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May 22, 1973. PSYCHOANALYTIC OBSERVATIONS ON THE LAST PAINTING AND SUICIDE OF VINCENT VAN GOGH. Marcel Heiman, M.D.
Dr. Heiman discussed the important events in the last two years of Van Gogh's life, the concatenation of which led the artist to surrender his yearning for life and to choose suicide instead. His last painting, Crows Over A Wheatfield, represents his despair and hopelessness; according to Dr. Heiman it is a pictorial suicide note. The size of the canvas and its content are interpreted in terms of maternal deprivation, aggressive breasts, portents of death, and a longing for union.
Four elements in the last period of Van Gogh's life are emphasized: the painting, La Berceuse (the lullaby); the 'abandoned' canvases; the last painting; and the connection between Vincent's suicide and his brother Theo's death. Dr. Heiman assumes that Mme. Roulin, 'the woman rocking the cradle', represented Van Gogh's longed-for mother and was also identified with Gauguin by bringing back the friend whom he had killed in fantasy. Hence, Mme. Roulin represents a fusion of father and mother images. The 'abandoned' canvases represent Vincent's 'children', paintings he felt had been neglected and which were deteriorating. The artist's depression, Dr. Heiman believes, was communicated in Crows Over A Wheatfield by the use of inverted perspective: attainment of a vanishing point which represents 'no life' and 'no death'. Drawing on Lewin's concepts about wide expanses and the dream screen, Dr. Heiman sees the over-all composition of this last painting as a representation of mother,