, Guru Maharajaji; or the miraculous
appearance of the child Krishna at a time in Indian history when arid Hindu
culture was clashing violently with invading Islam). Thus 'the birth of the
child' symbol is both the harbinger and fruit of change and innovation.
It may be a part of socio-cultural process involving acute acculturative
stress and revitalisation movements, or appear intrapsychically as part of
Symbolic equations in creative process
creative process, dreams, and visions. While there are no specific contents
common to the child motif in all cultures, the mythological form may be
seen as an important archetypal given. This would be in complete agree-
ment with Jung' s position on the archetypes and a collective unconscious,
or what he later came to call 'the objective psyche'.
Archetypal analyses do not preclude the concept of culture. Archetypes
are not inherited ideas, but are predispositions to apperceive core human
emotional situations and figures. They exist unconsciously outside the
comprehension of the ego as positive or negative potentialities which may
or may not be activated and become part of the symbol formation,
depending on culture patterns and personal life experiences. Personal
experiences evoke in life the transpersonal (Cf. MADURO & WHEELWRIGHT
35)
The phenomenology of the birth, infancy, and playfulness of the divine
child may be seen to reflect the complementary articulation between
culture and personality in artistic symbolic expression. The many meanings
of the child symbol may represent the hidden feeling life of both social
and psychological processes.
SUMMARY
Highly creative Hindu painters were shown to work with central cultural
symbols in unique and personal ways. Although the baby-child form of
Lord Shri Nathji is found by all painters in everyday life-as a cultural
given-creative men imbue it, 'reinvigorate' it, and create it again and again
by their great capacity to be childlike and engage in symbolic play and
active imagination. Strong ego identifications with images of Lord
Vishvakarma, the Divine Mother, and the Divine Child were observed.
The author interprets them as related to archetypal activity and shows how
creative regression takes place to symbolic equations, to archaic object
relations and to transitional phenomena associated with the positive value
of illusion in symbol formation. 'Living' myths and symbols were said to
be activated and to emerge dynamically from unconscious portions of the
mind, and to be underlined and patterned by Hindu Pushtimarga culture
in Nathdwara. It was further suggested that they serve as psychic models,
or culturally patterned ego ideals, for symbolic growth, for psychological
differentiation, and for creative transformation.
Creative Nathdwara artists were distinguished from others by their
greater capacity to maintain rapport with unconscious mental processes;
the concept of deintegration was used to understand that material. Three
ways in which experiences rooted in infancy (at the level of symbolic
equations) find expression in Hindu culture patterns of adult life, including
sexuality, have been mentioned. The possibilities for working holistically
with psychoanalytic data such as free associations, dreams, phantasies and
88 R. Madura
life i ~ t o r y materials were suggested. It was demonstrated that the study
of symbolic process must take seriously into account the cultural, the
personal, and the unconscious transpersonal, dimensions of psychic reality.
The birth and life of the playful divine child motif was stressed as an
important source of symbolic power when creativity is at work; it was
shown as due to the deintegration of the primary sel The historical
appearance of this affect-image in times of social stress was also mentioned
as being a symbol of futurity, potentiality, and the creation of new social
forms.
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