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.