Powerful Photos Depict Veterans Who Use Art Therapy To Heal

[Michelle420]

• Marine Cpl. Chris McNair (Ret.) Afghanistan 2011-12 Impeccable in his Marine uniform and outwardly composed, McNair sits on the porch of his parents’ home in Virginia, anonymous behind a mask he made in an art therapy session. “I was just going through pictures, and I saw the mask of Hannibal Lecter, and I thought, ‘That’s who I am’ … He’s probably dangerous, and that’s who I felt I was. I had this muzzle on with all these wounds, and I couldn’t tell anyone about them. I couldn’t express my feelings.”

More at link: Powerful Photos Depict Veterans Who Use Art Therapy To Heal

 

[Blackrook]

I'm sure he will get in trouble for this.

 

[Bill Angel]

A quote from Carl Jung on the subject of "masks":

The persona, for Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, was the social face the individual presented to the world—"a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and on the other to conceal the true nature of the individual".

One wonders what Jung would have thought about the masks created by these veterans, as their intent in creating them was to reveal, rather than to conceal, aspects of their true nature as individuals.

See Powerful Photos Depict Veterans Who Use Art Therapy To Heal

 

[Michelle420]

I'm sure he will get in trouble for this.

Why?

The link has more photos of other soldiers with masks they made.

 

[Bill Angel]

More at link: Powerful Photos Depict Veterans Who Use Art Therapy To Heal

Carl Jung in his essay After the Catastrophe (1945) discusses the situation of the Germans and the Nazi phenomenon. A couple of observations from Jung could be relevant to the soldiers' artistic work documented in the article from the National Geographic (see above link ):

"...the tide that rose in the unconscious after the first World War was reflected in individual dreams [of my German patients], in the form of... mythological symbols which expressed primitivity, violence, cruelty: in short, all the powers of darkness."

"I was able to... observe how the uprush of dark forces deployed itself in the individual test-tube. I could watch these forces as they broke through the individual's moral and intellectual self-control, and as they flooded his conscious world."