Jackson Pollock

by Steven Naifeh

  Cary Baynes: Wysuph, “Behind the Veil,” p. 52; C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, pp. 14–19. Although Marot’s friend Baynes was a Jungian, and therefore would naturally have attempted to locate a Jungian analyst for Jackson, there is no evidence that Marot specified a Jungian analyst; see “How a Disturbed Genius Talked to His Analyst with Art,” p. 25. Baynes recommending Henderson: Henderson to B. H. Friedman, Jan. 1, 1970, in Friedman files. Henderson’s address: East Seventy-third Street between Park and Lexington; Henderson.

  22. ARCHETYPES AND ALCHEMY

  SOURCES

  Books, articles, manuscripts, and transcript

  Ashton, The New York School; Coe, Sacred Circles; Fermé, Illustrious Immigrants; Friedman, JP; Green, John Graham; Henderson, Thresholds of Initiation; Jung, Contributions to Analytical Psychology; Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections; Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul; Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology; C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, The Shaman from Elko; Philipson, Outline of a Jungian Aesthetics; Potter, To a Violent Grave; Trilling, The Liberal Imagination; Wysuph, JP.

  David Freke, “JP: A Symbolic Self-Portrait,” Studio International, Dec. 1973; Donald E. Gordon, “Department of Jungian Amplification, Part I: Pollock’s ‘Bird,’ or How Jung Did Not Offer Much Help in Myth-Making,” Art in America, Oct. 1980; Gareth S. Hill, “J. L. H.: His Life and His Work,” in C. G. Jung Institute of San Francisco, The Shaman from Elko; (“J. L. H.”), “How a Disturbed Genius Talked to His Analyst with Art,” Medical World News, Feb. 5, 1971; Rosalind Krauss, “JP’s Drawings,” Artforum, Jan. 1971; Elizabeth Langhorne, “JP’s ‘The Moon Woman Cuts the Circle,’” Arts, Mar. 1979; William Rubin, “Pollock as Jungian Illustrator: The Limits of Psychological Criticism, Part I,” Art in America, Nov. 1979; William Rubin, “Pollock as Jungian Illustrator: The Limits of Psychological Criticism, Part II,” Art in America, Dec. 1979; Irving Sandler, David Rubin, Elizabeth Langhorne, and William Rubin, “Department of Jungian Amplification, Part II: More on Rubin on Pollock,” Art in America, Oct. 1980; Judith Wolfe, “Jungian Aspects of JP’s Imagery,” Artforum, Nov. 1972; C. L. Wysuph, “Behind the Veil,” Art News, Oct. 1970.

  Joseph L. Henderson, “JP: A Psychological Commentary” (lecture); FVOC, “The Genesis of JP: 1912 to 1943” (Ph.D. thesis), Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University, 1965.

  SLM, int. by James T. Vallière, Aug. 1963, AAA.

  Interviews

  Peter Busa; Violet de Laszlo; Joseph Henderson; LK; George McNeil; Sam Naifeh; Nene Schardt; Judith Wolfe; C. L. Wysuph.

  NOTES

  Many Freudian analysts: Fermé (p. 142) estimates that about two-thirds of all European psychoanalysts eventually fled to the United States. Henderson intrigued by artists: Naifeh, a Jungian analyst in San Francisco, a colleague of Dr. Henderson’s, and, coincidentally, a cousin of one of the authors; Wysuph. Seeing Jackson gratis: Wysuph.

  Henderson’s birth: Aug. 31, 1903. Henderson’s origins: “J. L. H.,” pp. 10–12. Relationship with Wilder: “J. L. H.,” p. 12. Princeton: “J. L. H.,” p. 13. “At sea”; meeting Bayneses: “J. L. H.,” p. 14. “I decided”: Q. in “J. L. H.,” pp. 14–15. Jung’s home: Henderson: An institute in town housed the library and secretariat. Dream of becoming an analyst: “J. L. H.,” pp. 15–16. “Asking his dreams”: “J. L. H.,” p. 21. “If you’re really”: Jung, q. by Henderson, q. by Naifeh. University of London; “white horse”: “J. L. H.,” pp. 15–16. Another dream: A redheaded snake killing a “ray-like, black fish”; “J. L. H.,” pp. 15–16. Marriage to Cornford: “J. L. H.,” pp. 17–19: They were introduced by Mrs. Cary Baynes. “Swallowed Jung”: Naifeh. Analyzed by Jung: “J. L. H.,” pp. 15–16.

  Earlier arrival of Rank and Ferenczi: Ashton, p. 122. Freud dominating New York: See Freke, “JP,” p. 217. “A puritanical reluctance”; more favorable climate elsewhere: Ashton, p. 123. Onset of Jackson’s therapy: Henderson to B. H. Friedman, Jan. 1, 1970, in Friedman files: He was never sure exactly when JP started therapy except that it was “early 1939.” “Large, self-contained man”: Q. in Potter, p. 58, which refers to Henderson as “The Source.”

  Jung and “imaginal mind”: Naifeh. “For him, Pollock”: Name withheld by request. Focus on the future; “innermost self”: Naifeh. Ignoring history: Q. in Potter, p. 59. No look at records; never spoke with others; “[Jackson] was taken”; “[Jackson] explained”; “saw to it”: Q. in Potter, pp. 58–59. Jung and alcoholism; “managed”; “the emergence”: Naifeh. “Managing” job Sande’s: Henderson, “JP,” p. 21: Sande carried the burden of Jackson’s reality function. “Drinking was necessary”: Q. in Potter, p. 59. Jackson saying little: Friedman, p. 41. “He seemed preoccupied”: Q. in “How a Disturbed Genius Talked to His Analyst with Art,” p. 25. “Talk about himself”: Wysuph, p. 10. “This was not even”: Q. in Potter, p. 59.

  “Embryonic germ-plasm”; “individuation”: Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 108. Accumulated psychic experience: Jung (Contributions to Analytical Psychology, p. 246) called them “the psychic residua” of “countless typical experiences of our ancestors.” “The creative process”: Jung, Contributions to Analytical Psychology, p. 248; emphasis in the original. “Visionary mode”: Philipson, p. 104. “The artist reaches out”: Jung, Contributions to Analytical Psychology, p. 248. “We are astonished”; “genuine, primordial”: Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 184. “Synthesis of the individual”: Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 299. “Substitute gratification”: “Art and Neurosis,” in Trilling, p. 161. “Genetic fallacy”: Philipson, p. 91. Personal conditions: psychic significance: Philipson, pp. 100–01. “It is art”: Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 196.

  Symbols that lead to health: Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 193: “It was conceivable that a work of art, no less than a neurosis, might be traced back to those knots in the psychic life we call the complexes. … No objection can be raised if it is admitted this approach amounts to nothing more than the elucidation of those personal determinants without which a work of art is unthinkable. But should the claim be made that such an analysis accounts for the work of art itself, then a categorical denial is called for.” “Dream the myth”: Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, p. 299. “What is essential”: Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 194.

  One or two works: Henderson. “Human figures”: Q. in Friedman, p. 42; see, e.g., OC&T 545–49, III, pp. 112–13; see also OC&T 507, III, p. 87; 557, III, p. 118; 495, III, p. 80; 536, III, p. 106. Gouache brought to early session: Henderson, “JP,” pp. 14–15; OC&T 940 IV, p. 23. Jackson taking notes: See OC&T 556, III, p. 118. This drawing has traditionally been considered a “study” for the gouache; we believe it is a schematic done after the gouache. Violence and distortion: Henderson, “JP,” p. 14. “[Pollock’s] own highly developed”: Q. by Langhorne, in Sandler et al., “Department of Jungian Amplification,” p. 59. “Ordering symbols”: Henderson, “JP,” p. 15.

  “The analyst (out of knowledge)”: Henderson, pp. 17–18; this is from a supposedly anonymous case study but the subject is clearly JP. “He did not have free”: Q. in Friedman, p. 41. Drawing of tree with snake: Not identified in Thresholds of Initiation, but it is OC&T 555, III, p. 117. “Would normally seek”; “a movement of regression”: Henderson, p. 39. Showing illustration of snake; “a simple form”: Henderson. “A psychic birth-death-rebirth”: Gordon, “Department of Jungian Amplification,” p. 44; see Henderson, “JP,” pp. 2, 17. Curved lines, straight lines: Wysuph, p. 14.

  Henderson becoming uneasy: Henderson, “JP,” pp. 2, 20. “A genuine, primordial”; “something derived”: Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 184. Previous profiles: Philipson, p. 121. “True symbolic”: Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 184. When JP brought in an elaborate drawing of a mandala, Henderson acknowledged that JP could have seen a reproduction of one in Jung’s Secret of the Golden Flower or some other Jungian text, and that JP might have made the drawing to get Henderson’s approv
al, but decided to overlook this possibility because JP’s honesty as an artist would not have allowed him to create an image that he “did not feel”; Henderson, “JP,” p. 2.

  The need to preserve spontaneity, or at least the appearance of spontaneity, clearly obsessed Henderson, both at the time and for years afterward; Henderson, “JP,” p. 12. In subsequent accounts of JP’s therapy, he frequently revised his description of the circumstances under which the drawings were submitted. According to one version (Krauss, “JP’s Drawings,” p. 58, citing a conversation with Henderson), the drawings were “dream representations which Pollock produced specifically for his analytic sessions—rather than drawings made independently of the therapy.” According to Rubin (“Pollock as Jungian Illustrator, Part II,” p. 86, citing Henderson, “JP”), Henderson “actively exhorted [Jackson] to produce symmetrical, mandala-like images” and, when he met resistance, fought “tooth and nail” until JP acquiesced. But in a letter to Lee Krasner (Oct. 16, 1970, in Friedman files), Henderson claimed that he never asked JP to make drawings, that JP had brought them in unprompted. Elsewhere (q. in Friedman, p. 41), he said that JP ”was already drawing them, and when I found out, I asked for them.” The extent to which Henderson educated JP to Jungian theories once the analysis began—and thereby risked “leading” his imagery—was also the subject of frequent revisions. “I did not consciously discuss Jung or Jungian theories with Jackson,” Henderson claimed in 1980 (q. in Gordon, “Department of Jungian Amplification,” p. 44), although he allowed that he had pointed out to JP ”those characteristics in his work which seemed to represent ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’ signs” (q. in Wysuph, p. 13) and elsewhere (Wysuph, pp. 21, 16) admitted that he discussed with JP “the Jungian faith in a ‘psychic birth-death-rebirth cycle’ as well as the ‘symbol-ordering’ device of the circular mandala.” At various times, he claimed that JP said virtually nothing during their sessions (“I commented upon them spontaneously,” q. in Friedman, p. 410); that JP was already familiar with Jungian theories and supplied the analyses himself (“According to Henderson, Jackson Pollock was already familiar at the time [of therapy] … with the principles of Jungian psychology”; Wysuph, p. 19); and finally that he couldn’t remember anything about the sessions (He had lost all “recall [as] to what extent he may have entered into detailed analytical discussions of the drawings”; Wysuph, “Behind the Veil,” p. 53). Wysuph, who has studied the issue closely with Henderson himself, says JP “got that kind of jargon from his discussions with Henderson.” Even Langhorne (“JP’s ‘The Moon Woman Cuts the Circle,’” p. 131)—in arguing that the most likely “explanation for the archetypal nature of Pollock’s imagery around 1941 is saturation in Jungian thought while under Jungian analysis”—implies that Henderson was JP’s instructor in Jungian lore.

  Jackson untutored in Jung: Those who would like to think that JP brought some knowledge of Jung’s ideas into his relationship with Henderson assume that he learned about Jung from Helen Marot; see Wolfe, “Jungian Aspects of JP’s Imagery,” p. 65; see also Krauss, “JP’s Drawings,” p. 61. In fact, Marot, was far more interested in Sherrington than in Jung throughout the period of her friendship with JP. Henderson a father figure: Henderson himself claims (“JP,” p. 20) that he became a father figure to JP. Jackson never reading Jung: Busa; see also Langhorne, “JP’s ‘The Moon Woman Cuts the Circle,’” p. 131, and Rubin, “Pollock as Jungian Illustrator, Part I,” p. 116. Jung in English: Contributions to Analytical Psychology and Modern Man in Search of a Soul. Jackson writing about “anima” and “animus”: Busa.

  Symbols become leitmotifs: See OC&T 516–27, III, pp. 92–100; 533–39, III, pp. 103–09; 550–55, III, pp. 114–17. Circular Chinese Tao: OC&T 521v, III, p. 96; 522r, III, p. 97; 527, III, p. 100; 533r, III, p. 103; 534v, III, p. 104. “Axis mundi”: OC&T 519r, III, p. 94; 525, III, p. 99; 531, III, p. 102; 534r, III, p. 104; 534v, III, p. 104; 549, III, p. 114. Crescent moon: OC&T 518v, III, p. 93, 521v, III, p. 96; 523, III, p. 98; 525, III, p. 99. Snake: OC&T 519r, III, p. 94; 520, III, p. 95; 521v, III, p. 96; 524–25, III, pp. 98–99; 527, III, p. 100; 530–31, III, pp. 101–02; 533r–34r, III, pp. 103–04; 550, III, p. 114. Crossed lines: OC&T 518v, III, p. 93; 520., III, p. 95; 521v, III, p. 96; 522v–23, III, pp. 97–98; 534v, III, p. 104; 537r, III, p. 107. Pelvic basin: OC&T 522r, III, p. 97; 523, III, p. 98; 538v, III, p. 108. Mandala: OC&T 520., III, p. 95; 524–25, III, pp. 98–99; 527, III, p. 100; 533v, III, p. 103; 535r, III, p. 105; 537r, III, p. 107; also note evidence that Henderson had introduced Jackson to Native American symbology: OC&T 520., III, p. 95; 521r, III, p. 96; 552–54, III, p. 116. Images repeated, more finished: See OC&T 534v, III, p. 104; 537r, III, p. 107. Angular figures: OC&T 541, III, p. 110; 544, III, p. 111, Jagged lines: OC&T 542–43, III, pp. 110–11.

  Drawing that provided synopsis of case: OC&T 555, III, p. 117. Teaching tool: Henderson, “JP,” pp. 15–17. Schematic female: Q. in Wysuph, p. 17. Not a phallus: Henderson, p. 109. Axis mundi; reorganizing psychic life: Henderson, “JP,” pp. 15–16. “Reality function”: Q. in Wysuph, p. 17. Pelvic basin; opposites: Henderson, “JP,” pp. 15–16. “The principal”: Q. in Wysuph, p. 16. Henderson (“JP,” pp. 15–16) added a caveat to this diagnosis: The only troubling sign that remained in the drawing was the existence of the horse and the bull in the background, denoting the instinctual aspects required to produce JP’s integration on a conscious level. While the drawing indicated that such integration had already occurred on the unconscious or semiconscious level, as represented by the snake and plant symbols, integration had yet to take place in the conscious world—that is, in reality.

  Same image seven times: OC&T 525–26, III, p. 99; 531, III, p. 102; 533v, III, p. 103; 538r, III, p. 108; and especially 552, III, p. 115; for closely related symbols see 523, III, p. 98; 535r, III, p. 105; 537v, III, p. 107; 556, III, p. 118. Continuing value: Later Henderson (p. 110) would claim: “By allowing the symbols expressive of his inner experience to emerge and by giving them form in his paintings, he began to be cured.” In the most important of the drawings that Jackson had brought, Henderson argued, “The pole had a centering effect upon his disorganized psychic life, restoring a sense of structure. In the same way, his representation of the plant with its enigmatic leaves or fruit was placed in the very center, from which it seemed to exert an ordering, nurturant effect.”

  Jackson reluctant to discuss Jung: Schardt. Incapable of discussing Jung: See LK, int. by Rubin, Apr. 1967, q. in Rubin, “Pollock as Jungian Illustrator, Part I,” pp. 117, 120: JP called the dog in Guardians of the Secret a “father-figure”; as Rubin notes, in Jungian terms a dog is a female symbol, not a male one: “On the lone occasion when Pollock identified the psychological significance of one of his early images, he attributed to it precisely the opposite symbolism … than we would be led to expect from Jung’s references.” Jung, artists, and the unconscious: As at least one art historian (Freke, “Jackson Pollock.” p. 218) has suggested: “A theory which asserts that the unconscious is mythopoetic and that the arts are its mouthpiece naturally commends itself to those involved in artistic activity.”

  “To help [Jackson]”: Q. in Friedman, p. 43. “Adequately”: Henderson, “JP,” pp. 20–21. “Reality function”: Q. in Wysuph, “Behind the Veil.” p. 17. Jackson sober at sessions; “astonished”; “how little”; “unorthodox analysis”; “my duty”: Henderson, “How a Disturbed Genius Talked to His Analyst with Art,” p. 28: Henderson also claimed that he failed to treat Jackson’s alcoholism because “his symbolic drawings brought me strongly into a state of counter-transference to the archetypal material he produced.”

  “The lives of artists”; natural balance always upset: C. G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul, p. 195. “Schizophrenic group”: Also that Picasso’s pictures “immediately reveal their alienation from feeling”; Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art and Literature, translated by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, 1966), pp. 135–41, q. in Rubin, “Pollock as Jungian Illus
trator, Part II,” p. 87: Rubin notes that, in a clarifying note (p. 137 n.3) to the 1934 edition of the text (added after considerable controversy in the press), Jung backtracked and said he had not meant to say that Picasso was literally a schizophrenic but merely that he had a “disposition” to the disease: “Thus Picasso is not ‘psychotic’; he simply has a ‘habitus’ which leads him ‘to react to a profound psychic disturbance not with an ordinary psychoneurosis but with a schizoid syndrome”’ “Everything in the unconscious”: Jung, Memories, Dreams, and Reflections, prologue, p. 3.

  Henderson raised by Navajo: Hill, “J. L. H.,” p. 10. “Obsessed”: Q. in Hill, “J. L. H., p. 10. Visits to the Zuni and Sia tribes: Hill, “J. L. H..” p. 10. Lecture on rituals: Hill, “J. L. H.,” p. 19. Racial memory: According to Jung (Wolfe, “Jungian Aspects of JP’s Imagery,” p. 70), “Americans are all possessed by an Indian soul. … It is noteworthy that Pollock has chosen images from Jung that were originally produced on the American continent.” See also C. G. Jung Institute, p. 56. When Henderson himself allegedly disputed Jung’s notion that “Americans are all possessed by an Indian soul,” Jung asked him about his most recent dream. Henderson’s associations included the image of some Indian women in his childhood home of Elko, Nevada, carrying their papooses. “Jung’s laughter in response,” writes the Jungian scholar, “convinced him that Jung was right, that the American psyche does contain an Indian component;” Hill, “J. L. H. … pp. 9–10.