Harry Trosman

The Freud Library

HE h i A m PART of Sigmund Freuds library is preserved at the home of his daughter, Anna Freud, in London. When Freud T left Vienna in June, 1938 in the face of the German occupation, he was permitted to take his personal effects, including his collection of antiquities and books. The Nazis initially threatened to confiscate the library, relenting only upon being paid over

Transformations of Unconscious Fantasy in Art

800 in ransom money (Jones, 1957). During the last few weeks in Vienna, while awaiting permission to leave, Freud went through his library, selected those books he wished to take to London, and disposed of the others. This last group-described below-was eventually acquired by the New York State Psychiatric Institute. The library in London provides a valuable key to the range of Freuds reading. I t includes source material not available in present bibliographies of Freuds published writings, and thus it provides evidence for Freuds familiarity with heretofore presumptive or unsuspected antecedents. In addition, the present composition of the library is a product of Freuds judgment in his later years of books he thought useful or worthy of preservation. From the time Freud became a student he had a passion for collecting and owning books. He alludes to the sources of this passion in his analysis of the dream of the botanical monograph

Toward a psychoanalytic iconography

Unconscious fantasy is conceptualized as a representation for drive-related, conflict-laden, wish-fulfilling views of human experience. These are usually related to sexuality, and refer to birth, intrauterine existence, primal scene, castration, and seduction. Unconscious fantasy may be transformed into works of art through a variety of artistic means. The employment of formal means for the representation of fantasy may be the product of an endopsychic perception. Thus, structural attributes of the psyche may also find representation. An example is used from the creative process in the construction of a novel by Henry James, The Spoils of Poynton. In the process of fulfilling artistic purposes in the construction of his plot, the author made use of derivatives of unconscious fantasy which surface in the process of creation. The work of art is the integration of unconscious derivatives which become transformed into artistic structure.

FREUD AND THE CONTROVERSY OVER SHAKESPEAREAN AUTHORSHIP.

In describing the principles of psychoanalytic iconography, I follow a historical approach, pointing out that the rudiments of such an interpretive mode are present in Freuds works on Leonardo and on the Moses of Michelangelo and reach a classical expression in Kriss paper on Messerschmidt. Some recent scholarly studies of works of art rest on the incorporation of psychoanalysis into contemporary views of the nature of man, thus permitting a level of analysis of art not previously attained. The interface between a psychoanalytic understanding of the artists life and preoccupations and the unconscious content present in the work itself continues to offer an opportunity for refining the analytic tool as an instrument for understanding aesthetic response and creativity.

Book Review: Freud in His Time and OursFreud in His Time and Ours. By RoudinescoÉlisabeth; translated by PorterCatherine. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016, xvi + 580 pp.,

N 1938, when Sigmund Freud arrived in England, following his flight from Vienna and the Nazi occupation, he received a I cordial note of welcome from J. Thomas Looney, the author of “Shakespeare” Identified (24) and the leading proponent of the Earl of Oxford as the author of Shakespeare’s plays. In his response Freud referred to Looney’s “remarkable book, to which I owe my conviction about Shakespeare’s identity, as far as my judgment in this matter goes” (8, p. 165). Freud’s remark was more than a superficial courtesy appropriate to the occasion. Nor was this the first such reference Freud had made to the question of Shakespearean authorship. T h e present contribution is an attempt to describe Freud’s fascination with the authorship controversy regarding Shakespeare and to indicate the general nature of the controversy by focusing on the Oxfordian position as put forth by Looney. This essay will offer some speculations concerning motivation of those who s u p port the antistratfordim position with particular reference to this interest in the life of Sigmund Freud. Freud’s knowledge of the Shakespearean canon was extensive. Quotations from Shakespeare came readily to his mind and their variety indicates a remarkable degree of familiarity with the plays. He began reading the plays when a boy of eight and Shakespeare continued to be a popular topic of conversation when literal? topics were discussed. Jones (23) states that Shakespeare was Freud’s “favorite.” He admired his psychological insight and used him as a

35.00 hardcover.

A biographer of Sigmund Freud is likely to leave a discernible personal imprint on a work. Since we live in a Freudian age today, one is either a Freudian or an anti-Freudian.1 One who is neither is hardly a denizen of the modern world. Élisabeth Roudinesco, a prolific historian and psychoanalyst, has written extensively on psychoanalysis and Jacques Lacan. The present biography of Freud was written in French, published in 2014, and published in in English two years later. It is an account of Freud that emphasizes his social and political position rather than highlighting him as a scientist, a designation he preferred. “Freud always thought that what he was discovering in the unconscious foreshadowed what was happening to people in reality,” she writes. “I have chosen to reverse this proposition and show that what Freud thought he was discovering was at bottom nothing but the product of a society, a familial environment, and a political situation whose signification he interpreted masterfully so as to ascribe it to the work of the unconscious” (p. 4). In this interesting reversal, the emphasis is displaced from seeing psychoanalysis as concerned primarily with psychology and intrapsychic phenomena to viewing them as secondary. Paying particular attention to the era in which Freud lived, the biographer emphasizes a contemporaneous view of his life and work. The book follows the chronology of its subject’s life, starting with his early development, important familial relationships, the “invention” of psychoanalysis, his success, his progress through the First World War to his death. Roudinesco was aided by her access to the Freud Archives, now available in the Library of Congress and open for public inspection. The first

WILLIAM HAZLITT, OBSESSIVE LOVE, AND LIBER AMORIS

William Hazlitt, a distinguished literary figure of the early nineteenth century and a forerunner of psychoanalytic insights, had a keen awareness of the impact of the imagination on assessing works of art. At forty-two, he became hopelessly involved in an obsessive love affair with a nineteen-year-old woman and could not extricate himself from the relationship. The affair followed the death of his father, a powerful influence on his life. Factors in his obsessive love included finding an object of idealization subject to his imaginative creation and narcissistically reexperiencing himself about to begin a new life.

The ironic detachment of Edward Gibbon

Edward Gibbon, the author of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, has been widely recognized as a master of irony. The historian’s early life with parents he found self‐serving and unreliable, his reaction to the events surrounding the death of his mother at the age of 9 and the decline of his father, left an impact on his personality and played a role in determining his choice of his life work. Irony has been approached from a psychoanalytic perspective as a mode of communication, as a stylistic device, as a modality through which one might view reality and as a way of uncovering the linkage between pretense and aspiration, between the apparent and the real. Gibbon’s ironic detachment can be understood as rooted in his life history. He felt detached from his family of origin, in need of a protective device which would enable him to deal with passion. Sexual and aggressive impulses mobilized defensive postures that were later transformed into an attitude of skepticism and an interest in undercutting false beliefs and irrational authority, positions he attributes to religious ideation which served to instigate historical decline.

Andrea Del Sarto Rehabilitated: A Psychoanalytic Emendation

Ernest Joness “The Influence of Andrea del Sartos Wife on His Art” (1913) is an early example of psychoanalysis applied to the study of a prominent painter. Greatly influenced by Freuds Leonardo da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood, Jones gave excessive credence to Vasaris highly prejudicial account of the life of del Sarto, on which the study relied heavily. Jones attempted to account psychologically for the circumstance that del Sarto, though highly skilled and “faultless,” was not the equal of the three preeminent masters of the Italian High Renaissance: Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Joness uncritical acceptance of the Vasari biography encouraged him to view del Sartos assumed deficiency as the result of excessive attachment to his wife, a pathological uxoriousness. A contemporary psychoanalytic perspective, with its emphasis on the emotive response of the analyst, requires us to pay attention to the evocative nature of the work of the artist, an approach Jones neglected. In an examination of several paintings, the artists sensitivity to the position of the spectator is explored, as is the interest in involving the viewer spatially and emotionally. An appreciation for the viewers position is consistent with a capacity for using projected internal objects for creative purposes. The presence of this capacity suggests a revised view of del Sartos contribution to art and of his relationship with his wife.

The Creativity Question

This collection of readings on creativity aims for balance and variety rather than depth or adherence to a particular point of view. Short selections, from the writings of philosophers, psychologists, psychoanalysts, educators, literary figures, and creative scientists are presented. The editors have avoided introspective accounts by intent, although subjective descriptions of the creative process appear in excerpts by Edgar Allen Poe and Walter Cannon. The selections begin with Plato and Aristotle, include Kant and Lombroso, Jacques Maritain and Arthur Koestler, empirical investigators such as Jacob Getzels, Anne Roe, and Frank Barron, and contemporary philosophers such as Croce , Collingwood, and Monroe Beardsley. Although the editors, a psychiatrist and a philosopher, include excerpts from their own writings on creativity, they modestly place their contributions among the “Alternative Approaches” rather than under the heading of “Seminal Accounts.” Of the total of 45 selections, only four are by psychoanalysts, Freud, Harry Lee, Ernst Kris, and Lawrence Kubie. Several excerpts are by sometime psychoanalysts Rank and Jung. Several additional contributors, Ehrenzweig, Schachtel, and Barron’, have been influenced by psychoanalysis. The low psychoanalytic profile, however, is deceptive. As the editors state, “The upsurge of scientific interest in creativity in this century began with the psychoanalysts who first became interested in art and artistic creation because of their wider concern with the phenomena of motivation, affect and irrational id processes” (p. 94), and many of the other selections show . the influence of psychoanalytic theory and clinical findings, if only in passing.