Chagall

The persistent effort of so-called modern minds to explain mysteries … can yield nothing, in the long run, but the nostalgic satisfaction of the small boy who discovers at last that his mechanical duck was made up of two wheels, three springs and a screw. The little boy holds in his hands three springs, two wheels and a screw, objects which are doubtless reassuring, but he has lost his mechanical duck, and he has usually not found an explanation.

There have always been two sides to me: the artist and the scientist. The artist wants to make art and the scientist wants to understand. At school I was torn between going to art school and going to medical school. Going to medical school won, but through medical school I continued to make art. In my final year at medical school (Birtchnell 1959) I wrote an article trying to explain what art was. It brought together the two sides of me. Some years into psychiatry, the conflict resurfaced in the form of: do I want to do psychotherapy or do I want to do research? Doing research won but I continued to do psychotherapy. The art side of me emerged as an interest in art therapy and, lately, I have treated a number of artists.

Artists often have serious psychological difficulties, and some commit suicide, but I do not believe that Chagall had serious psychological difficulties. The evidence suggests that he was a stable and well-balanced person. My reason for writing this article is my belief that what happens in art is sometimes similar to what happens in psychotherapy. The artist, like the person in psychotherapy, gives expression to ideas that are not understood. The artist, unselfconsciously and uncritically, allows the picture almost to paint itself, following the paint brush wherever it chooses to go, like the glass on an ouija board. Similarly, the psychoanalytic patient is encouraged to say whatever comes into her/his head, without question and without censor. Marian Milner (1987), who was as interested in art