artistic urges issuing from their offspring. They offer
cautionary advice where support might be more to the point.
Timid young artists, adding parental fears to their own, often
give up their sunny dreams of artistic careers, settling into
the twilight world of could-have-beens and regrets. There,
caught between the dream of action and the fear of failure,
shadow artists are born.
I am thinking here of Edwin, a miserable millionaire
trader whose joy in life comes from his art collection.
Strongly gifted in the visual arts, he was urged as a child to
go into finance. His father bought him a seat on the stock
exchange for his twenty-first birthday. He has been a trader
ever since. Now in his mid-thirties, he is very rich and very
poor. Money cannot buy him creative fulfillment.
Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on
their environment and especially on their children than
the unlived life of the parent.
C. G. JUNGSurrounding himself with artists and artifacts, he is like
the kid with his nose pressed to the candy-store window. He
would love to be more creative but believes that is the
prerogative of others, nothing he can aspire to for himself. A
generous man, he recently gifted an artist with a year’s
living expenses so she could pursue her dreams. Raised to
believe that the term artist could not apply to him, he cannot