Independence, Arrogance, or Ignorance?

One of the strongest themes that can be taken from almost any work concerning America is a strong sense of individualism. This individualism is present in the language of the Declaration of Independence, the fear in "The Minister's Black Veil," and the strong attidtudes of "Self-Reliance."
AHEM, a brief bout of scribus interruptus, you must excuse me. Where was I?

Individualism can be viewed a few ways. Generally, we like to portray it positively as "independence." In this case we are making decisions for ourselves and choosing to conform or not to conform as we see fit. On the other hand, we might see individualism as simply being conceited and self-righteous. Clearly, we need to be individuals because no one is as good as you are so you should just ignore everyone else. On the third hand, it might just be unconcious ignorance or apathy that causes this. We want to be individuals because we just don't care or even notice what other people think.

Mark Mulhern's untitled colored pencil print (casually called "Couch") features a man, probably a self-portrait of the artist because of its similarity to another man depicted in a similar painting by the same artist, laying on a couch in a psychologist's office. The psychologist's face is obscured by a cloud of darkness, probably meant to depict dark thoughts. In this cloud over the doctor's face and above the patient's head there are indistinguishable images. One that stands out, though is what appears to be a bald eagle with a body shaped like a heart. On the rug under the psychologist's chair are more rudimentary images. Among them is a truck, a stuffed turkey, leaves, a gun, and a hammer and sickle like that on the flag of the USSR.

The fact that the patient's face is the only readily distinguishable feature in the drawing seems to be speaking about the clarity of self-image in our own minds over the image we have of others. The patient is entirely focused on himself and getting his thoughts out.

The images featured throughout the drawing (the truck, eagle, turkey etc.) are likely to be the anxieties of the patient. The truck and turkey are symbols of America's traditions and work ethic and the patient probably has some anxieties about conformities to these. The hammer and sickle is perhaps the most alarming part of the image, though. Why would a drawing about America have a contemporary (the image was created in 1984) symbol of communism along side all the other symbols of America? Most likely it is to represent the fears and issues Americans felt about communism. Or perhaps, it's place among commonplace objects expresses the mind of Americans (in the view of the artist) that Communism might not be that bad. That, though is a view more of the last ten years than the past 30.

As for the obscurity of the psychologist's face, this is perhaps the most important part of the drawing to its theme of self-absorbance. The thoughts coming from the patient, and what appears to be a clock being tossed aside by the patient, completely black-out the face of the psychologist above his strangely formal dress of a tailcoat, cummerbund, and bowtie. This is a symbolism of the arrogance of the patient. He doesn't care about the psychologist's identity. He wishes to be independent of him. The patient is so absorbed in fixing his own problems, that he doesn't have any idea that other's might have issues as well. He's not even able to be independent and self-reliant because he's depending on the doctor for help defining his own image.

Furthermore, the Valerie Babb excerpt we read seemed to speak of definition through elimination. We define ourselves by what we are not. In this way, the psychologist is defined by not being the patient. By making one thing more clear, we make the other variables less clear (Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle). In this way, we know so much about the patient that we seem to know nothing about the doctor. Quite the contrary though, we know that the doctor is not the patient, and that might just be enough.