Egon Schiele's Self-Portraits: A Psychoanalytic Study in the Creation of a Self

What we do depends on what we are; but it is necessary to add also that we are, to a certain extent, what we do, and that we are creating ourselves continually. … For a conscious being to exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.

Egon Schiele (1890-1918) was an Austrian Expressionist artist who produced throughout his brief lifetime hundreds of self-portraits, a number of which strike the onlooker as unusual and even grotesque. Indeed, the self-portrait was the major theme in Schiele's art and his oeuvre therefore, is a highly autobiographical one, chronicling not only the major events and important people who figured in his lifetime but also reflecting the devouring intensity with which he faced his most intimate emotional experiences. In this chapter an attempt has been made to identify those occurrences from Schiele's early life that were to become the primary determinants of the content and form of his art. In order to accomplish this, it was necessary to reconstruct Schiele's childhood as thoroughly as the available data would allow. From this reconstruction two sets of formative events crucial for their effects on Schiele's life and art arose: a failed mirroring experience with his mother and family deaths, including those of his four siblings and, most importantly, that of his father, who died from syphilis. Both of these sets of circumstances had a profound influence on Schiele's body image and subsequent self-representation. I will briefly discuss each of them, illustrating the manner in which Schiele dealt creatively with narcissistic issues and how the reparative function served him and his art.