Freud's Writings on Art

Freud saw in art another manifestation—and a particularly attractive one—of the human spirit which he was engaged in studying scientifically. By making the same objective and painstaking approach to both he was able to enhance his knowledge of art and to use it for the benefit of psycho-analysis. he refused to speculate on the nature of the Beautiful, leaving this to the philosophers and confining himself, as a psycho-analyst, to what man perceives, imagines, and feels. To this day there is no fully developed psycho-analytic theory of aesthetics, although some analysts, notably Hanns Sachs, have put forth suggestions concerning the experiencing of a feeling of beauty which might conceivably form part of such a theory. What Freud did was to establish the principle that evaluations of art fall within the purview of psycho-analysis only as they reveal the psychic needs out of which art arises, the psychic materials which it uses, and the psychic purposes it serves.

Artistic productions, like novels or paintings, when looked at in this way, disclose a great deal about those experiences of the artist which have achieved aesthetic expression and about their communication through the artistic medium to others. Freud studied art as a record of the gifted; it translates events and the artist's reactions to them into forms by means of which they can be communicated symbolically. But he realized that it was more than simply a message in code which, when deciphered, would 'explain' art. He recognized that it actually has the property of preserving (in modified form) and creating repeatedly on demand an experience, or rather its artistic equivalent, which has afforded the author certain satisfactions and is capable of doing the same for an audience. Literature especially, since its medium, like that of psycho-analysis, is language, lends itself readily to scientific investigation without the necessity of constructing a new symbolic foundation. It was natural, therefore,