ART AND THE WARPED VISION
175
or is transmuted or sublimated into art. To put the question in a
more general way, what we need to know is how the neurosis of
the artist, which is a form of disorder, can shape a work of art that
has value and meaning for an entire civilization. Thus we are really
questioning what was once assumed: that madness and wisdom may
go hand in hand.
One reason we know so little about the relation of neurosis to
art is that we know so little about
art.
It might have been expected
that psychoanalysis would clarify some of these questions; and
actually
it
has thrown some light on one side of the problem, by
defining the neurotic mechanism and by giving an exact account
of the neurosis of many writers, painters, and musicians. But, despite
the vast number of studies on the subject by psychoanalysts, we
still have no answer to some of the basic questions. Much of the
writing on art by psychoanalysts combines bad taste-as when
Death of a Salesman
is treated as a classic-with some contrived,
jargonized theory. The approach to painting and music/ based
largely on a "literary" version of content, has been most primitive,
and its value has been biographical rather than aesthetic. But even
the best of psychoanalytic writing in this vein suffers from the lack
of an accepted philosophy of
art;
hence it has had either to adopt
or improvise one. Some analysts have taken art to be a form of
communication, others a mode of expression, and the traditional
definitions of meaning, form, content, and audience have all found
their way into psychoanalytic writing. Most aesthetic systems in the
past have been no better than the insight that went into their
formulation, and when they simply are tacked on to some doctrine
in
another field, like psychoanalysis, the result is at best a tour de
force. Even so brilliant an essay as Ernest Jones's famous study
of
Hamlet,
which traces the Oedipal motives in the play, makes
the assumption that works of
art
are great and lasting when, like
Hamlet,
they deal with primal conflicts. Such an assumption is, of
course, too simple and schematic, and though Jones's piece does
1 Most of the examples I am using here are drawn from literature, because
the formal content of painting and music has a much more complex and less
obvious connection with psychological motives, and these media require special
analysis. I do believe, however, that all of the arts, and creative thinking as
well, have the same basic relation to neurosis.
