Psychoanalytic Aesthetics

Paper Summary:

The psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics enables us to understand the artists' aesthetic experiences as he or she conjures up his perception and response thereof, interpretation and meaning and his or her thoughts and feelings. The paper explains that, primarily divided into applied psychoanalysis and clinical psychoanalysis, the discipline of psychoanalytic aesthetics has been studied and commented upon by many famous psychoanalysts and clinicians over the years. This paper focuses on the comments of clinician Hanna Segal's psychoanalytic approach to aesthetics in general and particularly her quotes on creation and recreation. It examines her comment: "The essence of the aesthetic creation is a resolution of the central depressive situation and that the main factor in the aesthetic experience is the identification with this process." (H. Segal, 1981).

From the Paper:

"According to Segal, one of the main aims of the artists is to create a world of his own, as Winnicott (1971) also held that the need to create something out of nothing is the main impulse. Segal says that though the artist believes that he is engaged in reproducing the external world, the fact is that the artist is using the external world to rebuild his own inner self. One of the themes used by Segal is of recovering the past and the defragmentation of the pieces."

More papers on Psychoanalytic Aesthetics:

• Analytical Essay # 120208 : "Theodor Adorno and Subjectivist Aesthetic Theory"
• Essay # 45884 : "A Tale of Two Psyches"
• Analytical Essay # 58192 : "The Erotic in Julian of Norwich's "Mystical Writings"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: