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The author is a Greek psychiatrist who, as Dr. Hesnard of Paris tells us in his foreword, is also a biologist, a poet, an old student of the École des Beaux-Arts, and a translator of French literary works. He has over a dozen books on medical psychology and many articles on psychiatry to his credit.
His book, The Psycho-analysis of the Artist and his Work, is full of scholarship and makes very interesting reading. He is certainly at home in the field of history of art and literature, particularly French. The general approach to the subject is psycho-dynamic, but there are also excursions into the fields of experimental and social psychology.
Occasionally the reader comes across assertions which seem to be the conviction of the author rather than views held by psycho-analytic science as such. To this category belongs the statement that artistic creativeness, being the result of conflict (and therefore really a neurotic symptom), would tend to diminish and disappear under analysis. The historian-sociologist, on the other hand, would perhaps question the negative correlation, which he thinks does exist, between the prosperity of a nation and its artistic output.
Almost half of the book is devoted to the analysis of modern movements in art and literature. The author demonstrates convincingly the almost psychotic nature of some of these 'Schools'. He seems to be well informed about his subject, though not very kindly disposed towards it. He writes, 'Pour nous, Symbolisme, Impressionnisme, Futurisme, Expressionnisme, Dadaïsme, Surréalisme, Existentialisme, Suprématisme, Lettrisme, Abstraitisme, forment les gradins d'un escalier symbolique que l'homme de notre siècle doit descendre jusqu' à la dernière marche afin de pouvoir recommencer une ascension avec un pas plus ferme et plus optimiste.' (For us symbolism, etc. … form the steps of a symbolic ladder down which the man of our century must descend to the last step in order to be able to start an ascent with firmer