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Born as a revolutionary form of therapy for the neuroses, psychoanalysis soon also became a psychological theory for the understanding of all sorts of cultural phenomena, the arts included. Early instances are Freud's own interpretations of a fictional work of literature (‘Delusion and dream in Jensen's Gradiva’, 1906) and of a sculpture (‘The Moses of Michelangelo’, 1914).
With a few notable exceptions (e.g. Milner, 1950; Kris, 1952; Gedo, 1983; Oremland, 1997), those who have written about the world of the arts from a psychoanalytic perspective have focused on art products rather than on the creative process involved in making them. Besides, most of such authors were either psychoanalysts without personal experience of creating art works, or art critics borrowing (and often misrepresenting) psychoanalytic ideas.
Desy Safán-Gerard, the California-based Chilean author of Chaos and Control: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Unfolding Creative Minds, is an exception, being herself a visual artist also trained as a psychoanalyst, with considerable experience of working with creative patients from several fields. Prefaced by her first analyst Otto Kernberg, her book focuses on the different emotional components (both conscious and unconscious) involved in the creative process through a detailed observation of her own mind and body at work while painting.
The book consists of 16 chapters, neatly divided in two distinct parts: ‘Theories, conditions, and obstacles’ and ‘My own development’. This second section is richly illustrated with colour reproductions of many of her paintings and includes a sort of autobiographical trajectory of the author as an artist: from her early studies in music composition (and her ‘breakthrough’ encounter with Pierre Boulez and his music) to the development of her personal style as an abstract painter. Each page of her book conveys the impression that she approaches her painting activities with great passion - troubled at times, ecstatically jo