The Observer, by Peter Birkhäuser, hangs in the lecture hall at The Psychology Club Zürich. Photo by Laura London.
19 – THE OBSERVER: "Before we know ourselves we are already ‘known.’ The self watches us like a superior observer, as ‘private protection, intimate understanding as an individual judge, an inexorable witness’ {Apuleius: De Deo Socratis, chapter 16}, allowing no self-deception. He is both subhuman and superhuman and sees things far beyond our conscious mind." ~Light From the Darkness: The Paintings of Peter Birkhäuser, p. 64
The original painting – The Observer {Oil, 1966} by Peter Birkhäuser – is hanging in the lecture hall at The Psychology Club Zürich. It's positioned very high up on the wall. I took this photo at the Club on November 24, 2015. It was not easy to photograph.
I was immediately grabbed by this image and attempted to capture its darkness.
“I experience a power within myself which is not the same as my conscious ego. It has forced me to adopt a path quite foreign to my conscious attitude, a path which totally contradicted my will and everything I considered important. Before I was able to obey this power, I first needed to be crushed and almost destroyed. I often felt it was a pity this process had taken so long, but now, looking back over thousands of dreams and the sacrifices of a long, hard development, I can see how valuable the experience has been.”
Birkhäuser and his wife, Sibylle Oeri, entered Jungian analysis and remained in it for the rest of their lives. Over the course of 35 years, Birkhäuser collected and worked on more than 3,400 of his dreams.
His book, Light From the Darkness: The Paintings of Peter Birkhäuser, is available from Amazon in hardcover {new or used} and in paperback.