The Contribution of Psycho-Analysis to the Biography of the Artist—A Commentary on Methodology1

Biographical reconstruction is an inherent aim of the psycho-analytic process, and psycho-analysis as a genetic psychology is in essence a science of biography. In the clinical situation the focus is the biography of the patient, the reconstruction of the repressed events of his early life; in the application of psycho-analytic methods to the study of the life of a great man there is a similar interest in the reconstruction of aspects of his life that would not be available from an ordinary biographical study.

There is no unanimity in literary criticism about the value of biographical studies of artists, and in some quarters there is an actual aversion to the biographical approach. But whatever differences of opinion may exist, it is a fact that modern literary criticism includes among its techniques biography, psychology, and also psychological biography. Evidence of this is to be found in the review pages of any literary journal and in the increasing number of psychological studies by literary critics.2

Psycho-analysis cannot avoid its portion in the general interest in biography, and offers, as I propose to show in this paper, an instrument of particular sharpness and precision with which to scrutinize its psychological aspects. There is much to be learned from the life of a great person and there is an undeniable fascination in the study of such a life. The psycho-analyst, like any other scientist, is a man with curiosity, directed in his case to the working of the mind. To the curiosity he adds psychological insight and scrupulous application of the tools of his skill.

It is an inevitable step from the study of the dream and the fantasy to the study of the creation of a work of art. The biography of the artist is a prelude to the study of imagination, because in the artist and in his work we are vouchsafed insight into thought processes and fantasy formation to a degree rarely possible elsewhere.

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