“The pictures are of a psychological culture, a Jungian culture, if you will. It emanates from my own psyche… It’s a hard place to get to, honestly. It has taken me many years to get to that place and to define it visually.” – Roger Ballen

Self discovery is “the act or process of gaining knowledge or understanding of your abilities, character, and feelings”[1] according to the Britannica Dictionary. I think it takes much more than knowing what your hobbies are and what clothes you like wearing. Discovering yourself means reaching to the deep, dark parts of your subconscious and meeting all the “socially unacceptable” parts of the Being you have repressed throughout your life. As Jordan Peterson described in his book 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos, “Being is what each of us experiences, subjectively, personally and individually, as well as what we each experience jointly with others. As such, it includes emotions, drivers, dreams, visions and revelations, as well as our private thought and perceptions.’ Peterson expands on the point by stating: ‘Being is also, finally, something that is brought into existence by action, so it’s nature is to an indeterminate degree a consequence of our decisions and choices – something shaped by our hypothetically free will”. [2] It can be a dreadful and terrifying process as you start to uncover your true capacity for destruction and chaos alas it is the only path to serenity and order. Roger Ballen explores the theme of self discovery through his subconscious, the very dark places in his psyche which hold all the repressed emotions and drivers behind choice and decision, places to which the conscious does not have access to. Psyche refers to the complete personality of the individual. In response to Ballen’s work I will produce a photobook exploring the theme of self discovery through my lived experiences. I am aiming to show all the dark and uncomfortable parts of the human psyche, through a series of images where I am staging lived experiences creating a narrative between fact and fiction.

Carl Jung was a Swiss psychologist who aimed to understand the nature of the psyche and develop strategies in order to integrate its components into a state of wholeness. “Mans task, is… to become conscious of the contents that press upward from the unconscious… As for as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle the light in the darkness of mere being” [3]. However most of the interaction between the two happen beyond our awareness and control, hence a big part of who we are, what we are capable of and the drivers behind our actions and choices, exists beyond our reach or understanding. Individuation is the achievement of self actualisation through the process of integrating the conscious and the unconscious[4].

Jung’s model of the psyche consists of the consciousness, personal unconsciousness and the collective unconsciousness. Consciousness refers to a “realm of personal awareness where one identifies explicitly and knowingly with themselves”.[5] In the centre of the consciousness Jung identified a structure called the ego, which is responsible for creating stories about oneself told to oneself as a way of providing a sense of personal distinction. The ego is expressed as a persona or the appearance an individual displays to the world. However the persona is often far from one’s true self as the ego only allows qualities deemed acceptable or appropriate in society. The ego filters elements of our experiences and characteristics either into or away from the consciousness. The personal unconscious is an idea well understood through Freud’s work. It is a place beyond our awareness where we store all the repressed aspects of selfhood, which continue to interact with the conscious. The collective unconscious, according to Jung is a collection of universal elements originating in the inherited structure of the brain. He has observed patterns and characteristics throughout myths, religions and cultures of communities unlikely to contact each other yet their stories centre around the same roles and elements. He called those universal, inherited, themes and motifs the archetypes. The archetypes are the base for personality, influencing the individuals cognitive tendencies. In the combined unconscious, Jung referred to the repressed parts of selfhood the ego does not want to identify with, as the shadow. More specifically Jung identified within the shadow the animus and anima. Animus meaning the suppressed masculine qualities (Strength, logic, leadership, action…) in a female and anima referring to the suppressed feminine qualities in a man (Creativity, nurture, empathy, grace). All those structures are supposed to work together in circulation, mediating between one another in order to achieve balance and create the Self. The Self refers to who an individual truly is, what they like, desire, what they are capable of. Individualisation is a process that requires radical self honesty and actively working toward true self acceptance. There is no way to separate an individual form its psychological shadow, nor should we try to do so by denying and repressing it. “Good does not become better by being exaggerated, but worse, and a small evil becomes a big one though being disregarded and repressed. The shadow is very much a part of human nature, and it is only at night that no shadow exists”. [6]

I have been deeply committed to the process of Individuation since I realised how lost I was in the persona I have fabricated to protect myself or maybe rather protect the outside world from my true flawed Self. The more I learned the more I understood that the emptiness and loneliness I felt wasn’t due to a lack of acceptance by others but rather a result of rejection of the Self. I learned that endlessly striving towards light takes away from the quality of being human and that rebelling against it completely, in order to satisfy desire (even if the desire is to protect oneself) brings you closer to being a monster than a human. As Jordan Peterson says “A harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very, very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control”. In the same way I have found that there is order within chaos and chaos within order and that ambitiously striving for either one or the other can tip the balancing scales into insanity. In this project I aim to portray the balancing of order and chaos, the feminine and the masculine, the light and dark involved in the forever ongoing process of Individuation.

Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen evolved his style using a simple square format in stark and black and white. His earlier works shows clear connection to traditional documentary photography however it developed into a style described as documentary fiction, combining reality and hallucination. Throughout his carrier Ballen photographed people that could be described as outsiders who’s appearance was more of a physical manifestation of a psychological disturbance. When asked if he himself feels to be an outsider he described the complexity of his work. “I would say that I am not an outsider artist. I like art that reflects something very basic, very primitive and psychological, which has something in common with outsider art but the work itself is advanced photography.”[7] He explained how his photographs are staged scenes, intensified to the absurd as metaphors for the mind itself, including symbolic elements such as animals, drawings, organised chaos, broken objects and fragmented humans[8]. In essence Ballen explores the theme by taking a dive through the depths of his psyche and exploring all that constitutes a Being.

The Protector is one of the photographs from the series Roger the Rat which aims to visually explore the forces that shape the human psyche. In this quote Ballen describes who the main subject is. “I am an outsider, live on the margin and have no place in human society. I am judged by humanity to be insane, to be feared and avoided at all costs. Normality must be preserved; it is sacrosanct, no matter what the cost… Most humans hate people such as me, as we challenge their illusion of stability and purpose.” In this, Ballen manages to perfectly explain what a psychological shadow is, why we repress it and fear it. He continues to explain: “As a rat, I symbolise chaos and disorder. There is little hope of a better world until humanity comes to terms with the unpleasant fact that repression and fear are ultimately the masters of their destiny. I cannot remember when I put this rat mask on for the first time. Maybe I was born with it. I am not sure what is underneath. I never take it off: I sleep with it, bathe with it. I have heard people call me a rat and others a human with a mask. I am unsure whether I am a rat or human. Perhaps my mother was a rat and my father a human. I think I am a bit of both.” [9] Ballen explains that until humanity comes to terms with its shadow and starts to perceive the flawed and twisted as a part of our nature, there is no chance for unification. You cannot fix an issue until you see it.

In conclusion, Roger Ballen explores the theme of self discovery through the exploration of his psyche, in the process identified by Carl Jung as Individuation. This results in absurd photographs of a deep psychological nature. However, to what extent can we actually represent the subconscious though photography? Considering the topic is deeper than the ocean it self, I feel that parts of the subconscious cannot be perceived by vision alone. Maybe, there is parts of it we cannot perceive at all? Given our biological limitations. And even if, does the process of Individuation ever really finish? Do we get to a point where exploring is no longer an option? Or is our consciousness forever expanding just like the universe it self? Maybe we aren’t meant to know it all, maybe we should leave that up to God, after all isn’t sin (literal meaning in Hebrew to “miss the mark”) the one quality that makes us human?

Bibliography

[1]

Britannica Dictionary definition of SELF–DISCOVERY

[2]

Jordan Peterson, 12 Rules for Life, An Antidote to Chaos (2018) ch. 1

[3]

Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections (1962) ch. 11

[4], [5]

Pursuit of Wonder, Becoming Your True Self – The Psychology of Carl Jung (YouTube)

[6]

Carl Jung, A Psychological Approach to the Dogma of the Trinity (1942), Psychology and Religion: West and East, pg. 286

[7], [8]

[9]

Roger Ballen: The Enigma of Organised Chaos, Alasdair Foster, 20 March 2021, Africa