Hanna Segal\'s Psychoanalytic Approach to Aesthetics

¶ … psychoanalytic as portrayed by H. Segal. It has sources.

Psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics can best be understood by understanding the theory/ies that guide us on the study of this particularly complex discipline. The theory and guidelines of psychoanalytic approach enable us to offer some insight into the worlds of literature, art and music, and on the other hand, it also allows us to better understand artists' perception and inner approaches as he applies them to portray his feelings. Psychoanalytic approach also enables us to understand the artists' aesthetic experiences as he or she conjures up his perception and response thereof, interpretation and meaning, and his or her thoughts and feelings. Primarily divided into applied psychoanalysis and clinical psychoanalysis, the discipline of psychoanalytic aesthetics has been studied and commented upon by famous names including Melaine Klein, Hanna Segal, Wilfred Brion, Donald Meltzer, Donald Winnicott and Marion Milner on the clinical aspects. While equally famous names of psychoanalysts including Adrian Strokes, Anton Ehrenzweig, Peter Fuller and Richard Wollheim have studied and commented from the psychoanalytic aesthetics' applied or non-clinical perspective.

Then there is the role of psychoanalysis in the study of aesthetics that is yet another area that demands an equal study on the psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics. Briefly speaking, psychoanalysis provides a detailed understanding of the human mind, and its complex working methods. In clinical language, we can thus say that psychoanalysis provides both the metapsychological and a clinical theory. Psychoanalysis also provides the dynamic, economic, structural, adaptive and developmental perspectives of the human mind, as well as a very highly sensitive approach that includes both the portrayal of the different meanings through the use of intricate wordings applying language as a medium of expression, as well as through the materialistic expressions of the visual arts.

Aesthetics, on the other hand studies three different, yet overlapping areas: the particular nature of an artists' creative process and his experience/s; the interpretation of art; and the nature of the aesthetic encounter.

Though a vast and equally complex discipline, psychoanalytic aesthetics can neither be covered in a single paper, not is it possible to comment, let alone briefly mention the works, criticisms of each and every psychoanalyst, whether belonging to the clinical field or the non-clinical or non-practicing field. The following paper will thus only focus on the comments of clinician Hanna Segal's psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics in general and particularly his quotes on creation and recreation as he notes, "The essence of the aesthetic creation is a resolution of the central depressive situation and that the main factor in the aesthetic experience is the identification with this process" H. Segal, (1981) p. 204. And, commenting on all artists, Segal says, "all creation is really a recreation of a once-loved and once whole, but now lost and ruined object, a ruined internal world and self. It is when the world within us is destroyed, when it is dead and loveless, when our loved ones are in fragments, and we ourselves in helpless despair -- it is then that we must recreate our world anew, reassemble the pieces, infuse life into dead fragments, and recreate life." (1981 p. 190).

Critique on Creation and Re-Creation

Melaine Klein and Donald Winnicott (Klein; Winnicott) both belonging to the fields of clinical psychoanalysis, have noted that the artist takes on the roles of a critic and an audience at the same time, thus diminishing the gap between the art object, that is the work of art, and that of the artists' private world of fantasy. The result of the attainment of this peculiar dual status for the artist is the line of thoughts created by the artist 'with' the object, rather than 'about' the object of art, as would have been the case if the artist had been restricted to a singular status. Kleinian approach thus primarily concerns art with the aesthetic qualities within the art work, as also noted by Langer (1953) and Dewey (1934), both of who commented on the processes in art with those of as esthetic feelings of the artists.

Aesthetic creation has always been seen as a product of the tormented soul. Artist in every civilization is a unique individual endowed with unique experiences. Moreover artists are sensitive then ordinary individuals, they have a different perspective. Though artists and the work of art retained a high status in society, artists and the aesthetic creation was brought into any critical analysis before the nineteenth century. The art theory mainly contended itself to historical description of the works of art and the philosophical debate which mainly concentrated on the issue of beauty. The work of art was itself treated as a given and one did not ask how and where it came from and why it was there in the first place. Creativity the artistic process was also considered an innate and natural quality possessed by certain individuals. There was no systematic study of the artistic process and the aesthetic creation. It was perhaps the psychoanalytical studies of art which has created a lot of attention to the question of the meaning of art. Sigmund Freud was one of the first theorists to have addressed the artwork and presented it in relation to the life of the individual. For Freud a work of art meant something, his method of analysis was one which studied the person who made it and through them what it means to the general man. Psychoanalytic theory of art provides an in-depth insight into works of literature, art and music; it attempts to decipher the artistic creative process and most significantly provides an expansive understanding of the aesthetic experience itself.

There is much truth is the saying "little divides genius from a madman," artistic creation are often termed as the work of genius. Creative artists often display the narcissistic traits but at the same time they are exceptionally mature and productive in their work. The question faced by the psychoanalysts is what constitutes this unique behavior, why an artist is different from general masses and what is the essence of aesthetic creation. Hannah Segal in her book "A Psychoanalytic Approach to Aesthetics" (1981), gives a definition of the aesthetic creation, she says "The essence of the aesthetic creation is a resolution of the central depressive situation and that the main factor in the aesthetic experience is the identification with this process" [Segal, 1981]. In a context that refers to the work of all artists, Segal says, "all creation is really a recreation of a once-loved and once whole, but now lost and ruined object, a ruined internal world and self. It is when the world within us is destroyed, when it is dead and loveless, when our loved ones are in fragments, and we ourselves in helpless despair -- it is then that we must recreate our world anew, reassemble the pieces, infuse life into dead fragments, recreate life" [Segal, 1981]. Segal's analysis is can be seen sharply in contrast with the Freudian concept of 'unconscious' phantasy life and symbolic processes. Freud in his "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" maintains that unconscious conflicts concerning powerful biological derives, such as sexual impulses and even more archaic drives, provided the motivation for creative effort in terms of the energy that must be harnessed for productive enterprise [Freud, 1907].

In his Lectures Freud discusses the concept of symptom building, he explains that neurotic play an important role, as they generate fantasy in contrast to the otherwise forbidden needs. Freud makes similarities of the neurotics with the artistic work; he contends that artists too seek to fulfill via their art needs they cannot satisfy in a direct way. The only difference according to Freud in both these workings is that artists possess a capacity to mould their fantasies in such a way that they not only work for themselves but also to the general masses. Thus works of art have a wide popularity and they attract other persons too and serve as a satisfaction for their repressed needs. Artistic works thus serve as a useful tool to balance one's own depression and turmoil. To get consolation and relieve their pains the people have good reason to admire artists and honor them. With the result of this the artists become a celebrated individual in the society, having a high status and possess a natural ability to create such objects of art. In this way the artists finds in the end not only his fantasy satisfaction for socially impossible and morally forbidden needs, sometimes he even finds real satisfaction for these needs through the workings of his fantasies. As Freud writes: "The artist has now attained through his fantasy, what before he only had attained in his fantasy: honor, power and the love of women" [Freud, 1907]. Freud in his essay on Leonardo introduces the concept of 'pathography'. According to Freud this concept of pathography does not make the works of an artist intelligible but is entails in the in-depth analysis of the works of an artists not from a point of the view of the biographer but a pathographer who unearths the truth about the works of art. Thus according to Freud a pathographer treats the artist as a patient and his works of art are analyzed in terms of these psychological considerations. The pathographer's works as an objective observer is of one who makes an analysis and makes a relation between the object of art and the artist. The work of art shed's light on the life and the inner conflicts of the artist, his repressed anxieties which are usually of an infantile nature [Nicole, 1998].

Pathography attempted to look insight the life of an artist through his work. The pathographic model also attempts to find out that to what an extent the works of art depict the inner psyche and conflicts of its creator and whether or not the work of art is genuine and sincere. A work of art is usually defined as a projection of the inner state of artists mind, the work of art is the externalization of the artist's inner thoughts. To a pathographer the most important question is that what are the underlying feelings, psychic states or desires are being expressed in the work of art? It is a common view even today that artists are persons with intense and deep conflicts and the term pathography further implies this view. Thus a pathographer according to Freud is ale to uncover the inner conflicts, anxieties, repressions and complexes of the artists after analyzing his works. It does not make any contribution to the aesthetic value and only tells the psycho-history of the artists and its reflection in his work. As Freud writes "What Psychoanalysis was able to do was to take inter-relations between the impressions of the artist's life, his chance experiences, and his works and from them construct his [mental] constitution and the instinctual impulses at work in it - that is to say, that part of him he shared with all men" [Freud, 1910]. Though this psychological study is criticized for many reasons, the merit of this approach according to Freud is that in reveals that "phantasies" expressed by the artists in the artworks. His study of Leonardo and Dostoevsky led him for the first time to describe the narcissistic trait in the artists and also introduced many other aspects of infantile psycho-sexuality in artists. Through his study of Dostoevsky and Leonardo, Freud also describes the universal theme of Oedipus complex and the splitting of the personality in artists. According to Freud an artists is an individual who turns away from the reality of life "because he cannot come to terms with the renunciation of instinctual satisfaction which it at first demands" [Freud, 1910]. In addition artist is an individual who cannot control his erotic ambition and lets its play in the life of phantasy. Freud further says: "He finds the way back to reality, however, from this world of phantasy by making use of his special gifts to mould his phantasies into truths of a new kind, which are valued by men as precious reflections of reality. Thus in a certain fashion he actually becomes the hero, the king, the creator, or the favorite he desired to be, without following the long, roundabout path of making real alterations in the external world. But he can only achieve this because other men feel the same dissatisfaction as he does with the renunciation demanded by reality, and because that dissatisfaction, which results from the replacement of the pleasure-principle by the reality principle, is itself part of reality" [Freud, 19

This is the same approach that Freud made in his "Introductory Lectures," the artist is driven by pleasure and his way of achieving is unique. It is the purely formal values of art which gives us pleasure and according to Freud it does not go further than that. The artist uses his art work as a bait to catch fish, an incentive bonus or fore pleasure. Though Freud discuses the inner conflicts of the artists his theory of art does not delve into the innermost secret or the mysterious ability of the artists. While the Freudian unconscious is structured by the desire and repression, Melanie Klein in her analysis concentrate on the infant's psychic pain, on the process of splitting and on his early capacity for a rather limited form of sublimation [Klein, 1989]. In the Freudian analysis the drive has a source and an aim but no object, Klein maintains that the new born drives are directed from the outset toward an object. The object is the mother and Klein depicts the bond between the object and the ego. For Klein the root of human anxiety can be seen in the child early development, through her close analysis of the children's play she reveals the presence in very young children of complex systems of phantasy. According to Klein the depressive position in the infant is reached when the infant realizes that his love and hate are directed to the same object, the mother and her body. This is the time according to Klein that the child begins to develop and experience mixed feelings and this has consequences on lot of things and other object of experience too. Klein says that the unconscious gets really disturb by this situation and there is an impulse in the unconscious to repair the objects felt to have been damaged by destructive attacks of hate [Klein, 1989]. Klein says that this is inherent in the depressing feeling and also believed that anxiety originated in aggression. In her book "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" Klein considered death drive to be the primary agent for our distress. Thus the focus on anxiety, the inner threats and the working of the death instinct have an important effect on the child. For Klein these concepts were important in the formulation of the phantasy and also the nature of creativity.

Klein main argument about the artistic creativity and the urge to create was that it was rooted in the anxiety and the urge to make good the destructive and sadistic phantasies set in motion by the death instinct. The depressive position and the concept of the part and whole object marked the break with Freudian analysis. Thus Klein makes an important step by arguing about the contribution of the anxiety a depressive drive in artistic creations. Klein indicated the importance of the depressive feelings in the elaboration process of mourning that follows the recognition of the separateness of the Loved Object [Klein, 1988]. According to Klein this process constitutes the basis for the development of the ability to symbolize. According to Klein the process of symbol formation and the unconscious fantasy reaches deep into the heart of meaning itself. Thus for Klein the artistic creation represents a separation, from the object of love, which the mother and her body. This separation creates an anxiety and a depressing behavior which on the other hand results in symbol formation and the unconscious phantasies. Thus the root of the artistic creation is the separation from the maternal protection and it entails in a kind of mourning and reparation through the works of art [Nicola, 1998]. In addition Klein also stresses on the death drive which is also a source of distress and depression. This position was also maintained by Donald Winnicott (1971), according to Winnicott the artist main attempt is to create something out of nothing or non-being, therefore the artists must face the non-being. In order to create something new he must separate the world known in order to create something which is new and original. The attempts of separation and of individual identity are prevalent in every creative process. Winnicott says that when an artist confronts the nothingness, the blank page or something equivalent to the that, this event unconsciously represent separation from the maternal introject, resulting in a loss of maternal protection [Winnicott, 1971].

According to Winnicott this loss of maternal protection is coupled with loss of immortality in mother protective embrace. This 'loss' is not without negative consequences; it produces in the conscious or unconscious the annihilating anxiety and profound depression. This depression brings about a sense of meaninglessness and non-being. In other words an artist when attempts to create something new out of nothing, if forced to confront death, what Winnicott calls his biological finiteness, he needs more than self-confidence and thus he adopts. The need to create something new is fundamental; it helps in replacing the anxiety and depression. It also is a route to put the pieces together to empathize with oneself. But the artists cannot create something out of nothing and this presents a dilemma, thus according to Winnicott creativity entails in adaptation, or mixing diverse experiences [Winnicott, 1971]. According to Winnicott creativity is the process or an ability which mixes the known ideas in a variety of ways, the unusual association of the ideas and concept is known as creativity. This process of association of ideas and concepts is such that the general masses relate to it, it also creates new experiences. The artist places an extremely high value on the uniqueness of his ideas, feelings, perception, thoughts and experiences. Through creative mediums these ideas are exhibited in the public and the ability to create such an idea which related to the public in general makes the artistic value of the idea. Though Winnicott does not mention how these ideas are popularize among the masses and what is their value, he does mention the narcissistic traits and the ego-centric grandiosity to fuel to empower his creative process [Wolson, 1995]. Winnicott believes that this narcissistic tendency is largely a manic defense against the artists potentially disruptive depression reaction to separation from the maternal introjects during the creative process. The artist has a fragile and defensive nature, under the sway of omnipotence, the artist becomes subjected to the delusion that creativity occurs through instant, magical will power and not through persistent effort, painstaking discriminations and complex technical skills [Winnicott, 1971]. Klein too believed that omnipotence as a manic defense against the experience of envy, dependency and separation during the creative process and was therefore an impediment to artistic creativity. Omnipotence was seen as undermining the main creative objective which was to restore the destroyed maternal object through mourning and reparation while working through the depressive position [Wolson, 1995].

Hannah Segal in her book "A psychoanalytic Approach to Aesthetics" gives the Kleinian aesthetic formulation as precise form and theoretical form. According to Segal the psychoanalysis of aesthetics in the past have limited itself to the unconscious phantasy and the formation of the symbolism. Though she says that this discovery is most important in the psychoanalysis and has shown the universal infantile anxieties which are expressed in different art works such as Freud's 'The Theme of the Three Caskets' (1913) and Klein's 'Infantile Anxiety Situations' (1929). However Segal maintains that these analyses have left one of the central problems of the aesthetics which according to her is the concern and the nature of good art and how it can be distinguish from other human practices and also the concept of bad art. Freud says that the phantasy life of artist's shapes their artistic work but he does not gives a proper account of why people share in his daydreams or his phantasies [Nicola, 1998]. Freud's suggests that we share with artist's phantasies and his dreams as it serves as a release of tension, because the phantasies also reveal our own phantasies. Freud was not much concerned about the formal qualities of art, in his essay on Leonardo he does not indulge in any analysis why Leonardo was a great painter, his analysis was of a pathographer who observes the work of art in relation to artists life and makes an analysis of his inner conflicts and desires.

Segal believes that through Klein's concept of depressive position we can separate the psyche of the artist and the specific factors which enable him to produce a work of art. This she believes will further enhance our understanding of the aesthetic value of the work of art and of the aesthetic experience of the audience [Segal, 1981]. Segal elaborates using the clinical material and the examples from the literature to argue about the two major concerns the distinction between the good and the bat art and the nature of the audience aesthetic experience. In order to do this Segal repeats Klein's position of the infant struggle from the fragmentation which is basically a world which is split into part objects, to an awareness of the people around his as whole persons. The child according to Segal comes to see the whole object as having both good and bad qualities. Segal says that the whole object is loved and is introjected and forms the core of an integrated ego. However because of this situation a new form of anxiety begins in the infant, the persecution he felt from his bad objects now becomes a fear of loss of the loved whole project, both in the external and inside him [Nicola, 1998]. As Klein points out that it is the memory of the good object which evoke the wish to restore and recreate the lost and damaged object. Segal says that it at this stage that a more distinct and inner sense of outer reality develops. Thus from this point-of-view the artistic process cannot be viewed as regressive and neurotic. Indeed, the urge to restore, repair and recreate the world anew is inseparable from the development of a realistic relationship to the external world, and this lies at the heart of subsequent "authentic" creativity [Segal, 1981].

According to Segal one of the main aims of the artists is to create a world of his own, as Winnicott (1971) also held that the need to create something out of nothing is the main impulse. Segal says that though the artists believes that he is engaged in reproducing the external world, the fact is that the artist is using the external world to rebuild his own inner self. One of the themes of Segal is of recovering the past and defragmentation of the pieces. Segal mentions Proust's "Remembering of Things Past" which is a good example of artists attempt to recover the past. Proust in his book describes his own process of creativity, for him the purpose of his writing was to bring back all the loved ones back to life, his parents, his grandmother and other real characters are brought back to life in the book. Klein says that it is only the lost objects and the dead objects which can be made into a work of art. As Segal says "It is only by renouncing that one can re-create what one loves', implying 'that a creation is really a re-creation of a once loved and once whole, but now lost and ruined object, a ruined internal world and self" [Segal, 1981]. Segal says that one of the important aspects of the artistic creativity is the artist's ability to work the depressive position work for him; Segal says that when this depressive position is not worked through properly it results in unsuccessful artistic product. To prove this Segal gives clinical examples of the artists who have suffered inhibitions in relation to their work because they could not work through their depression and their anxieties. Segal gives an example of a girl who had a talent for painting but because of her rivalry with her mother, she had to give up the painting. After some time the girl began doing handicrafts and decorative work, but she realized this was not moving and is not significant aesthetically. But the girl would deny in a manic way that this caused her concern, When Segal interpreted these sadistic attacks on her father the girl recalled a dream. In her dream the girl saw a picture of a wooden man in shop; the picture overwhelmed her emotions and her admiration and thought that this picture represented the essence of life. She thought that if one could only paint like that one would be a successful artist [Nicola, 1998].

According to Segal the problem with the girl is that she is unable to acknowledge the depression over the wounding of her father. If she acknowledges that she would be able to express her painting and achieve real art. Segal argues that artists have an acute sense of his or her own inner reality which he does not confuse with the external world. In addition the artists have a good sense and awareness of his artistic medium. Segal's adds that an artist must become highly sensitive to the nature, needs, limitations and possibilities of his material be it words, paint, clay or wood [Segal, 1981]. Commenting on the artistic experience Segal says that it is the artist who can help us understand the aesthetic experience. The artist according Segal wants to convey the whole creating process to the audience and he wants the audience to relate to his dreams, phantasy and his experiences. Freud also recognized this phenomenon and believed that there was something about the artist's state of mind which was implicated in the aesthetic experience of the audience, Freud says: "what grips us so powerfully can only be the artist's intention, in so far as he has succeeded in expressing it in his work and in getting us to understand it. I realize that this cannot be merely a matter of intellectual comprehension; what he aims at is to awaken in us the same emotional attitude, the same mental constellation as that which in him produced the impetus to create" [Freud, 19?

]

Freud however does not go further and he mainly focuses on the content of the phantasies, it is the Kleinian theory was able to more fully the relationship of artistic experience to the audience. Segal for example does this when she observes that the 'aesthetic emotion proper, is: "The pleasure derived from a work of art and unique in that it can only be obtained through a work of art, is due to an identification of ourselves with the work of art as a whole and with the whole internal world of the artist as represented by his work. In my view, all aesthetic pleasure includes an unconscious reliving of the artist's experience of creation" [Segal, 1981]. We can see this in the classical tragedies, the spectators relates himself to the author of the tragedy, with the events in the tragedy and the world that the author has created. The spectator is able to witness the devastation of the main protagonist; the spectator puts himself in the position of the main protagonist. Thus in this way the spectator faces the same ruins and devastation as the main character, it is also recognition that the author has faced the same reality of his broken inner world and despite this pain he has been able to create a real work or art. The author out of this chaos and destruction is able to bring back the fragments together to make a whole again. Thus through the creation of his art, the artists faces his depressive anxieties and allows the audience to experience their own. Thus in Segal's account there is no distinction between creativity and aesthetic value for both is the state of depressiveness. In addition Segal also tells us that the authentic creative phantasies are developed and brought in front by the artists through the depressive realization of dependency and the acknowledgement of guilt and loss. This on the other hand results in impulse and urge to repair and restore which the artist feels has been damaged [Nicola, 1998].