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Pathography is Freud's term for the psychoanalytic study of an artist's life and interpretation based on the relationship between the work and his or her life. One is concerned with the nature of the creative work, the interpretation of the work of art, and the “aesthetic encounter.” In the earliest stages of psychoanalysis, the model of pathography emphasized conflict and repetition—classical Freudian theory. Freud's analysis of Leonardo Da Vinci is an example of this approach. Later models of psychoanalytic interpretation take as a context the work of art “conceived as autonomous and constituted by its own internal relations.” A more advanced idea was the exploration of the artistic product and the interaction with the audience—the viewer. Art engages us in complex, cognitive, and affective mental activities similar to our own dream states. As psychoanalysis has evolved so have these three approaches to interpretative aesthetics (Freud, 1910; Freud, 1900).
Spitz has summarized these perspectives: “From the point of view of society and culture … the work of art serves as a highly valued transformation of narcissistic instinctual energy into products that have a life of their own and that derive added and continuous overlays of meaning from their successive cultural contexts” (1985).
The understanding of pathography has moved from the fictive approach of Freud in his analysis of Leonardo, to the later documentary approach as it relates particularly to the analysis of Michelangelo, to the thematic approach as applied by Wolfenstein (1966). All of these approaches are utilized, for example, in studying Magritte's artistic work in the context of his early parental loss and the “psychic splitting” that played a major role in the development of his aesthetic perspective. We thus come to examine the creative process1 beginning