Still Other Kinds of Expression: Psychology and Interpretation Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) Viennese neurologist, founder of psychoanalysis; supposedly, the discoverer of the unconscious mind. Freud (nutshell version): Much behavior can be explained by unconscious motives; many of our actions are based on reasons/motives of which we are not even aware. 1
Play When children play, says Freud, they imagine worlds of their own invention or, more accurately, they imaginatively re-arrange the world as they would like it to be. E.g., fort, house, doctor, etc. The child s play is determined especially by his wish to be a grown-up; he plays at being a grown up and feels no shame about this Notwithstanding the large affective cathexis of his playworld, the child distinguishes it perfectly from reality; he only likes to borrow the objects and circumstances that he imagines from the tangible and visible things of the real world. It is only this linking of it to reality that still distinguishes a child s play from day-dreaming (300, emphasis added) 2
Grown Ups Play Substitutes As they grow up, people cease to play, and appear to give up the pleasure they derived from play But this an appearance only we never give up on pleasures once we have experienced them: When we appear to give something up, all we really do is to adopt a substitute (301) Fantasy & Day-Dreaming So, we neurotic grown-ups replace play with fantasy and day-dreaming. Adult fantasy life, Freud says, is mainly driven by a) unfulfilled erotic desires and/or b) self-exalting, egoistic wish-fulfillment. But, unlike children, we are ashamed of our fantasy life and seek to conceal it. (And perhaps rightly so, considering how socially destructive it would be if we acted on our fantasies.) 3
The Artist The artist, says Freud, has the same wishes and desires as other neurotic grown-ups Leonardo da Vinci, Virgin and Child with St, Anne (1510) [The artist] is urged on by instinctual needs he longs to attain honour, power, riches, fame, and the love of women; but he lacks the means of achieving these gratifications. So, like any other with an unsatisfied longing, he turns away from reality and transfers all his interest, and all his libido, on to the creation of his wishes in the life of phantasy, from which the way might readily lead to neurosis... from A General Introduction to Psycho-Analysis (1935), quoted in Freeland, 157 4
The Artist as Psychotherapist The poet fantasizes in words (the artist fantasizes in works of art), thereby providing us with a means (or an excuse?) to fantasize through the poet s words/the work of art. Aesthetic pleasure is a fore-pleasure, an enticement, a bribe, a kind of foreplay, that allows us, e.g., to identify with the poetic hero and thereby discharge unconscious tensions from our minds. What we are really after (even if we don t consciously admit it to ourselves) is the opportunity for fantasy and wish-fulfillment. Expression So art, for Freud, expresses unconscious feelings and desires (in the first case, those of the artist; later, by proxy, those of the audience). This is a valuable service: Art is an instance of sublimation (a socially acceptable gratification art is substituted for the object of our instinctual desires.) If we gratified every desire directly, civilization would collapse. Instead, art provides a sort of distributed coping mechanism for society. 5
Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychologist; one-time disciple of (and heir-apparent to) Freud. Eventually broke with Freud, arguing that Freud s view of the libido was too narrow (equated with sexual desire); too rigid and too reductionistic. Key concepts in Jungian psychology: symbolism and the effects of attachment which prevent people from recognizing their symbolic nature; the theory of archetypes (innate ideational prototypes, analogous to psychological organs ) Two Types of Artistic Process One of Jung s concerns is to distinguish two modes of artistic production: 1. The Psychological Mode 2. The Visionary Mode 6
The Psychological Mode Art created from the author s intention to produce a certain effect. Works created in this mode (e.g., psychological novels) are understandable in form and content: no obscurity surrounds them, for they explain themselves fully The psychological mode of artistic creation is dominated by the conscious mind, but even here the unconscious exerts an influence: The artist may take herself to be acting freely and consciously, but she is swept along by an unseen current. The Visionary Mode Dominated by the unconscious mind: The artist creates without consciously directing the process. In Jung s terms, the artist reacts to creative urges of the collective unconscious. The content of visionary artists work is, for Jung, thus likely to be in contact with the true symbols intuitive ideas that cannot be expressed in any other manner. 7
The Social Function of Art The visionary artist taps into not just her personal unconscious but the collective unconscious. According to Jung, individual manifestations of the unconscious (e.g., dreams, visions) arise to address an imbalance. The artist provides a similar service for society by educating the spirit of the age, conjuring up the forms in which the age is most lacking ( On the Relation of Analytical Psychology to Poetry, 1922) 8