The term ‘Image Maker’ occupies a complex and multi-layered position within the depth-psychology corpus, drawing simultaneously on Platonic cosmology, theological anthropology, and the clinical-expressive literature of art therapy. In Plato, the image maker is situated at a hierarchical remove from truth — a creator of appearances rather than essences, third in line behind the Form, the craftsman, and the representation. This ontological demotion is complicated, however, by Nussbaum’s reading of the Phaedrus, where philosopher, image-maker, and Muse-follower converge under the rubric of divine possession, suggesting that the inspired image maker participates in a madness continuous with philosophical eros. The theological tradition, particularly John of Damascus, reframes the question entirely: the Maker is God, and the human being is the image — reversing the direction of agency. Plotinus extends this into a contemplative register in which the Maker of the Intellectual Universe is sought behind every beautiful form. McNiff, the most clinically proximate voice, rehabilitates the image maker as a therapeutic agent whose spontaneous productions exceed interpretation, demanding respect as autonomous entities. Across these positions, the central tension concerns whether the image maker creates, discovers, or merely transmits — and whether the psyche in its making is closer to the divine or to the illusory.
philosopher, image-maker and Muse-follower, lover - all are seen as possessed types, and madness comes at the top.
Nussbaum argues that Plato’s Phaedrus rehabilitates the image-maker by placing this figure alongside the philosopher and the lover within a shared economy of divine madness, reversing the Republic’s demotion.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986thesis
the painter also creates a bed? Yes, he said, but not a real bed. And what of the maker of the bed? were you not saying that he too makes, not the idea which, according to our view, is the essence of the bed, but only a particular bed?
Plato’s Republic establishes the foundational critique: the image maker produces only semblances of existence, doubly removed from true being, and thus the paradigmatic case of the imitator.
, Republic, -380thesis
whoever has contemplated the Intellectual Universe and known it and wondered for it must search after its Maker too. What Being has raised so noble a fabric? And where? And how?
Plotinus recasts the question of the image maker by directing contemplation back through the beautiful image toward its ultimate source, positing a Maker who transcends Intellect itself.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
in it I see a triple allusion, to the Maker, to the being made, and to the image. The being made is man; God made him, and made him in the image of God.
John of Damascus reads Genesis through a Trinitarian optic in which the three-way structure — Maker, made, and image — becomes the theological grammar for understanding human dignity and divine creativity.
, Saint John of Damascus Collection, 2016supporting
All of this confusion can be avoided by acknowledging the personal aspect of every interpretation, by distinguishing the interpreter’s evaluation from the image and the person who made it.
McNiff insists on the irreducible agency of the image maker as distinct from the interpreter, arguing that conflating the two produces therapeutic harm and epistemological error.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004supporting
‘Gods, of gods of whom I am maker and of works the father, those which are my own handiwork are indissoluble, save with my consent.’
The Timaeus presents the Demiurge as the supreme image maker and father of all works, establishing the cosmological prototype of creative agency that depth psychology would later internalize as psychic process.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
His ability to simplify the complex configurations of visual experience into unique graphic interpretations revealed a definite intelligence that had gone unrecognized for many years of institutional life.
McNiff demonstrates that the image maker’s intelligence operates independently of formal training or institutional recognition, expressing a native expressive capacity that therapeutic encounter must honor.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004supporting
Throughout his career, Rembrandt was a painter of impressive religious images. Biblical scenes were one of his stocks in trade. He became famous for them. In some, he included himself as one of the characters in the scene.
Stein reads Rembrandt’s self-insertion into sacred scenes as the depth-psychological image maker’s characteristic move: making oneself simultaneous subject and object of the transformative image.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting
In order to find a vocabulary of images that could represent his forming imago in the fullest possible way, Picasso was forced — by his needs, by his temperament, by cultural circumstances, and by his place in contemporary history — to break free.
Stein interprets Picasso’s formal innovations as the image maker’s compelled response to archetypal pressures, situating artistic creation within the individuation process.
, Transformation Emergence of the Self (Volume 7) (Carolyn, 1998supporting
My intention while sitting with a picture is to suspend judgment, or to watch myself in the process of making judgments and then to engage the material that emerges.
McNiff articulates the therapeutic discipline required when approaching the work of the image maker: receptive suspension rather than interpretive appropriation.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004supporting
a cause imaged as a father who begets his offspring, or as a maker who fashions his product out of his
The Timaeus commentary identifies the generative ambiguity at the root of the image-maker concept: the Platonic maker is simultaneously paternal begetter and artisanal fashioner.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997aside
When I make a painting like this, I generally draw upon familiar figures. This one emerged from a series of spontaneous movements that I made on the canvas. I had nothing particular in mind at the start.
McNiff describes the phenomenology of image making as emergence from unconscious spontaneity rather than deliberate intention, illustrating how the image maker may function as a conduit rather than author.
, Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul, 2004aside