Art and emotion in psychoanalysis

Abstract

Freud's view that art satisfies psychic needs has been taken to mean that art has its source in the unconscious and that it unifies pleasure and reality. The author argues that there is a third point that Freud repeatedly emphasizes, which should not be overlooked, that art influences our emotions. The author examines what Freud means by this claim, in particular, his reading of Michelangelo's Moses. Freud's focus here on emotions as fundamental to subjective experience, as subject to regulation and as potentially healthy forms of communication serves to supplement and even challenge what he says in his theory of affect. The author concludes by making inferences about a contemporary psychoanalytic theory of affects: that it ought to be inclusive of science (more receptive to neurobiology and less bound to Freud) as well as art (preserving the focus on subjective experience, especially the processing of complex emotions), which is illustrated with the concept of mentalized affectivity.

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