ART AND NEUROSIS
45
Wilson effectively uses, does not suggest anything beyond this. It does
not suggest that the wound is the price of the bow, or that without
the wound the bow cannot be possessed or drawn. Yet Dr. Rosenz–
weig has accurately summarized the force and I think the intention
of Mr. Wilson's whole book; its several studies do seem to say that
artistic effectiveness depends on emotional pain.
This notion that genius has an unhappy source or that power is
the reward of sacrifice is as deeply rooted in popular assumption as
is its converse, that the artist's genius and power are not real because
they are ,the products of his neurosis. For those who wish to find art
irrelevant there is assurance in the foolish self-torture of the artist. For
those who wish to find art important, the same pain, differently des–
cribed, is a guaranty of the value of the artist's work. Part of the po–
pular mind always responds to the idea that pain and sacrifice are
virtuous.
To the 'belief that power springs from pain and neurotic sacrifice
there are two major objections.
1 ) The first objection to this explanation of genius is that it
applies almost exclusively to artists and chiefly to writers. I have sug–
gested one reason why writers are especially available to this explana–
tion--it is that they tell us, often in the most powerful language, what
is going on
in~ide
them. And even when they do not make a diag–
nosis of themselves or describe "symptoms," we must remember that
it is their profession to deal with fantasy in some form or other. They
constitute the only group in our society that takes responsibility for
its fantasies. (And here I would say that the more a writer takes pains
with his work and the further he removes it from the personal and
the subjective, the more-and not the less-he is expressing his un–
conscious.)
In short, it is the writer's job to exhibit his unconscious. He may
disguise it for various reasons and in various ways. But disguise is not
concealment.
What is more, the writer is likely to be a great hand at personal
letters, diaries and autobiographies: indeed, practically the only good
autobiographies are those of writers. The writer's instrument is his
state of mind and usually he is aware of its condition and articulate
about it. It is therefore wonderfully easy to find the material upon
which to make psychological explanations of him. Only a man as de–
voted to the truth of the emotions as Henry James was would have
informed the world, despite his characteristic reticence, of an accident
so intimate as his.
But no one who has ever lived observantly among scientists will
