The Visual Enactment
Ritual, transformation and meaning through creativity (2025).
This short film is a symbolic exploration of my creative imagination process as an artist—a process through which I engage the psyche and its unconscious contents in order to foster a deeper, more integrated connection with the Self. Grounded in the Jungian concept of active imagination, the work seeks to manifest the dynamic interaction between the conscious and unconscious realms. The shoreline—where land (consciousness) meets water (the unconscious)—serves as a metaphor for what Jung termed the transcendental function: the symbolic space where opposites meet and transform into a new, third position (Jung, 1957).
The film opens with a landscape of the bay at Cultra, near Holywood in County Down, where I lived for 18 years. Over this period, I documented the shoreline obsessively, photographing and filming the scene on each of my runs. The act of returning to this place, capturing and reconfiguring it over time, became a meditative and imaginal process—a lived form of individuation, where I unconsciously engaged the symbolic terrain of the Self. The film’s visual sequence, constructed from these images, represents what Jung called “the production of symbolic material” (Jung, 1961, p. 177), essential to the integration of unconscious contents into consciousness.
The forest imagery in the film represents the unknown—the unconscious mind—and is tied to personal and mythic memories of the woods in Wicklow. The forest, in Jungian thought, is a frequent setting for encounters with the shadow and the archetypal Self. As a child, the forest became a place of solitude, awe, and inner mystery—what Jung described as “the numinous experience which holds the key to the unconscious” (Jung, 1969, para. 405).
A significant narrative thread emerges through a birthday card from my grandmother referencing Little Red Riding Hood—a tale rich in archetypal motifs of initiation, danger, and transformation. In depth psychological terms, the figure of the wolf may be understood as a shadow figure, while the protagonist’s journey through the forest reflects an archetypal initiation into greater psychic wholeness. The grandmother figure evokes the Great Mother archetype, embodying both nurturance and ancestral wisdom. Her presence aligns with the archetypal motif of the guide, a feminine force facilitating inner transformation.
The enclosed body of water in the landscape, shaped like a vulva and cradled by land, symbolizes the feminine principle, the womb of the world, and the archetype of the Creatrix. In Jungian psychology, still or enclosed water is associated with the collective unconscious, emotional depth, and the feminine mystery. The landscape becomes a metaphorical body—a form of anima mundi, or world soul—expressing the sacred, generative nature of the Earth and the feminine divine (Hillman, 1975).
Throughout the film, birds appear as symbolic messengers of the Irish goddess Morrigan, a figure associated with death, transformation, and prophecy. Her recurring presence underscores the mythopoetic function of the work, embedding the film within a symbolic lineage of feminine power and psychological transformation.
Layering—both in imagery and narrative—is central to the film. As in painting, this process mirrors the layering of psychic material in the active imagination process. The interplay of conscious reflection and spontaneous image creation fosters the emergence of symbolic meaning and psychological integration.
Ultimately, this film constitutes a visual enactment of individuation—the ongoing, nonlinear journey toward psychological wholeness. It is a ritual of image-making that engages archetypal forces, personal memory, and symbolic form to create what Jung referred to as “a living symbol of the unity of opposites” (Jung, 1957, para. 180).
References:
Hillman, J. (1975) Re-Visioning Psychology. New York: Harper & Row.
Jung, C.G. (1957) The Transcendent Function, in The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works, Vol. 8. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jung, C.G. (1961) Memories, Dreams, Reflections. New York: Vintage Books.
Jung, C.G. (1969) Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious, Collected Works, Vol. 9 Part 1. Princeton: Princeton University Press.