A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO }ESTHETICS

By HANNA SEGAL, LoNDON

• D011I das Schoneist nichts constitutes good art, in what essential respect
au das Schrecklichen Anfang, den wir7IOch gerade is it different from other human works, more
ertragen, particularly from bad art? Psychological
und wir bewundern es so, wei/ es gelassen wtiters attempted to answer questions like:
verschmaht • How does the poet work?' 'What is he
U1IS zu zerstsren.' like?' 'What does he express?' In the paper
• The Relation of the Poet to Day-dreaming',
In 1908 Freud wrote: • We laymen have Freud has shown how the work of the artist
always wondered greatly-like the cardinal is a product of phantasy and has its roots, like
who put the question to Arioste-how that the children's play and dreams, in unconscious
strange being, the poet, comes by his material. phantasy life. But he did not attempt to explain
What makes him able to carry us with him in • why we should derive such pleasure from
such a way and to arouse emotions in us of listening to the day-dreams of a poet'. How
which we thought ourselves perhaps not even he achieves his effects is to Freud the poet's
capable? '1 And as the science of psycho- 'innermost secret'. 6 Indeed, Freud was not
analysis developed, repeated attempts were especially interested in asthetic problems. In
made to answer that question. Freud's dis- • The Moses of Michelangelo' 8 he says: ' I
covery of unconscious phantasy life and of have often observed that the subject-matter of
symbolism made it possible to attempt a works of art has a stronger attraction for me than
psychological interpretation of works of art. their formal and technical qualities, though to the
Many papers have been written since, dealing artist their value lies first and foremost in this
with the problem of the individual artist and latter. I am unable rightly to appreciate many
reconstructing his early history from an analysis of the methods used and the effects obtained in
of his work. The foremost of these is Freud's art.' He was also aware of the limitations of
book on Leonardo da Vinci. Other papers analytical theory in approaching asthetics. In
have dealt with general psychological problems the preface to the book on Leonardo da Vinci 7
expressed in works of art showing, for instance, he says that he has no intention of discussing
how the latent content of universal infantile why Leonardo was a great painter, since to do
anxieties is symbolically expressed in them. that, he would have to know more about the
Such was Freud's paper • The Theme of the ultimate sources of the creative impulse and of
Three Caskets', 2 Ernest Jones's • The Concep- sublimation. This waswritten in 1910. Sincethat
tion of the Madonna through the Ear', 3 or time the work of Melanie Klein has thrown more
Melanie Klein's 'Infantile Anxiety Situations light on the problem of the creative impulse and
Reflected in a Work of Art and the Creative sublimation, and has provided a new stimulus
Impulse.' 4 to analytical writers on art. In the last fifteen
Until recently such papers were not mainly years a number of papers have appeared dealing
concerned with asthetics. They dealt with with problems of creation, beauty and ugliness.
points of psychological interest but not with the I would mention, in particular, those by Ella
central problem of asthetics, which is: what Sharpe, Paula Heimann, John Rickman and

1 Freud (1908). • The Relation of the Poet to Day- Reflected in a Work of Art and the Creative Impulse',
dreaming', Collected Papers, Vol. IV. Contributions to Psycho-Analysis, 1921-45.
• Freud (1913). • The Theme of the Three Caskets " • Freud (1908). • The Relation of the Poet to Day-
Collected Papers, Vol. IV. dreaming', Collected Papers, Vol. IV.
• E. Jones (1914). • The Conception of the Madonna • Freud (1914). • The Moses of Michelangelo',
through the Ear', Essays in Applied Psycho-Analysis, Collected Papers, Vol. IV.
Vol. II. 7 Freud (1920). Leonardo do Vinci. (London:
• M. Klein (1925). • Infantile Anxiety Situations Kegan Paul, 1922.)
196

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A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO iESTHETICS 197

Fairbairn in this country, and H. B. Lee in object; it holds itself responsible for its impulses
the U.S.A. and for the damage done to the external and to
Maybe it is possible now, in the light of new the internal object. Where, earlier, impulses and
analytical discoveries, to ask new questions. parts of the infant's self were projected into the
Can we isolate in the psychology of the artist object with the result that a false picture of it was
the specific factors which enable him to produce formed, that his own impulses were denied, and
a satisfactory work of art? And if we can, will that there was often a lack of differentiation
that further our understanding of the <esthetic between the self and the external object; in the
value of the work of art, and of the <esthetic depressive phase, a sense of inner reality is
experience of the audience? developed and in its wake a sense of outer
It seems to me that Melanie Klein's concept reality as well.
of the depressive position makes it possible at Depressive phantasies give rise to the wish to
least to attempt an answer to these questions. repair and restore, and become a stimulus to
The 'depressive position', as described by further development only so far as the depressive
Melanie Klein, is reached by the infant when anxiety can be tolerated by the ego and the sense
he recognizes his mother and other people, of psychic reality retained. If there is little
and amongst them his father, as real persons. belief in the capacity to restore, the good object
His object relations then undergo a fundamental outside and inside is felt to be irretrievably lost
change." Where earlier he was aware of' part and destroyed, the destroyed fragments turn
objects' he now perceives complete persons; into persecutors, and the internal situation is
instead of 'split' objects-ideally good or felt to be hopeless. The infant's ego is at the
overwhelmingly persecuting-he sees a whole mercy of intolerable feelings of guilt, loss and
object both good and bad. The whole object internal persecution. To protect itself from
is loved and introjected and forms the core of total despair the ego must have recourse to
an integrated ego. But this new constellation violent defence mechanisms. Those defence
ushers in a new anxiety situation: where earlier mechanisms which protect it from the feelings
the infant feared an attack on the ego by perse- arising out of the loss of the good object form
cutory objects, now the predominant fear is that a system of manic defences. The essential fea-
of the loss of the loved object in the external tures of manic defences are denial of psychic
world and in his own inside. The infant at that reality, omnipotent control and a partial regres-
stage is still under the sway of uncontrollable sion to the paranoid position and its defences:
greedy and sadistic impulses. In phantasy his splitting, idealization, denial, projective identi-
loved object is continually attacked in greed and fication, etc. This regression strengthens the
hatred, is destroyed, torn into pieces and frag- fear of persecution and that in turn leads to the
ments; and not only is the external object so strengthening of omnipotent control.
attacked but also the internal one, and then the But in successful development the experience
whole internal world feels destroyed and of love from the environment slowly reassures
shattered as well. Bits of the destroyed object the infant about his objects. His growing love,
may turn into persecutors, and there is a fear of strength and skill give him increasing confidence
internal persecution as well as a pining for the in his own capacities to restore. And as his
lost loved object and guilt for the attack. The confidence increases he can gradually relinquish
memory of the good situation, where the infant's the manic defences and experience more and
ego contained the whole loved object, and the more fully the underlying feelings of loss, guilt
realization that it has been lost through his own and love, and he can make renewed and in-
attacks, give rise to an intense feeling of loss and creasingly successful attempts at reparation.
guilt, and to the wish to restore and re-create By repeated experiences of loss and restora-
the lost loved object outside and within the ego. tion of the internal objects they become more
This wish to restore and re-create is the basis firmly established and more fully assimilated in
of later sublimation and creativity. the ego.
It is also at this point that a sense of inner A successful working through of the depres-
reality is developed. If the object is remembered sive anxieties has far-reaching consequences;
as a whole object, then the ego is faced with the the ego becomes integrated and enriched through
recognition of its own ambivalence towards the the assimilation of loved objects; the depen-
• For the description of the preceding phase of develop- Analysis, 1921-1945, and H. Rosenfeld's paper in this
ment see Melanie Klein's Contributions 10 Psycho- issue of Int. J. Psycho-Anal.

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198 HANNA SEGAL

dence on the external objects is lessened and How does this creation come about? Of all
deprivation can be better dealt with. Aggression artists the one who gives us the fullest des-
and love can be tolerated and guilt gives rise to cription of the creative process is Marcel Proust:
the need to restore and re-create. a description based on years of self-observation
Feelings of guilt probably playa role before and the fruit of an amazing insight. According
the depressive position is fully established; they to Proust, an artist is compelled to create by his
already exist in relation to the part object, and need to recover his lost past. But a purely
they contribute to later sublimation; but they intellectual memory of the past, even when it is
are then simpler impulses acting in a predomi- available, is emotionally valueless and dead.
nantly paranoid setting, isolated and uninte- A real remembrance sometimes comes about
grated. With the establishment of the depres- unexpectedly by chance association. The flavour
sive position the object becomes more personal of a cake brings back to his mind a fragment of
and unique and the ego more integrated, and an his childhood with full emotional vividness.
awareness of an integrated, internal world is Stumbling over a stone revives a recollection
gradually achieved. Only when this happens of a holiday in Venice which before he had
does the attack on the object lead to real despair vainly tried to recapture. For years he tries in
at the destruction of an existing complex and vain to remember and re-create in his mind a
organized internal world, and with it, to the living picture of his beloved grandmother. But
wish to recover such a complete world again. only a chance association revives her picture
and at last enables him to remember her, and to
* * * * experience his loss and mourn her. He calls
The task of the artist lies in the creation of these fleeting associations: 'intermittences du
a world of his own. coeur " but he says that such memories come
In his introduction to the second Post- and then disappear again, so that the past
Impressionist Exhibition, Roger Fry writes: remains elusive. To capture them, to give them
• Now these artists do not seek to give what can, permanent life, to integrate them with the rest
after all, be but a pale reflex of actual appear- of his life, he must create a work of art. 'II
ance, but to arouse a conviction of a new and fallait . . . faire sortir de la penombre ce que
different reality. They do not seek to imitate j'avais senti, de Ie reconvertir en un equivalent
life but to find an equivalent for life,' What spirituel. Or ce moyen qui me paraissait Ie seul
Roger Fry says of post-impressionists un- qu'etait-ce autre chose que de creer une ceuvre
doubtedly applies to all genuine art. One of the d'art?' (' I had to recapture from the shade
great differences between art and imitation or a that which I had felt, to reconvert it into its
superficial • pretty' achievement is that neither psychic equivalent. But the way to do it, the
the imitation nor the' pretty' production ever only one I could see, what was it-but to create
achieves this creation of an entirely new reality. a work of art? ')
Every creative artist produces a world of his Through the many volumes of his work the
own. Even when he believes himself to be a past is being recaptured; all his lost, destroyed
complete realist and sets himself the task of and loved objects are being brought back to life:
faithfully reproducing the external world, he, in his parents, his grandmother, his beloved
fact, only uses elements of the existing external Albertine. 'Et certes il n'y aurait pas qu'Alber-
world to create with them a reality of his own. tine, que rna grandmere, mais bien d'autres
When, for instance, two realistic writers like encore dont j'aurais pu assimiler une parole, un
Zola and Flaubert try to portray life in the same regard, mais en tant que creatures individuelles
country, and very nearly at the same time, the je ne m'en rappellais plus; un livre est un grand
two worlds they show us differ from each other cimetiere ou sur la plupart des tombes on ne peut
as widely as if they were the most phantastic plus lire les noms effaces.' (' And indeed it was
creations of surrealist poets. If two great not only Albertine, not only my grandmother, but
painters paint the same landscape we have two many others still from whom I might well have
different worlds. assimilated a gesture or a word, but whom I could
, ... and dream not even remember as distinct persons. A book is
Of waves, flowers, clouds, woods, a vast graveyard where on most of the tombstones
Rocks, and all that we one can read no more the faded names.')
Read in their smiles And, according to Proust, it is only the lost
And call reality.' past and the lost or dead object that can be

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A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO iESTHETICS 199

made into a work of art. He makes the painter, If the wish to create is rooted in the depressive
Elstir, say: 'On ne peut recreer ce qu'on aime position and the capacity to create depends on a
qu'en Ie renoncant.' (' It is only by renouncing successful working through it, it would follow
that one can re-create what one loves.') It is that the inability to acknowledge and overcome
only when the loss has been acknowledged and depressive anxiety must lead to inhibitions in
the mourning experienced that re-creation can artistic expression.
take place. I should now like to give a few clinical
In the last volume of his work Proust des- examples from artists who have been inhibited in
cribes how at last he decided to sacrifice the rest their creative activities by neurosis, and I shall
of his life to writing. He came back after a long try to show that in them it was the inability to
absence to seek his old friends at a party, and work through their depressive anxieties which
all of them appeared to him as ruins of the real led to inhibitions of artistic activity, or to the
people he knew-useless, ridiculous, ill, on the production of an unsuccessful artistic product.
threshold of death. Others, he found, had died Case A is a young girl with a definite gift for
long ago. And on realizing the destruction of a painting. An acute rivalry with her mother
whole world that had been his, he decides to made her give up painting in her early teens.
write, to sacrifice himself to the re-creation of the After some analysis she started to paint again
dying and the dead. By virtue of his art he can and was working as a decorative artist. She did
give his objects an eternal life in his work. And decorative handicraft work in preference to what
since they represent his internal world too, if she sometimes called 'real painting', and this
he can do that, he himself will no longer be was because she knew that, though correct, neat
afraid of death. and pretty, her work failed to be moving and
What Proust describes corresponds to a restheucally significant. In her manic way she
situation of mourning: he sees that his loved usually denied that this caused her any concern.
objects are dying or dead. Writing a book is At the time when I was trying to interpret her
for him like the work of mourning in that grad- unconscious sadistic attacks on her father, the
ually the external objects are given up, they are internalization of her mutilated and destroyed
re-instated in the ego, and re-created in the book. father and the resulting depression, she told me
In her paper ' Mourning and its Relation to the following dream: 'She saw a picture in a
Manic-Depressive States ',9 Melanie Klein has shop which represented a wounded man lying
shown how mourning in grown-up life is a re- alone and desolate in a dark forest. She felt
living of the early depressive anxieties: not only quite overwhelmed with emotion and admiration
is the present object in the external world felt for this picture: she thought it represented the
to be lost, but also the early objects, the par- actual essence of life: if she could only paint
ents; and they are lost as internal objects as well like that she would be a really great painter.'
as in the external world. In the process of It soon appeared that the meaning of the
mourning it is these earliest objects which are dream was that if she could only acknowledge
lost again, and then re-created. Proust describes her depression about the wounding and des-
how this mourning leads to a wish to re-create truction of her father, she would then be able
the lost world. to express it in her painting and would achieve
r have quoted Proust at length because he real art. In fact, however, it was impossible for
reveals such an acute awareness of what r believe her to do this, since the unusual strength of her
is present in the unconscious of all artists: sadism and her resulting despair, and her small
namely, that all creation is really a re-creation capacity to tolerate depression, led to its manic
of a once loved and once whole, but now lost denial and to a constant make-believe that all
and ruined object, a ruined internal world and was well with the world. In her dream she con-
self. It is when the world within us is destroyed, firmed my interpretation about the attack on
when it is dead and loveless, when our loved her father, but she did more than this. Her
ones are in fragments, and we ourselves in help- dream showed something that had not been in
less despair-it is then that we must re-create any way interpreted or indicated by me: namely,
our world anew, re-assemble the pieces, infuse the effect on her painting of her persistent denial
life into dead fragments, re-create life. of depression. In relation to her painting the
denial of the depth and seriousness of her
* * * *
, Melanie Klein (1940). 'Mourning and its Relation to Manic-Depressive States', Contributions to Psycho-
Analysis, 1921-45.

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200 HANNA SEGAL

depressive feelings produced the effect of super- After the quarrel the painter had introjected her
ficiality and prettiness in whatever she chose to as a bad and revengeful mother, and, through
do-the dead father is completely denied and guilt and fear, she had to submit to this bad
no ugliness or conflict is ever allowed to disturb internal figure; it was really the Victorian
the neat and correct form of her work. mother who had dictated the painting.
Case B is that of a journalist aged a little over Paula Heimann described this example of
thirty. whose ambition was to be a writer, and an acute impairment of an already established
who suffered, among other symptoms, from an sublimation. In my patient his submission to
ever increasing inhibition in creative writing. An a very bad internal figure was a chronic situation
important feature of his character was a ten- preventing him from achieving any internal
dency to regress from the depressive to the freedom to create. Moreover, although he was
paranoid position. The following dream illus- trying to appease his persecutors, as a secondary
trates his problem: • He found himself in a defence against them, he was basically fixed in
room with Goebbels, Goering and some other the paranoid position and returned to it when-
Nazis. He was aware that these men were ever depressive feelings were aroused, so that
completely amoral. He knew that they were his love and reparative impulses could not
going to poison him and therefore he tried to become fully active.
make a bargain with them; he suggested that
it would be a good thing for them to let him live, * * * *
since he was a journalist and could write about All the patients mentioned suffered from
them and make them live for a time after their sexual maladjustments as well as creative inhibi-
death. But this stratagem failed and he knew tions. There is clearly a genital aspect of artistic
that he would finally be poisoned.' creation which is of paramount importance.
An important factor in this patient's psycho- Creating a work of art is a psychic equivalent of
logy was his introjection of an extremely bad pro-creation. It is a genital bisexual activity
father-figure who was then blamed for all that necessitating a good identification with the
the patient did. And one of the results was an father who gives, and the mother who receives
unbearable feeling of being internally persecuted and bears, the child. The ability to deal with the
by this bad internal father-figure, which was depressive position, however, is the pre-condi-
sometimes expressed in hypochondriacal symp- tion of both genital and artistic maturity. If the
toms. He tried to defend himself against it by parents are felt to be so completely destroyed
placating and serving this bad internal figure. that there is no hope of ever re-creating them, a
He was often driven to do things that he dis- successful identification is not possible, and
approved of and disliked. In the dream he neither can the genital position be maintained
showed how it interfered with his writing: to nor the sublimation in art develop.
avoid death at the hands of internal persecutors This relation between feelings of depression
he has to write for them to keep them immortal; and genital and artistic problems is clearly
but there is, of course, no real wish to keep such shown by another patient of mine. C, a man
bad figures alive, and consequently he was of thirty-five, was a really gifted artist, but at the
inhibited in his capacity for writing. He often same time a very iII person. Since the age of
complained, too, that he had no style of his eighteen he had suffered from depression, from
own; in his associations to the dream it became a variety of conversion symptoms of great
clear that he had to write not only for the benefit intensity, and from what he described as • a
of the poisoners, and to serve their purposes, complete lack of freedom and spontaneity'.
but also at their command. Thus the style of This lack of spontaneity interfered considerably
his writing belonged to the internal parental with his work, and, though he was physically
figure. The case, I think, resembles one des- potent, it also deprived him of all the enjoyment
cribed by Paula Heimann.!? A patient of hers of sexual intercourse. A feeling of impending
drew a sketch with which she was very dis- failure, worthlessness and hopelessness, marred
pleased; the style was not her own, it was all his efforts. He came to analysis at the age
Victorian. It appeared clearly during the of thirty-five because of a conversion symptom:
session that it was the' result of a quarrel with he suffered from a constant pain in the small of
another woman who stood for her mother. his back and the lower abdomen, which was
10 Paula Heimann: • A Contribution to the Problem of Sublimation and its Relation to Processes of Inter-
nalization', Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 23,1942, Part I.

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A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO ...ESTHETICS 201

aggravated by frequent spasms. He described bodiment of mental health and stability. After
it as 'a constant state of childbirth '. It ap- telling me the dream she said: 'loa n was not in
peared in his analysis that the pain started soon a fancy dress, she was undisguised, and I felt
after he learned that the wife of his twin brother her to be so much more vulnerable than me.'
was pregnant, and he actually came to me for Then she immediately corrected herself: 'Oh,
treatment a week before her confinement. He of course I meant she was so much less vulner-
felt that if I could only liberate him from the able than me.' This slip of the patient gave us
spasm he would do marvellous things. In his the key to the dream. The mentally healthy
case identification with the pregnant woman, person is more vulnerable than my patient, she
representing the mother, was very obvious, but wears no disguises and she is vulnerable to
it was not a happy identification. He felt his illness and death. My patient herself escapes
mother and the babies inside her had been so death, represented by the Matron, by using
completely destroyed by his sadism, and his various disguises. Her associations to this
hope of re-creating them was so slight, that the dream led us to a review of some of her leading
identification with the pregnant mother meant symptoms in terms of her fear of, and attempted
to him a state of anguish, ruin and abortive escape from, death. The disguises in the dream
pregnancy. Instead of producing the baby, he, represented personifications, projective and in-
like the mother, was destroyed. Feeling des- trojective identifications, all three used by her
troyed inside and unable to restore the mother, as means of not living her own life and-in the
he felt persecuted by her; the internal attacked light of the dream-not dying her own death.
mother attacked him in turn and robbed him of She also connected other symptoms of hers
his babies. Unlike the other three patients with the fear of death. For instance her
described, this one recognized his depression spending almost half her lifetime lying in bed,
and his reparative drive was therefore very much , half-dead " was a shamming of death, a way
stronger. The inhibition both in his sexual and of cheating death. Her phobia of bread, her
artistic achievements was due mainly to a fear of sex, appeared to her now as ways of
feeling of the inadequacy of his reparative escaping full living, which would mean that
capacity in comparison with the devastation that one day she would have 'spent her life' and
he felt he had brought about. This feeling of would have to face death. So far, she had
inadequacy made him regress to a paranoid almost lived on ' borrowed' life. For instance,
position whenever his anxiety was aroused. she felt extremely well and alive when she was
pregnant, she then felt she lived on the baby's
* * * * life; but immediately after the baby's birth she
Patient E, a woman writer, was the most felt depersonalized and half-dead.
disturbed of the patients described here. She I mention here only some of her more striking
was a severe chronic hypochondriac, she symptoms which all pointed in the same direc-
suffered from frequent depersonalization and tion; to a constant preoccupation with the fear
endless phobias, amongst them food phobias of death. The analyst, represented by the
leading at times to almost complete amorexia. Matron, tears off her disguises one after another,
She had been a writer, but had not been able and forces her to lead her own life and so
to write for a number of years. I want to eventually to die.
describe here how her inability to experience After some three sessions completely taken
depression led to an inhibition of symbolic up with the elaboration of this theme, she
expression. started the next one with what appeared to be
One day she told me the following dream: a completely new trend of thought. She started
'She was in a Nursing Home and the Matron complaining of her inability to write. Her
of this Home, dressed in black, was going to kill associations led her to remember her early
a man and a woman. She herself was going to a dislike of using words. She felt that her dislike
fancy dress ball. She kept running out of the was still present and she did not really want to
Nursing Home in various fancy disguises, but use words at all. Using words, she said, made
somehow something always went wrong, and she her break' an endless unity into bits'. It was
had to come back to the Nursing Home, and to like 'chopping up', like 'cutting things'. It
meet the Matron. At some point of the dream was obviously felt by her as an aggressive act.
she was with her friend Joan.' Besides, using words was' making things finite
Her friend, Joan, was for my patient the em- and separate'. To use words meant acknow-

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202 HANNA SEGAL

ledging the separateness of the world from She then told me the following dream: 'A
herself, and gave her a feeling of loss. She baby has died-or grown-up-she didn't know
felt that using words made her lose the illusion which; and as a result her breasts were full of
of possessing and being at one with an endless, milk. She was feeding a baby of another
undivided world: 'When you name a thing woman whose breasts were dry.'
you really lose it.' 11 It became clear to her The transference meaning of that dream was
that using a symbol (language) meant an accep- that I weaned her-my breast was dry-but
tance of the separateness of her object from she had acquired a breast and could be a mother
herself, the acknowledgement of her own herself. The baby who 'died or grew up' is
aggressiveness, 'chopping up', 'cutting', and herself. The baby dies and the grown woman
finally losing the object. takes its place. The losing of the analyst is here
In this patient the loss of the object was an experience involving sadness, guilt (about
always felt as an imminent threat to her own the rivalry with me in relation to the baby),
survival. So we could eventually connect her and anxiety (will she be able to go on remember-
difficulties in using language with the material ing me). But it is also an experience leading to
of the earlier sessions. Refusing to face this the enrichment of her ego-she now has the
threat of death to her object and to herself, breasts full of milk and therefore need no longer
she had to form the various symptoms devised depend on me.
magically to control and avoid death. She also Towards the end of the hour, she said:
had to give up her creative writing. In order to 'Words seem to have a meaning again, they
write again, she would have to be stripped of are rich', and she added that she was quite
her disguises, admit reality, and become vulner- sure she could now write 'provided I can go
able to loss and death. on being sad for a while, without being sick and
I shall now describe shortly a session with hating food '-i.e. provided she could mourn
the same patient two years later. me instead of feeling me as an internal per-
She had known for some time that she would secutor.
have to give up her analysis at the end of the Words acquired a meaning and the wish to
term, through external circumstances. She write returned again when she could give up
came to this session very sad, for the first time my breast as an external object and internalize
since it became clear that she would end her it. This giving up was experienced by her as
analysis. In preceding sessions she felt nausea, the death of the breast, which is dried up in the
felt internally persecuted and 'all in bits and dream and the death of a part of herself-the
pieces '. She said at the beginning of the baby part-which in growing up also dies.
session that she could hardly wait to see me In so far as she could mourn me words became
for fear that her sadness would turn into a rich in meaning.P
'sickness and badness'. She thought of the This patient's material confirmed an im-
end of her analysis, wondered if she would be pression derived from many other patients, that
able to go on liking me and how much would successful symbol formation is rooted in the
she be able to remember me. She also wondered depressive position.
if she in any way resembled me. There were two One of Freud's greatest contributions to
things she would wish to resemble me in: the psychology was the discovery that sublimation
truthfulness and the capacity to care for people is the outcome of a successful renunciation of
which she attributed to me. She hoped she an instinctual aim; I would like to suggest here
may have learned these from me. She also felt that such a successful renunciation can only
I was an ordinary kind of person, and she liked happen through a process of mourning. The
that thought. I interpreted her material as a giving up of an instinctual aim, or object, is a
wish to take me in and identify herself with me repetition and at the same time a re-Iiving of the
as a real ' ordinary' feeding breast, in contrast giving up of the breast. It can be successful,
to an earlier situation when an idealized breast like this first situation, if the object to be given
was internalized, which subsequently turned up can be assimilated in the ego, by the process
into a persecuting one, of loss and internal restoration. I suggest that

11 This theme became later linked with the' Rumpel- the dream in order not to detract from my main theme.
stiltskin' theme of stealing the baby and the penis, This transference situation was linked with past expe-
but I cannot follow it up here. riences of weaning, birth of the new baby and the patient's
12 I have given here only the transference meaning of failure in the past to be a • good' mother to the new baby.

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A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO .t£STHETICS 203

such an assimilated object becomes a symbol express, and of the external materials with which
within the ego. Every aspect of the object, he works, can in all consciousness use the
every situation that has to be given up in the material to express the phantasy. He shares
process of growing, gives rise to symbol with the neurotic all the difficulties of unresolved
formation. depression, the constant threat of the collapse
In this view symbol formation is the outcome of his internal world; but he differs from the
of a loss, it is a creative act involving the pain neurotic in that he has a greater capacity for
and the whole work of mourning. tolerating anxiety and depression. The patients
If psychic reality is experienced and dif- I described could not tolerate depressive
ferentiated from external reality, the symbol is phantasies and anxieties; they all made use of
differentiated from the object; it is felt to be manic defences leading to a denial of psychic
created by the self and can be freely used by the reality. Patient A denied both the loss of her
self. father and his importance to her: Patient B
I cannot deal here extensively with the projected his impulses on to an internal bad
problem of symbols, I have brought it up only object, with the result that his ego was split
in so far as it is relevant to my main theme. and that he was internally persecuted: Patient C
And it is relevant in that the creation of symbols, did the same, though to a lesser extent:
the symbolic elaboration of a theme, are the Patient E regressed to the schizoid mechanisms
very essence of art. of splitting and projective identification which
led to depersonalization and inhibition in the
* * * * use of symbols.
I should now like to attempt to formulate an In contrast to that, Proust could fully
answer to the question whether there is a specific experience depressive mourning. This gave
factor in the psychology of the successful artist him the possibility of insight into himself. and
which would differentiate him from the unsuc- with it a sense of internal and external reality.
cessful one. In Freud's words: 'What dis- Further, this reality sense enabled him to have
tinguishes the poet, the artist, from the neurotic and to maintain a relationship with other
day-dreamer?' In his paper ' Formulations people through the medium of his art. The
Regarding the Two Principles in Mental neurotic's phantasy interferes with his relation-
Functioning', Freud says: 'The artist finds a ships in which he acts it out. The artist with-
way of returning from the world of phantasy draws into a world of phantasy, but he can
back to reality, with his special gifts he moulds communicate his phantasies and share them.
his phantasies into a new kind of reality.' In that way he makes reparation, not only to
Indeed, one could say that the artist has an his own internal objects, but to the external
acute reality sense. He is often neurotic and world as well.
in many situations may show a complete lack
of objectivity, but in two respects, at least, he * * * *
shows an extremely high reality sense. One is I have tried, so far, to show how Melanie
in relation to his own internal reality, and the Klein's work, especially her concept of the
other in relation to the material of his art. depressive position and the reparative drives
However neurotic Proust was in his attachment that are set in motion by it, and her description
to his mother, his homosexuality, his asthma, of the world of inner objects, throws new light
etc., he had a real insight into the phantastic on the psychology of the artist, on the condi-
world of the people inside him, and he knew it tions necessary for him to be successful and on
was internal, and he knew it was phantasy. those which can inhibit or vitiate his artistic
He showed an awareness that does not exist activities. Can this new light on the psychology
in a neurotic who splits off, represses, denies or of the artist help us to understand the .estheuc
acts out his phantasy. The second. the reality pleasure experienced by the artist's public 0
sense of the artist in relation to his material, If, for the artist, the work of art is his most
is a highly specialized reality assessment of the complete and satisfactory way of allaying the
nature, needs, possibilities and limitations of guilt and despair arising out of the depressive
his material, be it words, sounds, paints or position and of restoring his destroyed objects,
clay. The neurotic uses his material in a magic it is but one of the many human ways of achiev-
way, and so does the bad artist. The real artist, ing this end. What is it that makes a work of
being aware of his internal world which he must art such a satisfactory experience for the

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204 HANNA SEGAL
artist's public? Freud says that he ' bribes us at a picture of the phantasies belonging to the
with the formal and esthetic pleasures.' earliest depressive position where all the objects
To begin with, we should distinguish between are destroyed. What is the psychological
the resthetic pleasure and other incidental mechanism of the listener's 'nach-erleben'?
pleasures to be found in works of art. For As I see it, he makes two identifications. He
instance, the satisfaction derived from identifica- identifies himself with the author, and he
tion with particular scenes or characters can identifies the whole tragedy with the author's
also arise in other ways, and it can be derived internal world. He identifies himself with the
from bad as well as from good art. The same author while the latter is facing and expressing
would apply to the sentimental interests his depression. In a simplified way one can
originating in memories and associations. The summarize the listener's reaction as follows:
resthetic pleasure proper, that is, the pleasure 'The author has, in his hatred, destroyed all
derived from a work of art and unique in that it his loved objects just as I have done, and like
can only be obtained through a work of art, is me he felt death and desolation inside him.
due to an identification of ourselves with the Yet he can face it and he can make me face it,
work of art as a whole and with the whole and despite the ruin and devastation we and the
internal world of the artist as represented by world around us survive. What is more, his
his work. In my view all resthetic pleasure objects, which have become evil and were
includes an unconscious re-living of the artist's destroyed, have been made alive again and
experience of creation. In his paper on 'The have become immortal by his art. Out of all
Moses of Michelangelo', Freud says: 'What the chaos and destruction he has created a
the artist aims at is to awaken in us the same world which is whole, complete and unified.'
mental constellation as that which in him pro- It would appear then that two factors are
duced the impetus to create.' essential to the excellence of a tragedy: the
We find in Dilthey's philosophy a concept unshrinking expression of the full horror of
called by him 'nach-erleben ':l3 This means the depressive phantasy and the achieving of
to him that we can understand other people an impression of wholeness and harmony.
from their behaviour and expression, we intui- The external form of ' classical' tragedy is in
tively reconstruct their mental and emotional complete contrast with its content. The formal
state, we live after them, we re-live them. This modes of speech, the unities of time, place and
process he calls ' nach-erleben '. It is, he says, action, the strictness and rigidity of the rules
often deeper than introspection can discover. are all, I believe, an unconscious demonstra-
His concept, I think, is equivalent to uncon- tion of the fact that order can emerge out of
scious identification. I assume that this kind of chaos. Without this formal harmony the
unconscious re-living of the creator's state of depression of the audience would be aroused
mind is the foundation of all resthetic pleasure. but not resolved. There can be no resthetic
To illustrate what I mean I will take as an pleasure without perfect form.P
example the case of 'classical' tragedy. In a In creating a tragedy I suggest the success
tragedy the hero commits a crime: the crime is of the artist depends on his being able fully to
fated, it is an 'innocent' crime, he is driven acknowledge and express his depressive phan-
to it. Whatever the nature of the crime the tasies and anxieties. In expressing them he
result is always complete destruction-the does work similar to the work of mourning
parental figures and· child figures alike are in that he internally re-creates a harmonious
engulfed by it. That is, at whatever level the world which is projected into his work of art.
conflict starts-' <Edipus Rex', for instance, The reader identifies with the author through
states a genital conflict-in the end we arrive the medium of his work of art. In that way he

13 Wilhelm Dilthey, an Introduction. Hodges. it is to the ideal. What the formalists ignore is that
" Roger Fry says: • All the essential resthetic quality form as much as content is in itself an expression of
has to do with pure form', and I agree, but he adds unconscious emotion. What Fry, following Clive Bell,
later: • The odd thing is that it is, apparently, dangerous calls • significant form', a term he confesses himself
for the artist to know about this.' Roger Fry feels that incapable of defining, is form expressing and embodying
it is odd, I think, because of an inherent weakness of the an unconscious emotional experience. The artist is not
formalist school he represents. The formalists dis- trying to produce pretty or even beautiful form, he is
count the importance of emotional factors in art. engaged on the most important task of re-creating his
According to Fry, art must be completely detached from ruined internal world and the resulting form will depend
emotions, all emotion is impurity, and the more the on how well he succeeds in his task.
form gets freed from the emotional content the nearer

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A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO !ESTHETICS 205

re-experiences his own early depressive anxieties, What is • beautiful'? Taking again the beauti-
and through identifying with the artist he experi- ful as but one of the categories of the esthetically
ences a successful mourning, re-establishes his satisfying, most writers agree that the main
own internal objects and his own internal world, elements of the beautiful-the whole, the com-
and feels, therefore, re-integrated and enriched. plete, and the rhythmical-are in contrast with
the ugly. Amongst analytical writers-Rickman
* * * * equates the beautiful with the whole object;
But is this experience specific to a work of Ella Sharpe considers beauty essentially as
art that is tragic, or is it an essential part of any rhythm and equates it with the experience of
resthetic experience? I think I could generalize goodness in rhythmical sucking, satisfactory
my argument: To do so I shall have to intro- defecation and sexual intercourse. I should add
duce the more usual terminology of asthetics to this rhythmical breathing and the rhythm
and re-state my problems in new terms. The of our heart-beats. An undisturbed rhythm
terms I need are' ugly' and' beautiful '. For in a composed whole seems to correspond to the
Rickman, in his paper' The Nature of Ugliness state in which our inner world is at peace.
and the Creative Impulse', 15 the • ugly' is Of non-analytical writers, Herbert Read comes
the destroyed, the incomplete object. For Ella to a similar conclusion when he says that we
Sharpe 16 • ugly' is destroyed, arythmic, and find rhythmical, simple arithmetical proportions
connected with painful tension. I think both which correspond to the way we are built and
these views would be included if we say that our bodies work. But these elements of
• ugliness' is what expresses the state of the • beauty' are in themselves insufficient. If
internal world in depression. It includes ten- they were enough then we would find it most
sion, hatred and its results-the destruction of satisfactory to contemplate a circle or listen to a
good and whole objects and their change into regular tattoo on a drum. I suggest that both
persecutory fragments. Rickman, however, beauty, in the narrow sense of the word, and
when he contrasts ugly and beautiful, seems to ugliness must be present for a full eesthetic
equate • beautiful' with what is resthetically experience.
satisfying. With that I cannot agree. Ugly I would re-word my attempt at analysing the
and beautiful are two categories of resthetic tragic in terms of ugliness and beauty. Broadly
experience and, in certain ways, they can be speaking, in tragedy 'ugly' is the content-
contrasted; but if beautiful is used as synony- the complete ruin and destruction-and' beauti-
mous with resthetically satisfying, then its ful' is the form. 'Ugly' is also an essential
contradictory is not • ugly', but uruesthetic, or part of the comic. The comic here is ugly in
indifferent, or dull. Rickman says that we that, as in caricature, the overstressing of one or
recoil from the ugly; my contention is that two characteristics ruins the wholeness-the
• ugly' is a most important and necessary balance-s-of the character. Ugly and tragic is
component of a satisfying resthetic experience. also the defeat of the comic hero by the sane
The concept of ugliness as one element in world. How near the comic hero is to the
esthetic satisfaction is not uncommon in the tragic can be seen from the fact that out-
tradition of philosophical resthetics; it has been standing comic heroes of past ages are felt, at a
most strikingly expressed, however, by the later date, to be mainly tragic figures; few
artists themselves. Rodin writes: • We call people to-day take Shylock or Falstaff as
ugly that which is formless, unhealthy, which figures of fun only; we are aware of the tragedy
suggests illness, suffering, destruction, which is implied. The difference between tragedy and
contrary to regularity-the sign of health. comedy lies then in the comic writer's attempt
We also call ugly the immoral, the vicious, the to dissociate himself from the tragedy of his
criminal and all abnormality which brings evil hero, to feel superior to it in a kind of successful
-the soul of the parricide, the traitor, the self- manic defence. But the manic defence is never
seeker. But let a great artist get hold of this complete; the original depression is still ex-
ugliness; immediately he transfigures it-with pressed and it must therefore have been to a
a touch of his magic wand he makes it into large extent acknowledged and lived by the
beauty.' author. The audience re-lives depression, the
i s J. Rickman (I 940). • The Nature of Ugliness and Delusion' (1930). • Similar and Divergent Unconscious
the Creative Impulse', Int. J. ofPsycho-Anal., 21, Part 3. Determinants underlying the Sublimations of Pure Art
16 Ella Sharpe: • Certain Aspects of Sublimation and and Pure Science' (1935).

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206 HANNA SEGAL
fear of it, and the aggression against it which If we consider what is commonly said about
are expressed in a comedy and its final successful beauty by laymen, we find a confirmation of this
outcome. conclusion. They say that complete beauty
It is easier to discover this pattern of over- makes one both sad and happy at the same time,
coming depression in literature, with its explicit and that it is a purge for the soul-that it is
verbal content, than in other forms of art. awe-inspiring. Great artists themselves have
The further away from literature the more been very much aware of the depression and
difficult is the task. In music, for instance, we terror embodied in works of classical beauty
would have to study the introduction of dis- which are apparently so peaceful. When Faust
cords, disharmonies, new disorders which are so goes in search of Helen, the perfect classical
invariably considered to be ugly before they are beauty, he has to face un-named terrors; to
universally accepted. New art is considered go where there is no road:
, difficult', it is resisted, misunderstood, treated
with bitter hatred, contempt; or, on the other • Kein Weg! Ins Unbetretene
hand, it may be idealized to such an extent that Nicht zuBetretende; einWegaus Unerbetene,
the apparent admiration defeats its aim and Nicht zu Erbittende.'
makes its object a butt of ridicule. These pre- He must face endless emptiness:
valent reactions of the public are, I think,
manifestations of a manic defence against the '-Nichts Wirstdu sehn in ewigleererFerne,
Den Schritt nicht horen den du tust,
depressive anxieties stirred by art. The artists Nichts Festeslinden,wo du riihst.'
find ever new ways of revealing a repressed and
denied depression. The public use against it Rilke writes: • Beauty is nothing but the
all their powers of defence until they find the beginning of terror that we are still just able to
courage to follow the new artist into the depths bear.'
of his depression, and eventually to share his Thus to the sensitive onlooker, every work
triumphs. of beauty still embodies the terrifying expe-
The idea that ugliness is an essential com- rience of depression and death. Hanns Sachs,
ponent of a complete experience seems to be in his book, Beauty, Life and Death, pays
true of the tragic, the comic, the realistic, in particular attention to the awesome aspect of
fact of all the commonly accepted categories beauty; he says the difficulty is not to under-
of the asthetic except one-and this single stand beauty but to bear it, and he connects
exception is of great importance. this terror with the very peacefulness of the
There is, undoubtedly, a category of art perfect work of art. He calls it the static
which shows to the greatest extent all the element; it is peaceful because it seems un-
elements of beauty in the narrow sense of the changeable, eternal. And it is terrifying because
word, and no apparent sign of ugliness; it is this eternal unchangeability is the expression
often called' classical' beauty. The beauty of of the death instinct-the static element opposed
the Parthenon, of the Discobolos, is whole, to life and change.
rhythmical, undisturbed. But soulless imita- Following quite a different trend of thought
tions of beauty, 'pretty' creations are also whole I come to similar conclusions about the role
and rhythmical; yet they fail to stir and rouse of the death instinct in a work of art. Thus
nothing but boredom. Thus classical beauty far my contention has been that a satisfactory
must have some other not immediately obvious work of art is achieved by a realization and
element. sublimation of the depressive position, and that
Returning to the concept of nach-erleben, of the effect on the audience is that they uncon-
experiencing along with another, we may say sciously re-live the artist's experience and share
that in order to move us deeply the artist must his triumph of achievement and his final
have embodied in his work some deep experience detachment. But to realize and symbolically to
of his own. And all our analytical experience express depression the artist must acknowledge
as well as the knowledge derived from other the death instinct, both in its aggressive and
forms of art suggest that the deep experience self-destructive aspects, and accept the reality
must have been what we call, clinically, a of death for the object and the self. One of
depression, and that the stimulus to create the patients I described could not use symbols
such a perfect whole must have lain in the drive because of her failure to work through the
to overcome an unusually strong depression. depressive position; her failure clearly lay in

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A PSYCHO-ANALYTICAL APPROACH TO iESTHETICS 207

her inability to accept and use her death instinct a symbol of death, and for him the solution of
and to acknowledge death. the play is Lear's final overcoming of the fear
Re-stated in tenus of instincts, ugliness- of death and his reconciliation to it. He says:
destruction-is the expression of the death , Thus man overcomes death, which in thought
instinct; beauty-the desire to unite into he has acknowledged. No greater triumph of
rhythms and wholes, is that of the life instinct. wish-fulfilment is conceivable.'
The achievement of the artist is in giving the All artists aim at immortality; their objects
fullest expression to the conflict and the union must not only be brought back to life, but also
between those two. the life has to be eternal. And of all human
This is a conclusion which Freud has brought activities art comes nearest to achieving im-
out in two of his essays, though he did not mortality; a great work of art is likely to escape
generalize it as applicable to all art. One of destruction and oblivion.
these essays is that on Michelangelo's Moses, It is tempting to suggest that this is so because
where he clearly shows that the latent meaning in a great work of art the degree of denial of
of this work is the overcoming of wrath. The the death instinct is 'less than in any other
other essay is his analysis of the theme of the human activity, that the death instinct is
Three Caskets. He shows there that in the acknowledged, as fully as can be borne. It is
choice between the three caskets, or three expressed and curbed to the needs of the life
women, the final choice is always symbolical of instinct and creation.
death. He interprets Cordelia in King Lear as

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