Review of Making Space - psychoanalysis and artistic process (original) (raw)
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Review of Creative States of Mind: Psychoanalysis and the Artist's Process by Patricia Townsend
Creativity Research Journal, 2020
What happens in the mind of an artist as she creates a new work of art? In Creative States of Mind (2019), visual artist and psychoanalytic psychotherapist Patricia Townsend approaches this long-standing question from two complementary perspectives. On the one hand, she fleshes out an experiential account of artistic creativity by drawing from her own and other artists' personal reflections on the creative process. More specifically, and very commendably, she uses interviews (conducted by herself) with thirty-three professional artists to identify several experiential themes/states that figure prominently in art-making. On the other hand, Townsend draws from psychoanalytical theorization -especially from the socalled British Independent tradition (including, for example, D. W. Winnicott, Marion Milner, and Christopher Bollas) -to investigate the psychodynamic mechanisms and processes that underlie the specified creative states. On the whole, Townsend's analysis is based on a loose method of triangulation: she brings the interviews, her own experience, and psychoanalytical theory into a mutual conversation that aims to both apply and refine the distinctive contributions of each source to the understanding of artistic creativity.
Art, creativity, and psychoanalysis: Perspectives from analyst-artists
Psychodynamic Practice, 2018
The book Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis, presents a range of firsthand experiences of 12 practicing practitioners of psychoanalytic psychotherapy and psychoanalysis who also are actively engaged as creative artists. They are painters, photographers, creative writers, and musical and vocal performers. George Hagman, the editor, selected therapists of diverse theoretical backgrounds with "busy and prosperous psychoanalytic and analytic psychotherapy practices for at least ten years… most… have been formally trained in the arts and they maintain studios and exhibit their work in galleries or other pubic venues" (p. xiv). Hagman presents samples of the authors' work, including selections of paintings and photographs, and excerpts of poetry and other writings. Accompanying links provide access to the performing artists' websites and Internet musical shopping sites. As an editor, Hagman initially raised questions for the writers to address, but found that they preferred telling their stories in their own ways, writing essays "that reflected their own experiences, thoughts and values." He was "grateful" for this modification, as the essays turned out to be "a rich assortment, sometimes quirky, always honest and thoughtful, invariably unpredictable" (p. xvi). As a reader, I benefited from meeting these 12 insightful individuals, with rich and fascinating lives to narrate. They provided insights into psychoanalysis, the arts they represented, and the impact this integration had on them, both personally and professionally. The authors provide nuggets from their artistic experience, enriching my appreciation of their art. Anna Carusi discusses her artistic style, which is evolving over the years, and her excitement when she realized the possibilities opened up by adding the dimension of action to her paintings. Her description of her painting of the running of the bulls of Pamplona is accompanied by her painting, illustrating the powerful movements of the whole scene (p. 129). Linda Cummings, a photographer, describes taking photographs while "paddling my kayak in a tidal river… creating photographic images of my impact on its surface… watching the changing patterns as paddle disturbs the water… images emerge… reflections of light and shadow, color and form" (p. 32). She explains that her subject "is not water per se, but impermanence, change, and the substance of light" (p. 32). In practicing psychotherapy, her approach can be "reassuring and at times disturbing. My responsibility is to make waves, to stir things up in clinically useful… ways" (p. 42). Donna Bassin, a photographer, has been producing experimental work with the use of dolls, photographed with a pinhole camera in a dollhouse; she discusses the various dramatic effects she produced. She comments that both the analyst and photographer must come prepared to capture an image that has never been created before. Both must have "a mindful emptiness or lack of intention… to be surprised by the new" (p. 170). She discusses at length her difficult experience of being present at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11, trying to help grieving families search for and mourn the victims, but I did not grasp the relationship of this narrative to the art.
Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists collects personal reflections by therapists who are also professional artists. It explores the relationship between art and analysis through accounts by practitioners who identify themselves as dual-profession artists and analysts. The book illustrates the numerous areas where analysis and art share common characteristics using first-hand, in-depth accounts. These vivid reports from the frontier of art and psychoanalysis shed light on the day-today struggle to succeed at both of these demanding professions. From the beginning of psychoanalysis, many have made comparisons between analysis and art. Recently there has been increasing interest in the relationship between artistic and psychotherapeutic practices. Most importantly, both professions are viewed as highly creative, with spontaneity, improvisation, and aesthetic experience seeming to be common to each. However, differences have also been recognized, especially regarding the differing goals of each profession: art leading to the creation of an artwork, and psychoanalysis resulting in the increased welfare and happiness of the patient. These issues are addressed head-on in Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists. The chapters consist of personal essays by analyst-artists who are currently working in both professions; each has been trained in and is currently practicing psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The goal of the book is to provide the reader with a new understanding of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic processes from the perspective of art and artistic creativity. Drawing on artistic material from painting, poetry, photography, music, and literature, the book casts light on what the creative processes in art can add to the psychoanalytic endeavor, and vice versa.
The space in-between : psychoanalysis and the imaginary realm of art
2006
This investigation uses an object relations psychoanalytic framework to explore ways that art embodies both social and personal meaning. The relationship between the non-verbal experience of art and the pre-verbal realm of infancy is explored and linked to bodily, perceptual and inner forms of non-discursive knowledge which are of value for the subject. The study investigates how this inner experience is related through art to language and representation as aspects of external experience. The study argues that these two dimensions, the inner/bodily and the outer/linguistic, are held together in the art object which, as metaphor, is a conjoined structure that embodies the maternal and paternal realms in paradoxical and dynamic interplay. The art object, which elicits imaginary and phantasied responses from the viewer, serves both the self (through presentational symbols) and social needs (through representational symbols), thus allowing the creation and communication of new meanings. My research project has been made possible due to the generous encouragement of a number of people. I would like to thank Professor Keith Dietrich for his commitment to the MA (Visual Studies) programme and for his empathetic support of his students. I am indebted to my supervisor Marthie Kaden for her timely, intelligent and thoughtful guidance. I would also like to thank my co-supervisor Vivian van der Merwe for his perceptive insights into my painting process. Romaine Hill has edited this thesis with great wisdom and generosity, for which I offer my gratitude. I wish to thank Cathy Comfort Skead for the photographic documentation of my visual work. I acknowledge Mary Anne Cullinan, who introduced me to the work of Jessica Benjamin and Christopher Bollas and the 'intersubjective turn' in psychoanalytic theory as well Fine Art and psychology postgraduate Anya Subotzky, with whom I was able to clarify my understanding of psychoanalytic and contemporary art concepts through ongoing conversation. I am grateful to Beauty Makhasi and Elisabeth Adams for their help in caring for my children. I would like to acknowledge the profound inspiration that James and Imogen have given me as I have struggled with being both a 'good enough mother' and with writing 'the dreaded masters'. Finally, this journey would not have been in any way possible without the unstintingly generous and unconditional support of my husband Brett.
Creativity and Destructiveness in Art and Psychoanalysis
This paper focuses on the creativity of the patient in analysis and compares it to that of the artist. Taking artists’ descriptions of their practices as its starting point, the paper suggests that the relationship between patient and analyst parallels that between artist and medium. Psychoanalysis and artistic process can both be seen in terms of a complex interplay between oneness and separateness in which aggression and destructiveness play an essential part. The paper includes a discussion of different forms of aggression and destructiveness within the creative process with particular reference to Winnicott’s paper ‘The use of an object’ (1969) and Rozsika Parker’s ‘Killing the angel in the house’ (1998). It suggests that a consideration of artists’ creative processes can shed light both on the experience of the patient in analysis and on the role of the analyst in facilitating the development of the patient’s creativity.
Journal of Art Historiography, 2012
The previously unpublished conversation between Ernst Gombrich and Joseph Sandler in 1988 constitutes an exciting meeting of minds in the field of art history and psychoanalysis, respectively. The two discuss 'the artist' as a term; the impulse inherent in the creation of art; taste; and the affective power of art, particularly in the light of the work of Freud and their shared friend, Ernst Kris. Gombrich seems both comfortable with the psychoanalytic theory they discuss, and also keen to steer the discussion in certain directions – quoting from Cicero, Van Gogh and I.E. Richards. At the point at which questions are opened up to the audience, the most interesting thing of note is the revelation that Gombrich was a member of 'The Image Group', which research has revealed was more accurately known as 'The Imago Group,' a society of psychoanalysts and dedicated analysands, of which Gombrich's membership is unusual. As Gombrich is often considered reticent a...
Creativity, art, and psychoanalysis
2006
Abstract: Four important themes in self psychology as developed by Heinz Kohut are remarkably congruent with current theoretical constructs in the field of evolutionary (Darwinian) psychology: (1) the concept of narcissism; (2) the claim for the innate human capacity for empathy; (3) the recognition of the importance of group cohesion and (4) the belief that individual psychological distress is produced by a changed environment rather than a dysfunctional self. By recasting Kohut's themes in a Darwinian framework and interpreting them with personal views of the phylogenetic origin and nature of the arts As one who writes about the arts from the Darwinian framework of evolutionary psychology, I have been intrigued to discover interesting and possibly fruitful correspondences between my ideas and selfobject theory as articulated by Heinz Kohut and others who, like him, have antecedents in the British psychological tradition called object relations. In Art and Intimacy (Dissanayak...