The Vienna Psycho-Analytical Society

1October 12, 1921. Dr. Prinzhorn (Heidelberg) as visitor: On drawings by the mentally deranged and by primitive peoples.

The lecturer presented a collection of spontaneously created pictures drawn by uninstructed mentally deranged patients of the psychiatric clinic at Heidelberg. These are attempts at representation of form uninfluenced by tradition or schooling; the draughtsmen, that is 75% of them, are suffering from schizophrenia. The lecturer

propounded the question of the relation of mental disease to artistic production. The main sources of the representations are eroticism and religion often viewed from the blasphemous side. In content there is a preference for symbolic and delusional analogies, in the matter of form there is shown an exuberance of the means of representation. The general attitude to existence of the mentally deranged is characteristic as well of the artist: delight in play, reversion to the ego, arbitrariness, and self-assurance. The question arises whether the morbid condition creates new talents or merely awakens existing ones. In the progress of the psychotic condition, the creative factor must be taken into account.

The lecturer pointed to those modern art forms which show a special relation to the pictures by the mentally deranged and sought to emphasize the difference existing between the latter and the work of creative artists. The mentally deranged labours under the estrangement from the real world as under a compulsion while this estrangement is consciously accomplished by the creative artist. The mentally deranged have been producing sufficient unto themselves, responsible to no one but to themselves. The artistic expression of the diseased is so akin to modern art because it lies along the line of the fulfillment of longing. The ability to express oneself in plastic form is given to every one to a greater or lesser degree.

The lecturer pointed to the interrelation of primitive art and that of mentally deranged patien