Conclusion

This study has traced one particular trajectory of psychoanalytic theory: the progression from the Freudian paradigm, to the work of Klein and “post-Kleinians” such as Wilfred Bion, Marion Milner and Donald Winnicott. This account has also emphasized how their clinical and metapsychological contributions have had important consequences for the development of psychoanalytic aesthetics, particularly through the writings of those such as Adrian Stokes, Anton Ehrenzweig, Peter Fuller, and Richard Wollheim.

In the first chapter, the shortcomings of Freud's “neurotic model” of art were considered, together with his failure to develop his account of the joke mechanism in terms of aesthetic experience and the structural aspects of art—this, however, was explored further by Kris (1952) and Ehrenzweig (1967). This model was too reliant on biographical material; it construed the artwork as a container for the artist's desires, repressions, and aggressions, making the critic more like a detective. The formal, aesthetic qualities of this “container” were left unaddressed by this approach; it did not yield insight into the structure of the artwork itself—its purely formal qualities qua object. Indeed, Freud himself noted that