Psychoanalysis.
and art
Roger Scruton
The Aesthetics of Freud Jack J. Spector (Allen Lane £3.95)
As the founder of psychoanalysis Freud has hsd a great influence on the appreciation and criticism of the arts. He also wrote extensively on painting and sculpture, producing a full-length study of Leonardo and a celebrated analysis of Michelangelo's Moses. Be is responsible for the obscure but influential doctrine of art as a passage from fantasy back to reality, and he propounded a theory of dream symbolism which continues to have powerful repercussions on artistic theory and practice. His own methods of psy• choanalysis have been compared to the methods of aesthetic argument, and in literary criticism it is often impossible now to discover where criticism ends and psychoanalysis begins. Some have even doubted that there is a distinction between the two: the search for meaning in literary symbols is of a piece with the search for meaning in everything we say and do, and if art is more complex in form, it is nonetheless no more Fomplex in content than the ordinary workings of the human mind. Indeed, there are some who have turned to Freudian analysis as an explanation of the celebrated " universality "of art, which they take to be its ability to re-enact, even in the most elaborate structures, an archetypal experience which. is Within the grasp of every man. Despite this overwhelming sense of an af finity between aesthetics and psychoanalysis, Freud's own writings on art are dis appointing, and those of his disciples usually very much worse. The psychoanalytic interPretations of great works of art and literature ,have been as contentious as any other, differ ing only in their emphasis on unconscious sYmbols at the expense of the more conscious forms of evocation which have always been recognised in art. It is no longer possible to regard psychoanalysis as an objective method Which will add rigour and depth to the study of criticism. Wittgenstein has even suggested that the relationship would be better seen in reverse, with psychoanalysis as a generalised application of aesthetic argument rather than an objective science of the human mind. The analysis of the dream provides no basis for artistic criticism, for it is simply a species of it.
The affinities between psychoanalysis and aesthetics nevertheless remain as important as they are mysterious, and the publication of a book entitled The Aesthetics of Freud will Possibly interest specialists in either field. It is Possible, too, that their interest will survive the strange preamble to the book, in which Mr Spector, with comic exactitude, describes the character and position of every work of art in Freud's study in Maresfield Gardens. But they will have begun to feel certain misgivings by the end of Chapter Two, where it is asserted that The Interpretation of Dreams Will be treated as an autobiography, concerned with "Freud's endeavours to explore his own Oedipal involvements with his father as well as with his mother." The Leonardo is treated in the same way, and what might Otherwise have been regarded as one of the Most important results of the application of Psychoanalysis to art is reduced to the level of a crudely disguised confessional, with little value except as illustrating how Freud himself suffered from the wounds which he discovered in us all. In discussing Freud's theories of art Specfor can rely on a larger measure of sympathy r°rn his readers. For despite a profound interest in art, Freud confined his theoretical
insights to a few scattered remarks which have never been satisfactorily interpreted. But this does not mean that Spector is right in showing so little interest in the truth or meaning of what Freud says. Freud envisaged art as an expression of profound experiences, but this conception was tempered by a severe classicism, according to which the virtues of art reside in inexorability rather than arbitrariness, in reality rather than fantasy, in clear convention rather than obscure self-exposure. Surely this combination of views calls for an explanation, and suggests an underlying vision of art which cannot be passed over as one quirk among many in Freud's own emotional history. Throughout his aimless and finicky discussion of Freud's remarks Spector remains exasperatingly aloof from the points at issue. It is seldom clear how much he accepts and how much he rejects, and when it is clear, the reasoning is shallow and unconvincing. In disputing Freud's explanation of the pose of Michelangelo's Moses Spector simply ignores the dramatic characteristics that interested Freud. He rests his case entirely on the existence of a previous design, and reduces the significance of the striking pose to something merely formal. The point at which Freud's psychology makes contact with aesthetics is ignored altogether.
Certainly one can agree with Spector in thinking that Freud neglected the objective aspect of works of art in favour of psychological considerations. But in what sense is this a natural consequence of psychoanalytic method, and in what sense are the objective and the psychological aspects of a work of art distinct? It is unsatisfactory to be told, after 160 pages of scholarly jottings, that "psychoanalysis as a technique has contributed little to the field of aesthetics." If that is so, why write a book about the aesthetics of Freud? Spector goes on to conclude that psychoanalysis has had more influence on the practice than on the theory of art, but once again his arguments are extremely feeble. The two examples he chooses — Magritte's painting Le Viol, and Joyce's Finnegan's Wake — are cited as instances of the " condensation " which Freud attributed to dreams. But " condensation " has always been a feature of art, and the particular forms of it that occur in Surrealist painting and in the works of Joyce owe more to nineteenth century Symbolism than to The Inter
pretation of Dreams.
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