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The science of æsthetics is very young, having only lately emancipated itself from a long stepchildhood with philosophy. Several
years ago I demonstrated in The Cultural Lag in Aesthetics1 that the psychoanalytic approach to the problems of artistic experience, like the experimental psychological and sociological approaches, is far from scientific on account of our uncritical acceptance of culture's erroneous philosophical directive concerning the nature of these problems and even their solubility. In this paper and in A Theory Concerning Free Creation in the Inventive Arts2 (especially pp. 259-269), I described the consequent defensive faults that are common to philosopher, psychologist, æsthetician, sociologist, and psychoanalyst when they confront themselves with these ancient problems. Kris's book is another illustration of the unscientific approach and the defensive faults that issue from this cultural lag. Accordingly, this review will criticize the ways in which the book reveals the leading techniques for evading the subject that I have described. These consist in leaning heavily upon the quotations of authorities who themselves have treated the problems evasively in accord with the same erroneous cultural directive; in substituting for the explanation of these problems theories about something else, for example about the interpretation of symbols or the analogy of art with daydream to which I shall return later; and, instead of going to the artistically sensitive ant, and learning about his ways, leaving Hamlet out of the play by diverting interest to the simpler task of speculating upon the literary content of a work of art, or upon the connection of the literary content of the work with a grossly unreliable legend of the artist's life.
A book