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Edvard Munch, one of the great painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, invites psychological analysis explicitly and implicitly. My intent is to develop a psychological narrative of his life and conflicts as they express themselves in his work and in his behavior in order to highlight the life of this man whose existence was so dominated by death. In so doing, I hope to enrich his “life frieze” by exploring a single theme, his relationship with his mother with the recognition that this is one perspective chosen among many and that only a part of the artist's experience and work can be understood this way.
This article will be organized around two related themes. The first is that the death of Munch's mother from tuberculosis when he was 5 years of age was a trauma about which an unconscious fantasy crystallized. This fantasy permeated his life, formed his behavior, and revealed itself in his art. The second, has to do with a recurrent, curvilinear form in his work that I infer unconsciously represents the mother to Munch. As such she represents what Wollheim (1987) called the “spectator in the painting.” I will construct the fantasy and illustrate the special meanings of this image in different works at different times in the artist's life.