Hyder Husain Arastu

Tag: philosophy

  • Social Media and Nimrod of the Giganti

    Social Media and Nimrod of the Giganti

    Since this is not meant to be for an academic audience, forgive the lack of detailed argumentation. I have said all that is essential, the rest is wholly intuitive. Feel free to contact me if you have any objections or questions.

    Vico describes in his Scienza Nuova the principles of the universal history of nations in which are foundational the institutions of religion, burial, and marriage. History to Vico takes place in cycles, moving through the ages of Gods, Heroes, and Men as the Ancient Egyptians describe it. Through these ages nations develop in their corso and fall in their ricorso.

    The corso of the first nations whose history we have begins after the universal flood. Of the period between the universal flood and the first thunder from which came the first word – Jove, there came the giganti.

    In Chapter III of the second book of the New Science we are acquainted with their origin: “Mothers abandoned their children”, he says, “who had to wallow in their own filth”, these children would absorb the nitrous salts from their filth, and “without that fear of gods, fathers, and teachers which chills and benumbs even the most exuberant in childhood. They must therefore have grown robust, vigorous, excessively big in brawn and bone, to the point of becoming giants.” (NS 369).

    Vico’s giants seem absolutely absurd to any serious ‘scientific’ inquiry, but we must note that the new science is wholly poetic, operating in the imaginative genera, universal class concepts that “with our civilized natures we [moderns] cannot at all imagine and can understand only by great toil”, to the imaginative genera Vico says the first men reduced “all the particulars appertaining to each genus; exactly as the fables of human times…reasoned out by moral philosophy” (NS 34, 412-427).

    I now attempt an interpretation of the poetic wisdom which speaks of gigantic as describing a particular aspect of the current state of our nations.

    If we are to look at our history, we will see that we cannot at all be in a corso. We are certainly moving towards a barbaric age. The age of Gods is characterized by the first word, Jove. The ricorso of civilization then must be identifiable by a forgetting of Jove, losing the primordial fear that gave birth to ‘reason’. Second, a ricorso will mark the loss of the foundational institutions.

    Nietzsche describes in his work how we have moved past the need for God, or more appropriately, why God has died. Zarathustra remarks “Could it be possible! This old saint has not heard in his forest that God is dead!”.

    The three institutions have as consequence begun to fade.

    Let me not waste more time, and move to describing why we are returning to these Giganti.

    The mothers who have abandoned us are those who have let us roam free within our own thoughts in the forest. The forest that we speak of is the internet, where like the primordial forest we live like beasts, free to pursue our passions in whatever bestial manner we choose to.

    In this primordial forest, we see our filth- those ideas of ours that stem from our passions. Without the fear of God, we are left alone in the forest with these passions and like the excrement that those abandoned babies absorbed nitrous salts from, we absorb the same deranged ideas.

    The idea that it is their own excrement that the babies absorb until they grow until they have become giants, can be understood only through analogy.

    Without Jove, we left alone in the forest absorb our own excrement- social media algorithms which show you only more of that which you look at in a never ending cycle where your darkest appetites are constantly reinforced in a feedback loop- until eventually you become one of the giants like Nimrod (a giant) who in the 1856th year of the world – 200 years after the universal flood in the year 1656 of the world built a tower towards Jove which brought about the confusion of languages.

  • Man’s First Word

    Man’s First Word

    I present here a recollection of a section of a conversation. The flow of thought- I attempt to preserve, but of its accuracy no guarantee is provided. The general ideas discussed remain true.

    This is a heavily condensed version of the conversation that took place, in doing this the transition from one topic to the next is obscured. I have included here only that which I found most interesting.

    As discussion proceeded we happened upon the question of freedom. Why is freedom so valued I wondered, what do people who want freedom really want?, I asked. They cannot wish for anarchy, that would be absurd, because without government there cannot be freedom-

    I could not cultivate my fields if they are constantly a battlefield, no that cannot be it. They must speak of freedom as concerning particulars. Someone who says they wish for freedom must answer what it is they want freedom from – perhaps from a tyrant. That is the freedom they speak of.

    But that is not what anyone says, people want ‘freedom’, not a particular instance of it. This is likely a product of modernity. The christian inversion must hold credit. God became man, this displacement created secular society as it is, the drive towards freedom is a consequence of this. God is no longer distant, if god himself is man, then we are the ones who can choose.

    There is something to that. Nietzsche speaks of it, freedom is a consequence of the slave morality. This provides us the capacity to hold the nobles accountable.

    That seems correct, the heroic kingdoms lacked private law. A personal wrong was not criminal, Aristotle speaks of theft in heroic kingdoms as absent any moral wrong. Its why duels where commonplace. The notion of freedom is certainly a recent one.

    Here I paused and wondered of the origins of the notion of freedom, we discussed briefly the pragmatist conception of freedom. “It really is all language, isn’t it? Conversation all the way down”, I commented at the close of this discussion.

    I asked then of the modern use of freedom, when did we shift from speaking of liberty to speaking of freedom?

    Liberty comes from French.

    Does that come from Liber? As in book?

    Perhaps, the latin may hold some clue. I suspect though that even this takes root in the greek luc, as in lysis, to loosen.

    Interesting, what of freedom? What is free?

    Well German has Frei which I suspect comes from the goddess freya.

    That’s fascinating isn’t it? That concepts stem from the Gods.

    Definitely is.

    The most basic thoughts must hold root in mythos, and mythos must hold answers to our most fundamental truths. Vico speaks of Jove being the first word, Jove. We started with fear. Then isn’t it funny that Freya is what we are after, and not Odin? But why Odin? Why is Odin the most powerful? He could not have been the first, Thor is Jove, isn’t he?

    Not Thor, Tiu, as in Tuesday. The God of the sky, like Zeus and Jupiter. Ju pater… as in Sky Father. They all come from the same sound – zu, ju, tu…

    That can’t be right, lightning is prior to the sky. Lightning was the first word.

    I don’t think so. The first word must have had a reference, lightning was an occurrence, but I suspect it was dusk or dawn, that is what we would have noticed.

    But lightning struck fear, it held an emotional weight that dusk or dawn do not.

    I don’t think so, lightning was noticed yes, but I find it unlikely that it was prior to dawn and dusk. Sure lightning might have elicited more of a response though.

    So lightning is the first thought?

    I wouldn’t say that, but there is definitely something there.

    What separates us from animals? Animals have calls, that’s distinct from our language. Isn’t it interesting that none of our words are simply screams? Because screams already mean something. Words are different.

    That makes so much sense. Thunder. The first word was thunder, not lightning. The sky spoke to us, it screamed at us. It is why we tremble. The lightning accompanies thunder. Once you notice Thunder, it is impossible not to realize lightning, and that it is of the sky. The first word was still Jove, lightning. But Jove does not need to be the most powerful, Jove brought language, but once we had language, we are able to move beyond it.

    bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthur — nuk!

  • Parts, Wholes, and A Thing Greater Than Any That Can Be Conceived

    Parts, Wholes, and A Thing Greater Than Any That Can Be Conceived

    There has crept into my mind a certain skepticism that now takes up the greater part of my thought. I am not unsure that this is a worry I am merely restating and which has been brought up on numerous occasions in many discussions, but given its effect on me, I will share it nevertheless.

    There are parts which make wholes. But it appears to me now that this may not be the case. I will waste little time in explaining my worry, for I think it straightforward.

    If it is the case that it is the parts that make wholes, then statements of the form ‘1+4=5’ must be of the nature that nothing can be learned from them, but it is the case that knowing that ‘1+4=5’ is more than knowing ‘1’ or ‘4’ alone, so it must be the case that something new is added when a ‘truth’ of this kind is learned, it must of course be learned.

    The ‘union’ of particulars then is greater than the particulars themselves, and though it is the particulars that comprise the object, their synthesis results in something greater than their mere union, its is not the case that the summation of ‘1’ and ‘4’ results in simply x = {1,4}, but it is instead something else than contained in x, which seems to go against all intuition.

    So far, I have said little that is of surprise. It is here that I am conflicted, a natural question arises of the limits of this notion of wholes being greater than their parts, and I must inquire as to how far it applies.

    In an attempt to explore what this comprises, I thought it ‘wise’ to approach it negatively, to explore where the notion is not contained. A natural place to start would be one where a statement is made that contains its own self, an analytic judgement. Of course this is entirely unhelpful (even if we were to ignore the problems with the category of judgments on a whole) since analytic judgments do not contain parts and wholes, since they are by their own definition contained in themselves, applying this line of thinking could not yield anything of benefit.

    Since I can conceive of no manner of judgement (thought) wherein it is meaningful to say then that the whole is equal to its parts, I am forced to conclude at this time that this universally applies.

    What occurs now to me is the Cartesian assertion of the third meditation, where it is claimed that an effect must have at least as much formal reality as does the cause, but this cannot hold, since if parts make wholes, and it is the case that the wholes are the effects of their parts, then it is necessarily always the case that every effect is greater than its cause.

    And yet, ironically enough, though I have directed this towards the third meditation, it in effect provides a similar assertion, insofar as it is the conclusion of the extension of this line of thinking is concerned. If it is the case that everything may be conceived of as a part of something, for it cannot be the case that any object we know of can be but a part of something greater, then it must be the case that there is a whole containing every object that is a part of its, and the unity of every part is a synthesis which must be greater than everything conceivable, for it cannot be conceived, we are returned in this inversion to our original assertion.

    HEHE

  • Culture, Schizophrenia, and Madness

    Culture, Schizophrenia, and Madness

    There exists a schism in culture as it is, resulting in its incapability for remaining an object of value.

    There is a notion, the origin of which I will not at this time spend words locating, this notion concerns a certain valuation ascribed to culture, that it is to be preserved. This though is in itself a contradiction, for what culture requires is its own destruction – parallel to the Nietzschian observation on which it is the values that devaluate themselves.

    If a culture holds in regard such ideas as ‘good’ and ‘respect’, then it inevitably falls into contradiction with the history that defines it as culture. That culture is historic is of little debate, that history is characterized by immorality, prejudice against all manner of people is clearer still.

    To preserve culture then is to preserve this history of madness. It itself though is what rejects this, culture then is a dialectic. The only way out of this is an inversion of exactly that which it is, a reconciliation of the schism created through its negation of its own self.

    The manner of surpassing this schizophrenia is its realization. This inversion that occurs as product of the realization though has not yet occurred, for it cannot happen with the individual, but only through the entirety of the culture. A movement that does not rise from within or even without but in which the whole realizes itself.

    So long as this realization remains merely ideal, the schism manifests itself as madness, a hysteria of the masses, the only parallel that comes to mind is that of an ant death circle, when the ant loses its pheromone trail it begins to follow itself resulting in a cycle where its own self is chased until all in the circle kill themselves. This circle is not the product of any single ant, and a single ant who escapes the circle will result neither in the salvation of all others, nor of its own self- in isolation, the ant brings its own death.

    We have forced ourselves into such a circle, existing in a schizophrenia of culture and of progress, both seemingly invoking the other and simultaneously negating it.

    It manifests itself also on the level of the totality that is each particular which partakes in the whole, presenting itself as a dilemma in every social interaction. An impossible choice between doing what one would do in isolation and what society asks of one, neither of these offering any salvation. The realization on the individual level though cannot be cathartic except through a destruction of the self, the individual is forced into madness. All attempts at escape result only in reinforcing this cycle, a constant alienation.

  • On Authenticity

    It is turning out to be that what I speak most of concerns ethics, I am perhaps then deceiving myself in believing that this is not my primary interest… Does that make me inauthentic, and consequently my actions immoral?

    A question that plagues my waking hours at this time is that of authenticity. Within the Aristotelian framework for virtue, to be virtuous is to have your reason disposed towards the kalon (fine), and for your passions to be in harmony with this disposition.

    Further, within this framework, it is the case that to ‘become’ virtuous requires a sort of ‘fake it till you make it’ attitude. That to become virtuous one begins by emulating virtue, analogous to pursuing a craft- in this regard virtue is a craft (tekne).

    But what if reason tells you that to deceive yourself is vice? I cannot but be confident of an awareness of that which is the moral action to take, and this appears to be an orientation towards the kalon; and yet reason asks of me that I do otherwise.

    I am left in a predicament- that either I do that which is kalon, pretending that I do it for the sake of the kalon, and yet with full knowledge that I would prefer to do otherwise; OR, that I act viciously, but do something beneficial.

    Deception cannot be virtuous for it admits of an inadequacy of my own self, and yet to ‘without’ being deceptive to act in a manner that ‘feels’ appropriate is to indulge in what I am confident is vicious.

    How does one reach a reconciliation in a scenario such? It is the reason of the psuche that itself appears to be at odds with itself.

    To act virtuously is in such a regard seemingly impossible. Is it virtuous to be yourself or is it virtuous to pretend to be something you are not?

    Perhaps it is the case that what I feel is correct is to give in to my ‘appetites’, on the contrary, since I cannot decide for certain what is correct and only through reference to that external to me which I take to be instances of virtue that I seem to define what is to be classified as virtue.

    And yet how am I capable of possessing a disposition to the kalon if it happens to be that I can do this only through a priori knowledge of its?

    This reasoning appears circular, it implies that to be virtuous, I must first know virtue. But had I known virtue, why would I need to ‘become’ virtuous? And if virtue is foreign to me, how do I acquire it?

  • Concerning God

    Prior to your reading this, I ask that you forgive the mild incoherence involved, for I write this at 5am- only minimally conscious.

    The Cartesian attempt falls short for it requires knowledge of God, in order to assert that God exists- Descartes’ begins with a claim of knowledge of perfection and of the attributes of perfection. The truth in the 3rd meditation though warrants greater credit, for this comes from the acknowledgement of the recognition of our finitude- of which as Descartes claims we could not conceive since knowledge of ‘finitude’ relies wholly on that of ‘infinite’, and yet this seems insufficiently satisfactory.

    Spinoza’s flaw is much greater, and his work- blasphemous. To attach attributes to ‘God’ is to recognize his like, and to recognize his like is to regard him two, and to regard him two is to mistake him, to mistake him is to have pointed at him, to have pointed is to have admitted limitation for him.

    God’s being is truth, but it cannot be through coming into being. His existence cannot be from non-existence.

    It is Kant’s discovery that truly brings to light the impossibility of making such assertions concerning God, for to make any assertion requires knowledge of that which we are incapable of. To speak of God’s action is to limit God, in time if nothing else, for to act is to have willed and to willed is to admit of a time prior to having willed and to admit of a time prior to having willed is to limit God.

    It can only be true that God’s ‘creation’ was not action as we have conceived action. He realized them fully and created them without innovation, he commenced it without creation, without any aspiration of mind.

    Yet to assert even this requires some conception of God, for how can one claim the impossibility of knowledge without knowledge? To assert ignorance requires in itself an acknowledgement of an awareness of the concept of which ignorance is being claimed, this same line of thought- Heidegger describes, “Every inquiry is a seeking. Every seeking gets guided beforehand by what is sought. Inquiry is a cognizant seeking for an entity both with regard to the fact that it is and with regard to its Being as it is. This cognizant seeking can take the form of ‘ investigating’, in which one lays bare that which the question is about and ascertains its character. Any inquiry, as an inquiry about something, has that which is asked about”, to ask of something requires prior cognition of the thing that is asked, and to assert anything requires the same.

    It thus becomes so that to say that ‘God cannot be conceived‘ is itself contradictory for the statement relies on a prior conception of God, it must then be true that God can be conceived. And if God can be conceived, God’s existence is self-evident, not through proving the attributes of God, but simply through knowing.

    I aim here to argue this, that the non-existence of God is what requires proving, to claim that God does not exist requires a demonstration that the statement is itself not self-contradictory. The fault of a long line of philosophers is their attempt to prove the most self-evident of all truths.

    The truth of God is greater than the truth of ‘being’, the latter of which is rarely attempted to be proved. To ask one to prove that there ‘is’, is ridiculous, and yet the same concerning the former is constantly attempted.

  • Art & the Omnipotence of Thought

    It appears only appropriate that my first post here be that essay with which I concluded my Bachelor’s and began my journey as Graduate.

    Introduction

    “In only a single field of our civilization has the omnipotence of thoughts been retained, and that is in the field of art.”, Here Freud explicitly singles out art as a field holding something distinctive, the claim that something exists in only a single field is no small one, and its implications must be dramatic. Through the course of this paper, I intend to engage with Freud’s work, with his theory of psychoanalysis, and understand what it is that sets art apart from all else, and argue that the role of art is so great in psychoanalysis that it holds the potential to possibly eliminate the need for a therapist in its entirety. 

    To understand this, we must begin first with an understanding of psychoanalysis, Freud’s methods, what psychoanalysis does, what its focus is, how it is that hysterics develop their symptoms, and the causes of their symptoms. Once we understand the hysteric, we can begin to ask the question of what psychoanalysis targets and how these symptoms can be resolved. With this basis, we can move our focus to the omnipotence of thoughts and to an understanding of the origin of the omnipotence of thought as described in Freud’s ‘Totem and Taboo’, which will then allow us to gain insights into the id. Through an understanding of the unconscious, we can begin to grasp the power of art and its relevance to psychoanalytic therapy. In doing this we will explore in particular two pieces of literature that will prove vital, the first being Freud’s essay titled ‘The Leonardo Da Vinci, A Memory of his Childhood’ where he describes a ‘screen memory’ which Da Vinci recalls as his earliest memory and its effects on his art, in particular, the well known ‘Mona Lisa’ and the lesser known but nearest in time to the Mona Lisa ‘Saint Anne’. The second essay we engage with is ‘Representation as Expression’ by Peter Kivy, with a focus on his descriptions of musical work as a representation of an artist’s emotional expressions. Through engaging with these works we discuss whether the therapeautic process can be reconstructed with a focus on art and whether the therapist can be completed eliminated from the process.

    Hysteria and Its Origins: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

    The unconscious mind, to Freud, functions as a reservoir for repressed thoughts and memories. Repression, as he describes it is a defense mechanism that arises when “a sharp cleavage has occurred between conscious and unconscious mental activity – that the essence of repression lies simply in turning something away and keeping it at a distance, from the conscious”, the repressed which lives in the unconscious, cannot exist without effect. Due to the inability of the conscious to access the unconscious, these manifest themselves as neurotic symptoms. This is made evident by Freud in the cases of ‘Anna O’ and of ‘Dora’- the symptoms then are invariably linked directly to the extent of the repression, the more repressed an individual’s mind is, the greater the symptoms that present themselves must be. When the mind has a strong libido it inevitably results in stronger repression- in such an individual, symptoms often present themselves more violently, resulting in ‘hysteria’. The hysteric is merely responding to internal stimuli caused by the unconscious, and since such an internal stimulus cannot be escaped through an instinctual response, it formulates itself into a symptom, an attempt by the conscious mind to get rid of the stimulus.

    Since the origin of the neurotic symptom takes place through a defense mechanism where the conscious represses a memory it cannot process due to the anxiety it would cause and since the memory is now pushed to the unconscious, the resolution can be attained only through the conscious experiencing this memory, thought, or, desire. This is the basis for the therapeutic method employed in psychoanalysis, for:

    “it is impossible to avoid the suspicion that, when the ideas attaching to certain excitations are incapable of becoming conscious, those excitations must act upon one another differently, run a different course, and manifest themselves differently from those other excitations which we describe as ‘normal’ and which have ideas attaching to them of which we become conscious. When once things have been made clear up to this point, no obstacle can remain in the way of an understanding of a therapeutic method which removes neurotic symptoms by transforming ideas of the former kind into normal ones.”

    These ideas of the former kind Freud speaks of are the repressed ones that result from traumatic experiences. Such ideas are repressed by the conscious because they are unacceptable to it. The ideas of the latter kind are the ‘normal ones’, the ones that are not hidden from the conscious mind, the ones we are aware of. The therapeutic method he describes involves converting the repressed ideas to ‘normal’ ideas. This is the function of the psychotherapist- to uncover repressed ideas from the unconscious and present them to the conscious, thereby transforming the repressed ideas into ones the individual is ‘conscious’ of.

    The Omnipotence of Thought, Neurosis, and The Unconscious

    Freud adopts the term ‘omnipotence of thoughts’ from whom he describes as “a highly intelligent man who suffered from obsessional ideas”. The omnipotence of thought is the superstitious belief against an individual’s better judgment of their ability to control the world. this phenomenon Freud explains is evident in the primitive men whose process of thinking is still to a great extent sexualized and serves as the origin of their “unshakable confidence in the possibility of controlling the world and their inaccessibility to the experiences, so easily obtainable, which could teach them man’s true position in the universe”5

    The omnipotence of thought that Freud describes ‘survives’ most visibly in obsessional neurosis where the:

    “over-valuation of mental processes as compared with reality, is seen to have unrestricted play in the emotional life of neurotic patients and in everything that derives from it. If one of them undergoes psycho-analytic treatment, which makes what is unconscious in him conscious, he will be unable to believe that thoughts are free and will constantly be afraid of expressing evil wishes, as though their expression would lead inevitably to their fulfillment.”6

    He explains that the neurotic places an excessive emphasis on the importance and power of their own thoughts and mental processes.They do not understand the nature of the external reality and therefore believe that their thoughts can shape reality itself. This idea is one that cannot be rational and must instead be a product of the unconscious, which is not governed by the faculties of reason, since the unconscious faculties are free of reason, as demonstrated most explicitly in Freud’s ‘Kettle Logic’ in The Interpretation of Dreams where the unconscious is capable of contradiction and free of logic. For if it were otherwise, then the realization that the external world is beyond the control of the conscious mind would have come to the primitive people, the obsessional neurotics and children immediately.

    Surrendering to the Unconscious: The Power of Art

    Now that we have an understanding of the Omnipotence of Thought and its functioning as a bridge between the behaviors of a neurotic and their unconscious, we can delve into an understanding of art. “Only in art does it still happen that a man who is consumed by desires performs something resembling the accomplishment of those desires”. Freud describes here the survival of the omnipotence of thought in art, for it is in art that the unconscious finds an escape. The artist converts their intangible desires into the tangible pieces that they can then observe. This is highlighted not only by Freud but also by others who have taken the time to understand art. Art here is not limited but rather covers a broad spectrum of disciplines; an artist is anyone ranging from painters and composers to martial artists and photographers. 

    This characteristic of art is explored in Freud’s essays Moses of Michelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of his Childhood, in both of these Freud analyses works of art in the same manner in which a therapist would use the psychoanalytic method to study the unconscious desires of a neurotic. What is clear from this is that the Unconscious mind projects itself into pieces of art, art itself becomes a defense mechanism where the ‘anxiety inducing memories’ are sublimated onto a canvas. What sets art apart though from other expressions of the Unconscious is that it exists physically and can therefore be perceived directly by the conscious parts of the mind. The bridge between the emotions and the medium we now see as a ‘portal’ between the unconscious and the world, or more accurately, a portal between the pleasure and reality principles, it seems clear then that art is in itself a reflection of the unconscious itself.

    Beyond Words: Art as a Non-Verbal Analytic Tool

    We see now that art can take the place of the therapist, for the role of the therapist as we have concluded earlier is that of bringing the unconscious to the surface so that defense mechanisms are avoided and the conscious and the unconscious can interact, allowing the individual’s superego to face the anxieties that the repressed feelings would have caused and thereby eliminating the symptoms, and we see clearly now that art is capable of doing the same, of projecting the individual’s unconscious onto a canvas. Hence one may conclude that art functions as a window to the unconscious, eliminating the need for an intermediary.

    This capacity of art to represent the unconscious is made clear when any work of art is looked at. In his essay, Peter Kivy identifies this when he describes that “when composers represent “fleeing” or “flying” with running passages, they must be executed “with the greatest rapidity and the least grace imaginable”.”. The ‘fleeing’ and ‘flying’ here are clear instinctual responses to stimuli, stimuli which must be of an internal nature, for it is the music that takes the instinct and what could it be that the music ‘flees’, but something that is repressed? This is as Freud would say “only a triviality to which any one but a psychoanalyst would pay no attention.”.  

    Further, such instances of the unconscious presenting itself within works of art is seen clearly in Freud’s work concerning Leonardo Da Vinci. the work begins with a description of one of Da Vinci’s earliest memories where, as Da Vinci recalls “When I was still in my cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips”. Freud examines this memory, concluding that it is a screen memory and he then touches upon a number of themes. For the purposes of this essay, however, the analysis of the memory remains irrelevant, although it is helpful to acknowledge the similarities between pieces of art and screen memories, both of which are products of the Unconscious, both including symbolism, the difference being that art unlike memories exists within the physical realm. Instead what is most important about this work of Freud’s is that in later chapters, he examines Da Vinci’s art, in particular two works, the ‘Mona Lisa’ and ‘Saint Anne’, and what Freud concludes is that both of these paintings are mere reflections of the experience that led to the creation of his screen memory. For instance, the smile on the Mona Lisa is in fact the smile of Leonardo’s mother, the mother who was reflected in the memory, for the vulture had taken the place of his mother and the striking of the tail was but a reflection of the baby’s being fed. That the same smile is on the faces of both the women in “Saint Anne”, that the two represent Da Vinci’s having two mothers, or that the mother had to compensate for the lack of a husband, which again is reflected in the memory of the vulture, where the tail clearly took the place of the male genital, reflected again in Saint Anne, for there are ‘two mothers’. 

    In describing the smile. Freud also explains that Da Vinci had “artistically conquered the (his) unhappiness”. This clearly hints that even Freud himself recognized the potential that art held for psychoanalytic functions and the possibility of its replacing the therapist. For through artistic expression, one finds the most primal confrontation with the unconscious. Art’s capacity to function as a conduit to the unconscious cannot be denied. It is clear that in art one can find some semblance of catharsis through confronting their repressions, but the extent of this is unclear. 

    Whether an artist recognizes the meaning of their art is something that is uncertain, for one could argue that dreams too are the work of the unconscious, and experiencing a dream does not provide catharsis. Such an argument fails to recognize a deep distinction between the work of the unconscious in dreams and in art, the difference is that dreams are not ‘reflections’ of the unconscious, but rather contain symbolism, which is the result of the material provided to the dream-work through the unconscious. Art on the other hand does not merely contain symbolism but is the ‘raw’ reflection of the unconscious, it is a manifestation of the repressed. As such art unlike dreams can prove to be cathartic. This art must of course be true, channeled from the unconscious, not the art that is taught, but the art that one produces of oneself, for this is the true unconscious. 

    The problem with such a theory is its unverifiability. If art truly is the panacea for hysteria, then a person who makes art would have in essence healed themselves to a great degree and would have no reason to seek therapy, they would never become hysterics. On the other hand, if an individual begins therapy and then starts making art, it is impossible to conclude whether the resolution of the symptoms is to be attributed to the art or to the therapist. Due to the ambiguity, the only rational synthesis is a recognition of the potential that art holds, an acknowledgment of it. Art then although can provide a possible alternative to the traditional psychoanalytic method can at this time not fully replace the therapist, not until further research of an empirical nature is conducted. The aim of this paper is to establish that such a possibility exists and to open the door to such research.