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When Ernst Kris met the young student Ernst H. Gombrich, who is revered today as one of the important art historians of the twentieth century, he recommended to him that he give up art history. This advice was based less on any doubt of the young man's professional attitude than on Kris' own aloofness from a subject which he considered to be immature in terms of methodology. Gombrich recalled his words: “We really know much too little about art to be able to draw any definitive conclusions. The best thing our colleagues can do is to take up a more developed branch of knowledge.” Kris proposed psychology as an alternative, even if he harboured reservations about the application of this discipline for problem solving in his own field (Gombrich 1984, 224).
The outcome of this perspective for Kris in the long run is well known: He concentrated on psychoanalysis and abandoned art history. But what effect did this ambivalent attitude have on his strictly art historical publications, which originated before and up to 1938, alongside his psychoanalytical texts? This essay is concerned with a question about Kris the art historian which has up to now curiously been neglected.1 It will point out the basic concepts of his writings in this field and their origins and thereby show that Kris' doubts about his profession as an art historian were induced not only by the theories of Freud but that of others as well. It may offer a contribution to the recovery of psychological and psychoanalytical influences on art history of the 1920s and 30s (cf. Herding 1990, 1994).
That first meeting with Gombrich took place in 1931. Kris had been working for nine years in the sculpture and applied art collections at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and was at the height of his fame as the author of art historical publications.2 At this time he was literally dividing his activities