Being in analysis: on the intimate art of transference

2019

Journal of Art Historiography, 2012

The previously unpublished conversation between Ernst Gombrich and Joseph Sandler in 1988 constitutes an exciting meeting of minds in the field of art history and psychoanalysis, respectively. The two discuss 'the artist' as a term; the impulse inherent in the creation of art; taste; and the affective power of art, particularly in the light of the work of Freud and their shared friend, Ernst Kris. Gombrich seems both comfortable with the psychoanalytic theory they discuss, and also keen to steer the discussion in certain directions – quoting from Cicero, Van Gogh and I.E. Richards. At the point at which questions are opened up to the audience, the most interesting thing of note is the revelation that Gombrich was a member of 'The Image Group', which research has revealed was more accurately known as 'The Imago Group,' a society of psychoanalysts and dedicated analysands, of which Gombrich's membership is unusual. As Gombrich is often considered reticent a...

Since its establishment as a profession, psychoanalytic practitioners have struggled with understanding the true nature of their work. Many remain devoted to Freud's medical model and aspire to establish a logical-positivistic basis for psychoanalysis. Others view the field more broadly, and consider psychoanalysis a distinctively humanistic discipline. This paper suggests that the bifurcation may be resolved by focusing on clinical as opposed to theoretical psychoanalysisan emphasis that illuminates its artistic elements. Psychoanalysts' work may be likened to performance artists, primarily because they work to create an experience in their patients. Additionally, they give with their psyche-somas, reminiscent of how actors use their bodies as instruments; they face each session in a fashion akin to how painters face the white canvas or writers the blank page, and; they choose from an infinite number of possible models for co-constructing ways of understanding their patients' experiences. Regardless of past or VIEWING PSYCHOANALYSIS AS A PERFORMANCE ART 2 future theoretical differences, psychoanalysts provide creative, transformative experiences most accurately described as transformational encounters. Psychoanalysis is a verb, a process. While it alleviates pain caused by various mental disorders, it also assists persons in discovering their individuality, authenticity, and singularity. In support of the artistic foundation of the psychoanalytic process, the paper includes three scenes that demonstrate how patients experience precipitous, essential breaks in their repetitive, internal dramas, resulting in them experiencing themselves as beings, capable of change. It thereby demonstrates how psychoanalytic

This is the transcript of a talk given by Martin Creed at the conference 'Making

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2020

Vera, a middle-aged, bright and skillful mental health professional, consistently maintained throughout the first years of her analysis that she had no imagination and, indeed, exhibited during the early years of work a limited, stunted capacity for truly abstract symbolic thinking, emotional expression and playfulness. I report developments within the fourth year of Vera's psychoanalysis, currently in its eighth year, during which Vera spontaneously began to draw objects, at first copying and eventually drawing from imagination. For a time, Vera was critical of her work, which was actually quite good, and experienced great difficulty acknowledging and appreciating the many internal dimensions and interests that her work revealed. This watershed development required an equally gradual "interpretive welcoming" on the analyst's part so as to contain Vera's transition from preoccupation with concrete, technical aspects of her drawings toward a more mature thirst for the aesthetic, symbolism and play. At some point, analysand and analyst began to play with cognate associations surrounding the Hebrew word for art-o'ma'nut-combined with the image of the nursing mother (o'me'net), and fidelity, trust and faith (e'mu'nah). This creative countertransference enactment eloquently reflected the spectrum of shared transformative aesthetic-imaginative processes within both analytic partners, or the emergence of the dyadic psychoanalytic artist. Discussion elucidates what has been achieved and what remains to be achieved.

2019

In Plato’s Republic, when Socrates was trying to explain that what painters do, He said that to Glaukon ‘Take a mirror and hold it everywhere. Suddenly you made the sun, the stars, the world, self, the house, plants, all living entities’ Is it really so easy for the artist to reflect the world and the human? The purpose of art is clear despite all its undefinitions. Art wants to understand and explain human being. Because the greatest enigma about human life has always been about itself. It is still another matter that art can fulfill this function. For example, at the point of time killing, why is reading books a much more intellectual action than watching television? Both are fictional, created. However, there are differences between the pleasure a person receives while reading and watching TV. The book is suitable for my communication. It triggers the imagination because there is no visuality. As long as Oguz Atay's doesn't give details about novel’s protagonist, I can describe it in my head. But television gives me a ready product and prevents me from dreaming. Here is the impressive, the most important feature of art is that the reader / viewer can dream. We can come under the influence of the work as we can imagine. Because, as Freud argues, adults make daydreams to satisfy their desires. In this way, the artist reflects the daydreams into his work with free creativity. Freud's psychoanalytic theory is undoubtedly one of the greatest turning points of the 20th century. Of course, its effect has not only survived the 20th century, but it has spread to every aspect of academic life and daily life in the 21st century. In this context, I will consider how Freud deals with art and especially creativity through psychoanalysis.

This work intends to investigate the use of psychoanalytical theory within the aesthetic and critical contemporary art field. To this purpose, it focuses on two philosophers who have become significant in our time: the art critic Hal Foster and the art historian Georges Didi-Huberman. This study aims to show how far the concepts generated in psychoanalytic praxis allowed interpretations that disrupt the traditional aesthetics field. This type of analysis is possible once we abandon the paradigm of "applied psychoanalysis", which is still current in non-clinical setting. Finally, the proposal wants to argue that the category of the amorphous may clarify certain aesthetic experiences that range from the modernity of art through postmodernity.

Creativity Research Journal, 2020

What happens in the mind of an artist as she creates a new work of art? In Creative States of Mind (2019), visual artist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist Patricia Townsend approaches this long-standing question from two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, she fleshes out an experiential account of artistic creativity by drawing from her own and other artists' personal reflections on the creative process. More specifically, and very commendably, she uses interviews (conducted by herself) with thirty-three professional artists to identify several experiential themes/states that figure prominently in art-making. On the other hand, Townsend draws from psychoanalytical theorization -especially from the socalled British Independent tradition (including, for example, D. W. Winnicott, Marion Milner, and Christopher Bollas) -to investigate the psychodynamic mechanisms and processes that underlie the specified creative states. On the whole, Townsend's analysis is based on a loose method of triangulation: she brings the interviews, her own experience, and psychoanalytical theory into a mutual conversation that aims to both apply and refine the distinctive contributions of each source to the understanding of artistic creativity.

The International Journal of Indian Psychology, 2021

Sigmund Freud's method of psychoanalysis has not only been fundamental for the discipline of psychology, but also for analysing works of art. Freud, beginning with his oft-cited psychobiography of Leonardo da Vinci, introduced the concept of studying an artist and its praxis from a psychic space; a concept that was revolutionary for its society that up until then experienced artworks through a romantic lens. The creation of a work of art was no longer simply the product of an intuitive 'genius,' but also the culmination of psychological factors like suppressed wishes and instinctual desires, familial relationships, childhood experiences, and dream sequences and fantasies, among others. Not only has such psychoanalysis inspired the Surrealist art movement, but also helped scholars in studying works of art, and their artists. In this paper, using Freudian principles, I psychoanalyse eight works of art produced in and beyond the ambit of Surrealism. With such an exercise, my aim here is to examine the creation of the self-portrait (and by extension, the image of an artist's self) as a site of multiplicities. It is a site that is the product of an unconscious that is being constantly shaped, right from the artist's childhood. For every artist, I have provided a small vignette that explains their oeuvre, its influences and aims, and how we can study the subtextual elements of their influential unconscious. With my examination, we can witness the projection of the self in a postmodern world where such sites are by their very nature, deconstructed, transient, and multiple.

Free Associations, 2014

The 'Making Space -psychoanalysis and artistic process' conference provided an opportunity to open up, illuminate and rigorously explore the relationship between unconscious processes and artistic production. 1 Since its inception, psychoanalysis has claimed privileged access to the unconscious and, along with this, has made certain knowledge claims regarding art and creativity. By bringing the field of psychoanalysis together with an exploration of 'artistic process' the conference opened up the chance to explore the intersections between the two and investigate the often seemingly mercurial nature of 'creativity'.