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The important contributions of interdisciplinary research continue to be both a challenge for those interested in seeking out new and fresh approaches and a danger to those who insist on guarding their boundaries from intruders. Montaigne noted this when he wrote, “We believe nothing so firmly as what we least know.” Dr. Ellen Handler Spitz is able to transcend any objections to applied psychoanalysis by bringing together her knowledge and competency in a number of areas. She is a gifted artist, an art historian, a philosopher, and a graduate of the Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, Columbia University. In this unusual book, which she calls a “modest contribution,” she makes a sweeping exploration of Freud's goals of psychoanalysis: a method of treatment, a metapsychology, and an instrument of research into areas that have not been touched before. Her understanding of the psychoanalytic literature is interwoven with examples from literature, music, and esthetics. The goal of the book if an understanding of the esthetic experience.
Spitz builds a theory by going back to the origins of the psychoanalysis and Freud's “Leonardo” monograph. The chapters “On Pathography: The Individual Artist and His Work” and “Pathography in Practice” illustrate that Freud did not follow his comment, “Before the problem of the creative artist analysis must alas lay down its arm.” Freud did study the artist in his “Leonardo,” “Jensen's Gravida,” and “Dostoievsky and Parricide.” Spitz, in an extremely fine analysis, discusses the uses and abuses of pathography. Freud used drive theory and placed the artist within the context of this theory. The depiction of two maternal figures in Leonardo's St. Anne does reflect Leonardo's life, going from mother to mother surrogate. She contrasts this with Liebert's study of Michelangelo, which examines not only the work of art but the various contexts that influence the artist. Spitz is able to move adroitly back and forth from psychoanaly