Psychoanalytic Criticism

The text states that:“If psychoanalysis can help us better understand human behavior, it must be able

to help us better understand literary texts, (and art) which is about human behavior.”

Freud’s Ice Berg

The Unconscious…*storehouse of painful experiences, emotions, wounds, fears, guilty desire and unresolved conflicts*comes into being when we are very young through repression*until we find a way to know and acknowledge to ourselves the true cause of our repressed wounds, fears, guilty desire and unresolved conflicts we hang onto them in disguised, distorted and self-defeating ways.*desires not to recognize or change our destructive behaviors because we have formed our identities around them.

Stephanie Skalisky Another Day in...Surrealist School Date 1987-1997

Defenses:The processes by which the contents of our unconscious are kept in our unconscious…in other words…they are the processes by which we keep the repressed repressed in order to avoid knowing what we feel we can’t handle knowing. *selective memory *denial *avoidance *displacement *projection *regression*under ordinary circumstances keep us unaware of our unconscious experience, and our anxiety, even if it is somewhat prolonged or recurrent

• Standing Woman• Giacometti, Alberto,...• 1953

Le Surrealism Book

Andre Breton

Poem-ObjectAndré Breton 1941

Carved wood bust of a man, oil lantern, framed photograph, toy boxing gloves and paper mounted on drawing board.

Rene Magritte Sensational News

1926We have access to our unconscious, if we know how to use it, through our dreams and through any creative activities we engage in because both our

dreams and our creativity, independent of our conscious will or desire, draw directly on the unconscious.

Dreams and Dreams Symbols

• During sleep our unconscious is free to express itself, and it does so in our dreams.

• Even in our dreams there is some censorship, some protections against frightening insights into our repressed experiences and emotions, and that takes the form of dream displacement.

• It may be helpful to think of the dream’s manifest content as a kind of dream symbolism that can be interpreted much the way we interpret symbols of any kind.

• There are some images that tend to have the same symbolic meaning from dreamer to dreamer, as least if those dreamers are members of the same culture.

Joan Miro, Personages in the Night

These unconscious desires find symbolic expression in art as in dreams. Art is sublimation, the translation of instinctual desires into higher aims, and the goal of psychoanalytic criticism is to reveal the hidden content of the work that underlies and

determines its manifest content.Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown,

University of Toronto

• Dali’s “Old Age, Adolescence and Infancy” The Three Ages. 1940

Surrealism and Dreams• Each person we dream about

is really a part of our own psychological experience that we project during the dream onto a “stand in”.

• Dreams about children almost always reveal something about our feelings toward ourselves or toward the child that is still within us and probably still wounded in some way.

• Male imagery (phallic images) may represent sex, aggression or both.

• Female imagery may represent maternal control or a need for nurturing.

• Water, (fluid, changeable, soothing, dangerous, often deeper than it looks) can represent sexuality, emotions, or the realm of the unconscious.

• Water also is related to our experience in the womb…so dreams about water may relate to our relationship with our mother.

• Dreams about buildings may relate to the institution that the building represents for the dreamer.

Woman, Old Man, and Max Ernst Paris 1923,

Instead of using psychoanalysis to cure themselves of any disturbances, the surrealists saw the unconscious as a wellspring of untapped creative ideas. "A dream that is not interpreted is like a letter that is not opened" is a famous quote from Freud. The surrealists were less interested in

interpretation of their dream symbols than they were in the expressive capacity of such states.(eyecone art-modern surrealism web site)

Jackson PollockPainting-1945

Telephone Receiver Cover in LobsterDali, Salvador, 1904-1989

According to the display caption at Tate Gallery: Dali drew a close analogy between food and sex.

Joys and Enigmas of a Strange Hour Giorgio de Chirico

Freud’s Death DriveBiological Drive-psychological and physical self destruction.

• This is Freud’s attempt to explain individuals intent on destroying themselves and warring nations.

• Death relates to our fear of abandonment and occurs to different degrees and with different results in each individual.

Jackson PollockUntitled

1943

She-WolfJackson Pollock1943

In suggesting that human beings have a death drive, Freud’s attempt was to account for the alarming degree of self-destructive behavior he saw both in individuals, who seemed bent on destroying themselves psychologically if not physically, and in whole nations, whose constant wars and internal conflicts could be viewed as little other than a form of mass suicide.

The Meaning of Sexuality*Freud called this drive eros and placed it in opposition to thanatos, the death drive.*For psychoanalysis, there is no meaningful difference between normal and abnormal, and the issue isn’t one of moral vs immoral behavior; there are merely psychological differences among individuals, and the issue is one of nondestructive vs destructive behavior.*Concerns the relationship of the superego (social values and taboos we internalize), id (psychological reservoir of our instincts, our libido or sexual energy), and the ego (conscious self that experiences the external world through the senses and plays referee between the id and superego).Dali, Salvador The Dream of Venus: costume design Date 1939

Lacanian PsychoanalysisFrom the Art Review: Who is Jacques Lacan…John Haber in New York City

In his theory, the unconscious works like a language. The mind teems with desires that grow real only when translated into symbols, as in Freud’s device of free association. Like words in a language, the associations are arbitrary.

Marc Chagall

The Living Room by Balthus1966

We Are the Dead MenAlbert Tucker1940

Conversations Among the RuinsGeorgio De Chirico

Victor Brauner-1947“Each painting that I make is projected from the deepest sources of my anxiety….”

The painter’s notebook, given to Max Pol Fouchet

Title unknownTeitge, Thomas J.1978

Idaho artist.

Anthony Aziz and Sammy Cucher

Dystopia Series-Chris 1994

Anthony Aziz and Sammy CucherDystopia Series-Lynn

Anthony Aziz and Sammy CucherDystopia Series-Ken

Equivocal ColorsYves Tanguy1943

Yves Tanguy was inspired to make art by the inner world of dreams and the subconscious mind. Rather than reflecting the external world.

Kelly EllsworthAutomatic DrawingInfluenced by the Surrealist movement, but he never claimed any specific style of movement.

"...just because I don't know the

meaning of my art, does not mean it has no meaning..." S.D

Object Number One

• 1937• Oil on panel• 13.78 in x 10.63 in

The Burning Giraffe

Object Number Two

Leonard Meiselman"Genocide" 2007

“Whenever I feel confused and hurt, I try to get into my studio. If I can make some marks with paint or pencil I can get closer to my feelings and I seem to understand things better. The process of paintings reveals me to myself.”

http://www.lmeiselman.com

Object Number Three

What the Water Gave Me.

Frida Kahlo1938