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This book was originally published in 1987 and reissued in 1996 with revisions and a “docudrama” by the author. Although it has much to say, it is unfortunate that the author has not referred to any of the work on art and psychoanalysis published since 1987.
Rose embarks on the complex issue of the ways in which “trauma and mastery” elucidate the “overlap” between the process of creating art and clinical psychoanalysis. He identifies splitting as a key defense against trauma, and the reintegration of the split-off elements as the essence of mastery (p. ix). In the first section of the book, the author sets up the following binary oppositions, denoting psychopathology and creativity, respectively: regressive and destructive versus progressive and constructive, private and idiosyncratic versus public and communicative (p. ix). In the second part, he compares creativity with psychoanalysis and considers their contribution to mastery and integration.
To illustrate his argument, Rose refers to examples from art, music, and literature, while also taking issue with Freud's alleged insistence on an art-science dichotomy. He writes that “Freud's aesthetic theory … tends … to correlate art with neurosis” (p. 2) and quotes Freud's famous remark in the essay on “Dostoevsky and Parricide” (Freud, 1928, p. 177) that “Before the problem of the creative artist analysis must, alas, lay down its arms” (p. 177). According to Rose, this notion distanced art from psychoanalysis. It seems to me, however, that Freud's remark has no bearing on the issue of art and science, but rather is a reflection of his view that talent and creativity cannot be “analyzed” per se. Freud did analyze artists and writers: the fantasies driving the work and the meaning of its content, the dynamics of working procedures, and the inhibitions that halted or delayed them. But Freud made it very clear that he was not interested in writing pathographies of creative individuals, nor did he do so.
The notion of Freud's