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The central theme of Freud's Art: Psychoanalysis Retold appears to be that just as the process of analytic listening has the potential to render meaningful for the patient what was chaotic, so may ‘taking in with our eyes what we see in the artist's art’ (p. 120) have the capacity to effect similar internal transformations. Janet Sayers sets out to retell the story of psychoanalysis through art - either as an art in its own terms, or through art's professed affinity with the aims, processes and manifestations of psychoanalysis. Sayers's retelling takes the form of describing through single chapters aspects of the work of ten analysts and two art critics, and their varying approaches to the ‘art’ of psychoanalysis, with each chapter alluding to aspects of art - mainly visual - as may be referenced, or relevant to, the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. There is, however, no clear overriding theory - of either art or psychoanalysis - around which these ideas coalesce, so the work comes across more as a patchwork held together by their common themes but one whose separate squares are stitched together from irregular colours, textures and shapes brought together to constitute the final lively and interesting, if somewhat uneven, quilt.
The book's title introduces an ambiguity that persists throughout, ‘Freud's Art’ being both a reference to the art of psychoanalysis, as well as to Freud's abiding interest in the role of art: psychologically, within the culture, certainly, but also his preoccupation with the psyche of the artist, with regard both to Freud's theories of the neuroses, as well as to the genesis of creativity. Sayers introduces her subject by remarking that the histories of modern art and psychoanalysis have often coincided - having in fact grown up more or less side by side this would be inevitable - and notes that Freud's first meeting with Jung, and Picasso's painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon following his decisive encounter with African masks, both t