Art And The Unconscious: A Psychological Approach to a Problem of Philosophy

by Thorburn, John M

• ISBN13: 9780415210430
• ISBN10: 0415210437
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-07-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Routledge is now re-issuing this prestigious series of 204 volumes originally published between 1910 and 1965. The titles include works by key figures such asC.G. Jung, Sigmund Freud, Jean Piaget, Otto Rank, James Hillman, Erich Fromm, Karen Horney and Susan Isaacs. Each volume is available on its own, as part of a themed mini-set, or as part of a specially-priced 204-volume set. A brochure listing each title in theInternational Library of Psychologyseries is available upon request.

Table of Contents

PART I
The Selective Meditation of the Artist
Introduction
`New' psychological discoveries and old philosophical concepts	3	(2)
The dream the basal fact in any theory of the unconscious	5	(1)
Scope of the analogy of dream to art	6	(2)
The Dream and Practical Life
The dream by night and its counterpart of attitude or disposition by day	8	(3)
The passive dreamer and the active denizens of the dream	11	(3)
How the content of consciousness enters into the `unconscious'	14	(2)
Art and Practical Life
The soi-disant intellectual form of poetry	16	(3)
Though soi-disant, the intellectual is an all important cue	19	(2)
Contrast of literature with the other arts	21	(1)
The Absorption of the `IDEA'
The poet's action and the poet's art	22	(2)
The tragic spirit as conditioned by the moral consciousness	24	(1)
Is this conditioning by the `idea' the same for poem as for dream?	25	(3)
As regards the characters---Dostoevsky?	28	(5)
As regards unity---Dante?	33	(3)
If so, what differentiates art from dream?	36	(3)
The Nature and Origin of the Imagination
The Word, Imagination
`Medium' differentiates art from dream	39	(2)
But imagination comprehends more than images expressed in a medium	41	(1)
Perception and Imagination
Antithesis of percept to image	42	(1)
Apparent priority of percept doubtful in fact	43	(1)
Conflict in development of perception and image	44	(3)
Image is of the past, but directed to the future	47	(1)
The past is both individual and racial	48	(1)
The Freudian Discovery
Relation of child to mother as discovered by Freud	49	(4)
Freud's attitude negative to value of imagination	53	(3)
Restriction of his investigation to the individual	56	(1)
The Criticism of Jung
The problem of value raised	56	(3)
Jung's review of Freudian theory asserts :
The value of beauty	59	(1)
The value of religion in the past	60	(2)
The possibility of moral autonomy	62	(1)
Extension of problem beyond the individual	63	(2)
Through concept of archaic unconscious	65	(5)
Art and the Archaic
Art always blends
The individual past of the artist	70	(1)
With the past of his race	71	(1)
Imagination with its values extends beyond art	72	(1)
As in religion	72	(1)
The `archaic' as the centre of present controversy	73	(1)
Is Art Symbolic?
Jung's concept of symbolism	73	(3)
Relation of this concept to:
Antithesis between image and percept	76	(1)
Antithesis between dream and successful adaptation	77	(1)
Relation of these antitheses to each other	77	(1)
The symbol as governing the parallel between art and dream	78	(1)
Medium differentiates between creative genius and appreciative response	79	(2)
Plasticity and Vision
The Artist's Freedom and its Limitations
La donna della sua mente cannot belong only to the poet's mind	81	(1)
For she cannot exclude the real actress who interprets his play	82	(1)
And who thus becomes his medium	83	(1)
Hence the restriction placed upon his freedom by the social circumstances of his art	84	(3)
Looking at an Object Through a Medium
The landscape as `distanced' by looking through the wrong end of the telescope	87	(1)
This is only one instance of a larger principle of psychological distance	88	(2)
Application to art	90	(1)
Clay as type of medium	91	(1)
Compulsive power exerted by the medium	92	(1)
The actress distinguishes herself as plastic medium from herself as creative artist	93	(2)
Vision and Convention
The Denial of the Practical
The formula, `seeing as object through a medium,' must sometimes be taken literally	95	(1)
We receive but what we give obviously (i) in artistic `vision'	96	(1)
but even (ii) in sense perception	97	(2)
Yet `vision' and perception are essentially antithetical	99	(3)
Projection of the Unconscious
Dreaming through objects	102	(4)
Equivalent to projection of unconscious contents	106	(1)
Correlation of `projection' and `distance'	106	(1)
The Evanescence of the Object
Schopenhauer's treatment of the topic	107	(1)
The principle of `distance' here becomes insufficient	108	(2)
For, in beauty, there is union of the object with the subject	110	(1)
Convention and the Tragic Spirit
The conventional in art deprives the object of its life	111	(2)
This is the opposite of projection	113	(1)
Here the antithesis of subject to object is removed	114	(3)
Convention and tragedy	117	(3)
The Transition to Music
A Valid Distinction
Traditional distinction between representation and design	120	(2)
Its uncritical rejection by modern æsthetic	122	(1)
Due criticism admits restatement, not rejection	122	(3)
Schopenhauer's view and its significance	125	(3)
Outwardness and Inwardness in Art
The artist's realisation of the value of form	128	(4)
May withdraw his interest from the object	132	(1)
What is the positive aspect of this withdrawal?	133	(2)
Music as the Mediation of the Self with the Self
Architecture and Music	135	(1)
Music in relation to the voice	136	(2)
Subjective aspect of pure music	138	(4)
The Medium of Music
The evolution of the medium	142	(1)
Contrast with marble, which has no evolution	142	(3)
And with language	145	(2)
Music and the past, significance of the medium	147	(1)
Two consequences for the composer	147	(1)
His relative independence of the external	148	(1)
His relative dependence on social conditions of his art	149	(2)
Art as the Relation of Outer and Inner
What Is `Inner'?
The genius of the Outer and the genius of the Inner	151	(1)
`Outward' may easily mean `spatially outward'	152	(1)
But `inward' cannot so easily mean `spatially inward'	152	(2)
Hence `inward' cannot be defined through the mere negation of `outward'	154	(2)
Specific Differentiation in Art
The two orientations of the artist	156	(1)
Medium as the object of the artist's attention	157	(4)
Danger to East and West of uncritically adopting each other's standpoint	161	(4)
Rhythm, motion and emotion	165	(2)
Music and Emotion
Differentiation of `rhythm' from `form'	167	(1)
Rhythm as motion immediately related to emotion	168	(1)
The emotional austerity of painting and the emotional intensity of music	169	(1)
Emotion as the Goal of Music
Transformation of opposition of outer to inner	170	(2)
The poet `sees' his emotion in the object, but the musician claims it as his own	172	(3)
This differentiation of attitude an essential of masterly work	175	(6)
PART II
Ravenna
The Function of Criticism
Initial point of view---the `idea' of conscious reflection	181	(1)
A selective mediation of the critic as well as of the artist	181	(3)
European Art and Religion
The problem of Literature stands apart	184	(1)
Does art create new symbolism or only adorn the old?	185	(1)
Illustration through early Christian art	186	(4)
Ravenna as the Type of Repose in Art
Symbolism alone does not give art	190	(2)
For art involves harmony of the outer and the inner	192	(1)
Symbolism and harmony are thus divergent tendencies in art, which must have both	193	(1)
Divergent Tendencies in Aesthetic Contemplation
The repose of absorbed contemplation versus the dynamic of the symbol	194	(1)
Criticism and the cultural import of art	195	(1)
The Gothic Spirit
The Will to Transcendence
Contrast between primitive art and Gothic art	196	(1)
Ruskin's denial of formal perfection in art	197	(1)
The significance of the window in Gothic	198	(2)
The artistic problem of Golthic as set by ever increasing range of experience	200	(1)
Dante
Dante's artific problem	201	(1)
The achievement of mediæval Christianity	201	(4)
Literaure as the intuition of human relationships	205	(1)
The characters of the Comedia are at once subjective and historically real	206	(1)
Yet Dante never realises this	207	(2)
Hence the projection of his conflict upon the historical and spatial universe	209	(2)
The Music of Germany and the Literature of England
Michael Angelo and Palestrina
The burden of representative technique	211	(1)
Angelo's problem of multiplicity	212	(2)
Contrast Palestrina	214	(1)
Incarnation versus atonement in relation to the arts	215	(1)
The advent of the new art and its psychological significance	216	(1)
The Inwardness of Bach
German and Latin forms of worship	217	(1)
The chorale as a cue to the purely instrumental	218	(1)
Subjectivity of the figure of the Virgin in Bach	219	(1)
Contrast with Dante	219	(1)
The Outwardness of the English Genius
The crux of the English problem in outer relationship, of the German in self-relationship	220	(2)
The sonnet-sequence of Shakespeare as sense of failure in outer relationship	222	(1)
The problem of evil in Elizabethan literature	223	(1)
The values of extension and intensity in literature	224	(2)
Tragedy
Are the outwardness of the English genius and the inwardness of the tragic spirit reconciled?	226	(1)
Social conditions of dramatic art	227	(2)
The death of the hero as the essential of tragedy	229	(2)
The religious motivation of literature	231	(1)
Conclusion
Power of Dr. Jones' analysis of Hamlet	232	(1)
Yet it ignores the end of the play	233	(1)
The knowledge of Horatio and the silence of Hamlet	233	(2)
Art always moves between such knowledge and such silence	235