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In the discipline of psychoanalysis we try to anchor developing theories to clinical data or at least establish plausible connections between our theories and clinical material that can either confirm them or show them to be inconsistent. Of course we also know that the clinical data we select to demonstrate the usefulness of our theories is already dependent on some preconceived ideas about relevance. Hence our field is always struggling to define what constitutes validity and proof. As theories can never be “true” or “false,” they can only be judged by their usefulness.
These considerations are relevant to the critical evaluation of George Hagman's Aesthetic Experience, which presents a good overview of the field of aesthetics from the point of view of self psychology and relational psychoanalysis. Thorough and well researched, it brings together the ideas of Freud and of some of his followers, including contemporary theorists and developmental psychologists. Its chapter headings give a good perspective on its scope: The Developmental Matrix of Aesthetic Experience; Idealization; The Creative Process; The Sense of Beauty; Ugliness; The Sublime. The book also includes a brief philosophical review of the field of aesthetics before turning to more psychoanalytic considerations.
Hagman, an artist and poet, is an LCSW psychoanalyst on the faculty of the National Psychological Association for Psychoanalysis and of the Training and Research Institute for Self Psychology, both in New York.
I did not come across any clear references to his own experiences of creativity (painting or poetry), in spite of his allusions to it. There is, however, an autobiographical vignette of a traumatic experience of