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Beginning with Freud himself, psycho-analysis has always been interested in and concerned with the nature of artistic creativity. Although some artistic movements and art criticism itself have been much influenced by psycho-analysis, and many art critics use psycho-analytic concepts in their writings, this book is one of the few written by an art critic in which the processes underlying artistic creation are described with deep psycho-analytic insight.
Although the author's style is at times complex and not always easy to follow, a close study is well worth the effort involved, for it is obvious that he has a good understanding of the forces underlying artistic creativity in general and that of Michelangelo in particular. He brings out clearly the contrast between the neurotic side of the artist's personality, as evidenced by marked feelings of depression and persecution with ideas of being enslaved and exploited by his family on the one hand, and his extraordinary capacity for producing sublime works of art on the other. He analyses the different features of the sculptor's work and attempts to correlate them with various ways of dealing with conflict-ridden anxiety; and we are made vividly aware of Michelangelo's constant striving for perfection, with his search for the ideal object, and his consequent underlying feelings of dissatisfaction with his work, in spite of its recognition by the outside world.
One of the main points made about the creative act is that at one and the same time it comprises a wish for fusion with the object, an oceanic longing for it, and yet a recognition of the 'otherness' of the object, which presupposes the capacity to penetrate the object, yet not to be too confused with it. This seems to me extremely important, and links up with Segal's views on the processes involved in symbol formation. It would imply that the mechanism of projective identification is not so intense as to make for complete confusion with the object. It would al