What is Special about Drawing in a Circle?

What is special about drawing in a circle? Isn’t any kind of art making beneficial for discerning our unconscious?

Drawing, painting, collage, or pottery: all carry very personal messages from hidden parts of ourselves that deserve our conscious respect and attention. Working with our hands using such materials stirs healing energies within us, and allows expression of feelings that we cannot put into words. Journaling; paying attention to our symbol vocabulary as expressed in our dreams; discussing our creations with a trusted person or group are ways to gain awareness of these messages. This is all very good, and good for us. However, it seems that doing this creative work inside a circle has additional benefits.

The shape of a circle is embedded in elements in our body (eyes, breasts, pregnant womb) and this similarity naturally attunes us to respond deeply to the form of the circle. We take in and process information about our surroundings through the circular openings, or pupils, of our eyes.

Orienting ourselves in our natural surroundings, we refer to the horizon line when we can to establish the furthest point we can see. This line is a huge circle around us, clearly marking a portion of the earth to which we can relate with visual knowledge. In some way we consider this our territory, conflating it with our physical being/identity.

In our social milieu, we tend to claim our social space, a circular space a few inches outside our physical body, as our personal safe zone. We prefer that most people come no closer to us than the boundary of this personal zone. Our intimate friends and family we are comfortable allowing them to come closer.

Examining the art of young children around the age of 3 reveals the importance of circle drawings. At this important time, children are developing a personal identity, such that they begin to call themselves “I” instead of the 3^rd person naming such as “baby,” or “Billy.” They create mandala drawings of suns, stars, …. And people. I have witnessed a toddler name her drawing of a circle “baby,” her nickname in the family. She was processing the idea that she was an individual, a little person like no other.

This alignment of the circle with personal identity is one that CG Jung experienced in his art and that of his patients. He constructed his theory of the psyche as a central organizing principle anchoring personal development. The psychological experience of this psyche, Jung found, is often expressed in a circular design he called mandalas.

Gestalt psychologists find that the circle is a powerful form that organizes information, and tends to structure what is placed inside.

When we draw in a circle, we are inviting all these layers of meaning, personal identity, and potential for organizing and understanding to reveal themselves in our personal symbolism. The circle, like a microscope, brings context and focus to our self-reflection. For Jung, drawing a circular mandala was the pre-eminent indication that the process of individuation was actively shaping the psyche to become a more complete expression of its potential.