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Published online: 12 September 2023
© The Author(s) under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited 2023
Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art explores the concept of the cut, following its development in psychoanalysis and drawing parallels with the creative endeavours of several artists from the latter half of the nineteenth century, through to the fin de siècle, to the modern era, to the millennium, to the present. Scansion, like the dream and free association, is a royal road to the unconscious. Sinclair argues that in an era of intense exercise of biopower, when people are almost stripped of their humanity, it is important to reassert our inherent creative potential (p. 7). As a disruptive practice, scansion, cut, cutting up, juxtaposition and disruption, illuminate the underlying structures and dynamics of the unconscious (p. 10), while cutting out the ‘noise’ of everyday life that prevents us from seeing other possibilities more clearly (p. 7).
Different aspects of the cut are explored in the four sections of the book. ‘Sowing the seeds/setting the stage’ refers to the emerging art of photography at the end of the nineteenth century and its creative consequences. ‘Unleashing the unconscious’ focuses on Dadaism with special reference to the work of Marcel Duchamp. ‘Revolution in the mind’ deals with the cut in surrealism, avant-garde cinema and beat poetry. Finally, ‘When art becomes life (and death)’ introduces pop and alternative performance, body modification, gender practices, and discusses present-day instantiations of the cut aided by technologies.
The material of the book is arranged chronologically, yet the focus is clearly on the moment, the spark of inspiration that the artist expresses through the work of art. In the introduction the Lacanian concept of the scansion is introduced, namely, the potential power of the disruption of the patient’s narrative by ending a session at a moment of engaged possibility (p. 2). Such ‘aha’ moments, Sinclair argues, al