Hans Prinzhorn

Artistry of the Mentally 111 Case 244 Fig. 167. The Avenging Angel (Crayon). 24 x 40 cm. Artistry of the Menta11y 111 A Contribution to the Psychology and Psychopathology of Configuration Hans Prinzhorn Translated by Eric von Brockdorff from the Second German Edition With an Introduction by James L. Foy Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 1972 With 187 illustrations in the text and on 20 plates, some of which are in color, principally from the art collection of the Heidelberg Psychiatrie Clinic All rights reserved No part of this book may be translated or reproduced in any form without written permission from Springer-Verlag. © 1972 by Springer Science+Business Media New York Originally published by Springer-VerlagNew York lnc. in 1972 Softcoverreprint of the hardcover Ist edition 1972 Library of Congress Catalog Card Number, 70-162403 ISBN 978-3-662-00918-5 ISBN 978-3-662-00916-1 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-00916-1 Preface to the Reprint of 1968 Hans Prinzhorn's book, Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, published in 1922 by Verlag Julius Springer, Berlin, and reprinted in 1923, has long been out of print. The decision of the publishers to reprint the book again deserves recognition and gratitude. The book is still of interest in many quarters, not just for psychiatry, art history, and aesthetics, but the whole range of concerns with humanity which we may collectively call anthropo logy. Hans Prinzhorn was not able to attend to another reprint hirnseiL He died all too young of typhus at the age of 47, on June 14, 1933. This is perhaps the fitting place for abrief recapitulation of the life of this unusual man who so fascinated his contempora riers.1 He wasbornon June 8, 1886, in Hemer, Westphalia, the son of a paper manufacturer. At first he studied art history in Vienna, earned a degree in this subject, and then studied singing in London. Subsequently he studied medicine, turned to psychiatry, and, after his return from war service, in 1918 became an assistant in the Beideiberg Psychiatrie Clinic. The clinic's director, Kar! Wilmanns, had persuaded him to enlarge and analyze a small collection of pictures begun by Wilmanns. Prinzhorn collected about 5,000 samples from psychiatric institutions in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Italy, and Holland. The collection led to this book, which was completed in Beideiberg in 1921. Prinzhorn re mained in Beideiberg for only a few years, subsequently worked in the sanatorium "Weis ser Hirsch" near Dresden, and later settled down as a psychotherapist in Frankfurt-on Main. In 1929 he went on a lecture tour in the United States, which was followed by a journey to Mexico to study narcotics. During the following years he devoted hirnself to writing in Paris, the Black Forest, and Munich. He corresponded with numerous impor tant personalities of the Weimar Republic, and with artists, writers, and philosophers. 1 See Rave-Schwank, Maria, "Hans Prinzhorn und die Bildnerei der Geisteskranken," Bildnerei der Geistes kranken aus der Prinzhorn Sammlung, Heidelberg, Galerie Rothe, 1967, Folio 1, p. 7; Broekman, Jan M., "Das Gestalten Geisteskranker und die moderne Kunst," and Rothe, Wolfgang, "Zur Vorgeschichte Prinz horns," ibid. V He considered hirnself a disciple of Ludwig Klages and promoted Klages's philosophy in his speeches as weil as in his writings. At the time of the decline of the Weimar Republic he was also vitaily interested in political problems as weil as scientific and artistic ones. His scientific writings dealt with the study of character and with psychotherapy. After Bildnerei der Geisteskranken, which immediately made him famous, he wrote a book entitled Bildnerei der Gefangenen (Artistry of Convicts), published in Berlin by Verlag Juncker in 1926. The drawings, paintings, and sculptures which Prinzhorn co!lected and analyzed in Heidelberg are predominantly the products of artisticaily untrained and unpracticed per sons, inmates of asylums- most of whom suffered from schizophrenia - who were driven to compose them only by the onset of mental illness. In contrast to the more recent coilections of art by psychotics, the contents of the Prinzhorn coilection are not the pro ducts of occupational therapy or psychotherapy but are completely spontaneous. Their authors were iii people who Iived in the uninspirational, socially isolated atmosphere of closed institutions. The pictures, of which this work reproduces a small selection care fully and representatively made by Prinzhorn, date from 1890 to 1920. Before Prinzhorn, pictures by the mentaily iii were more or Iess considered mere curiosities. They were seldom studied scientifically (Lombroso, 1888) and were never subjected to a thorough and suitable analysis. The pictures by patients who suffered from dementia praecox (premature senility, an earlier description of schizophrenia) im pressed observers as astanishing and basically inexplicable effusions from the realm of the psychic dead. To Prinzhorn, who in the Beideiberg clinic had adopted the theory of schizophrenia of the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, they were eruptions of a uni versal human creative urge which counteracts the disease's autistic tendencies toward isolation. He was able to demonstrate surprising parailels between his pictures on the one hand, and those by children, ancient great cultures and primitive ones on the other, but he found that his collection was most closely related to contemporary expressionistic art. He saw great similarities between the Schizophrenieoutlook as expressed in the pictu res of the insane and the decay of the traditional outlook which had given birth to modern expressionistic art. He considered the difference to lie in the fact that the Schizophrenie artist has to adapt to the fateful psychotic alienation and transformation of his world, while the nonpsychotic, mentally healthy artist turns away consciously from the familiar reality, from the compulsion of external appearances, in order to meet the decay of the formerly predominant outlook with the autonomaus self. After Prinzhorn, others saw symbolism and formal impulses in the pictures of the mentally ill which represent obscure attempts at communication with outside society, as weil as simultaneaus attempts at self-identification during the ego-dissolving processes of the psychosis (Navratil). Later interpretatiohs of the pictures Iaid more stress on the patients' biographies, to which Prinzhorn had paid Iittle attention, and thereby provide the foundation for their psychotherapeutic evaluation. Despite the changes in observational methods and the interpretations of pictures made by the mentally ill, especially schizophrenics, Prinzhorn's book retains its place in the borderland between psychiatry and art, illness and creative expression. Prinzhorn, who consciously excluded ail psychoanalytic aspects, was primarily interested in the formal principles of configuration manifested by the pictures, for instance the patients' stubborn, luxuriant need for symbolism or their ornamental, repetitive, ordering tendencies. Diag nostic informationwas only marginally important for him. He was particularly impressed by the indisputable artistic achievements of many of the patients. He knew how to use vi his comparative method to make observers and readers aware of these achievements, and he was successful in making us conscious of the mysterious depths from which many schizophrenics draw in becoming artistically productive - of the alien, secretive, unfa thomable elements of such psychotic productions. It is remarkable that even now, 45 years after the first appearance of his work, the author's main point is still valid: people differing greatly in personality, age, and occupation continue tobe unusually and lastingly touched by these pictures and often feel compelled to ask themselves fundamental cultural and philosophical questions. Prinzhorn satisfied this concern of the cultivated men of histime and of ours who have an interest in art, with a rich, beautifully illustrated, thought ful, and weil constructed as weil as fascinating account. His achievement proves to be timeless and we are convinced that this fact alone justifies the reprint of the book - quite apart from its value for psychiatry and the history of psychiatry. W. von Baeyer vii lntroduction to the English Translation It is nearly 50 years since the publication of Hans Prinzhorn's Bildnerei Der Geisteskranken, (Artistry of the Mentally Ill). When the book first appeared it created a near sensation with its bald announcement that paintings and drawings executed by asylum inmates were to be treated with high seriousness and aesthetic analysis. It made strikingly original comparisons, for that time, between these works and the art objects made by children and so called primitive peoples. However, most shocking to some readers in the early 1920's were the parallels to be seen between the art of mental patients and the revolutionary paintings and graphics that were then being widely exhibited by the artistic avant-garde of the day, the German Expressionists. Prinzhorn's book has maintained a kind of timelessness in spite of advances in art schalarship and the relentless assimilation of the new in the gaudy parade of modern art. Artistry of the Mentally Ill remains an extraordinary document from the history of psychiatry and aesthetics. In a most sensitive and dignified manner it celebrates the humanity, the resourcefulness, and the creativity of some of our wretched, anguished brothers, whom society is even now too willing to ignore or discard. "What a real person he is," someone once said of William James and the same salute of praise comes naturally and spontaneously to mind when one reflects on the life and accomplishments of Hans Prinzhorn. Born in 1886 and dead in 1933 at the age of 4 7, he was an unusually gifted and fascinating man, whose career developed in a ripening and depth that leaves us with a sense of loss at the tought of its too early ending. He was the son of a paper manufacturer in Hemer, Westphalia. Before the age of 25 he had distinguished hirnself in two areas of study.

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