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This most ambitious volume by the Australian psychotherapist Nicky Glover contains a Foreword by Neil Maizels and seven chapters devoted to the contributions to the field of art and creativity by psychoanalysts from Freud to Klein followed by developments in the British School by Winni-cott, Bion, Ehrenzweig, Fuller, Wollheim, Meltzer and others. Glover is quite knowledgeable about the British School, having originally studied art history and psychoanalysis in England. She finds its members to be quite heterogeneous in their approach to art although there is much cross-fertil-ization of ideas. The book is quite erudite: the reader will have to be rather sophisticated to follow her thoughts, which are densely packed. It must be noted that the book is published by the Harris Meltzer Trust, Donald Meltzer being one of the theorists discussed.
Glover notes and emphasizes the aesthetic struggle within the infant's mind and that: “The study of the aesthetics of the analytic encounter has been a distinguishing feature of most post-Kleinian thinking” (p. 159). There have been three traditional aspects to the study of aesthetics:
the nature of the creative process and the experience of the artist
the interpretation of the art
the nature of the aesthetic encounter
Glover does not see these categories as discreet, but as overlapping and interdependent.
She begins with Freud's neurotic model, the nature of pathography and Freud's theory of the joke as a model for understanding the formal qualities of art. She proceeds to Kleinian concepts as taken up by Hanna Segal and Adrian Stokes and then, post-1960, after Klein's death, the post-Kleinians: Wilfred Bion, Donald Meltzer, Marian Milner and Donald Winnicott. The similarities and differences between and among them are discussed.
Glover reveals her own biases and misses no opportunity to criticize Freud: “Is there any justification or value in an approach that centers on the subject matter, the content of the artwork, and interprets thi