You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Many readers of this journal may be familiar with the original edition of this book. The present edition contains the original text plus an appendix, intended more for analysts, in which the material of her venture is given a psycho-analytic frame of reference thereby relating it more closely to body function and experience. At the same time the author develops her conception of the nature of the symbol.
The original work is an extremely interesting account of a part of the author's endeavour to find a way of living which she expressed through painting and drawing—“art for life's sake”. Among the problems with which she wrestled in these media are: taught or imposed standards and the extinction of true creativity—the delusion of “objectivity” as conventionally conceived; control versus freedom—letting go through free drawing and the regression to a state without boundaries and the re-forming of new boundaries and new areas of self and reality; the problem of oneness and twoness—of loving and the agony of separation and the bliss of reunion and ecstasy; the dialogue between freedom and control; the discovery of organization in chaos (especially rhythm). The author has carefully considered and reflected upon all these matters with a feeling of integrity.
The most interesting development in the appendix concerns the symbol and the pre-logical level of experience. With the Kleinians she regards the symbol, conceived in Ernest Jones's sense as a defensive and distorting mechanism, as inadequate. Moreover, she regards as secondary the symbol conceived as a restoration of the lost object. In the regression which is a necessary accompaniment of artistic creation, the symbol becomes a true creation, never before achieved, which is concerned with creating “that very otherness for oneself which alone makes any subsequent sadness at loss [depressive position] possible”. The bridge from the symbol as a substitute to that of a reality in itself which can relate one's very life to a