By Laura

Free Drawing and the Unconscious Mind

Like my articles on Jungian Dream Interpretation and my Stream of Consciousness Writing, I want to introduce Free Drawing as another powerful technique for gaining insight into the unconscious.

It isn't easy to gain insight into unconscious forces in our minds. We can know it only through accidental occurrences, like Freudian slips or with special techniques that are designed to engage the unconscious mind. Free Drawing is one of those techniques. It can offer us solutions to problems we're facing in our everyday life. This technique bridges the gap between the conscious, rational mind and the mysterious unconscious mind.

Free Drawing Technique

We all have irrational fears and outdated resentments. We have old patterns that we fall back into. We all have repressed or inhibited feels and needs. If these feelings can't find expression they block our normal psychological functioning, they create disturbances in our daily lives. Free drawing can be thought of as a way to cleanse our emotions, fears and unconscious. As Piero Ferrucci says, "Free drawing gives a visible shape outside ourselves to the unconscious psychic energy blocking us from within, and thus it loosens its hold on us" (36). We gain understanding and perspective of ourselves, insight into hidden tendencies and motivations that can't be expressed in words. Finally we can release ourselves from the grip of these unconscious forces by observing, understanding and analyzing them. When we shine a light into the darkness, the darkness is no longer there.

Here is a summary of the technique as created by Piero Ferrucci:

1. Take some colored pens, pencils, markers or crayons and several pieces of paper.
2. Take 5 minutes and relax, observe your breathing. Notice your calm awareness.
3. Let your hand draw and watch what you are drawing.
4. Draw anything that comes into your head. You can move in anyway and draw realistically or abstractly. Allow yourself complete freedom. Your hand movements can be any way they need to be, jerky, flowing, slow or fast.
5. When you're done, observe your drawing and decide if it's really finished. Ask yourself if it needs a final touch. If so, finish it.

Analysis

"We should greet our drawing as if it were a person coming from a distant land whose customs are very different from those of our own country...we should listen to the drawing's story. This drawing may represent something new and different from what our surface mind feels like. We seek to resonate with it and intuitively capture the message it gives us about ourselves." (37).

After observing the drawing and listening to the drawing, you may want to write some free associations that come to mind when viewing the drawings, sort of like a stream of consciousness journal entry based on the drawing. "As we stay with the drawing, its colors, forms, and various details may arouse in us a series of free associations, a nuance of feeling, a forgotten memory, an intuitive flash." (38).

As you continue to use the free drawing technique, make sure to look for patterns. Use sets of drawings to discover patterns within yourself that might not come with just one drawing. Keep with it, try different techniques and have fun with it. Free drawing is another powerful tool to use on your spiritual and personal growth path.

*All citations are from Piero Ferrucci's What We May Be.