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UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal UC Riverside UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal Title Psychoanalytic Feminism and the Depiction of Women in Surrealist Photography Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/9vr8m90t Journal UC Riverside Undergraduate Research Journal, 12(1) ISSN 2639-4103 Authors Bottinelli, Katherine Laxton, Susan Publication Date 2018 DOI 10.5070/RJ5121039158 Peer reviewed eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Psychoanalytic Feminism and the Depiction of Women in Surrealist Photography Katherine Bottinelli1 and Susan Laxton2 1 Department of Pyschology 2 Department of the History of Art ABSTRACT Katherine Bottinelli Surrealism, an art movement of the early twentieth century, was heavily influenced by psychoanalysis. The psychoanalytic theories that influenced Surrealism were based primarily on the research of Department of Psychology Sigmund Freud. Freud’s research began with case studies on patients with hysteria, a predominantly Katherine Bottinelli is a fourth-year female diagnosed mental disorder . From his clinical observations of hysteria, Freud developed Psychology major and Art History minor. his theories on unconscious drives and psychosexual development . André Breton, the leader of the Surrealist movement, first became acquainted with Freud’s ideas during the First World War. During her Winter 2018 quarter at UCR, After his return to France from the war, Breton’s interest in avant-garde art and distaste for Europe’s she developed an interest in Surrealism high culture led him to start the Surrealist movement . Breton declared psychoanalysis the basis of while taking Dr. Susan Laxton’s Surrealism in the First Manifesto of Surrealism, believing that Freud’s ideas had the potential to revolutionize culture . For the Surrealists, adopting psychoanalysis as a doctrine of change resulted seminar course on early twentieth in a reinforcement of sexist stereotypes and discrimination against women that was rooted in century avant-garde photography. Freud’s theories. While the Surrealist movement became notorious for being male dominated and With the guidance of Dr. Laxton, misogynistic, their idealization of Freud provided justification for their prejudiced beliefs. In this Katherine conducted research that paper, Salvador Dalí’s photo collage, The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, is analyzed to exemplify the translation of psychoanalytic ideas into sexualized and fantasy-like depictions of women in Surrealist combined her passions for psychology artwork . The conducted research provides insight to the repercussions that Freud and psychoanalysis and art history. She currently works had on women in the Surrealist art community . on campus as a research assistant in Dr. Cecilia Cheung’s Culture and Keywords: Surrealism; André Breton; Photography; Avant-garde art; Salvador Dalí; Feminism; Psychoanalysis; Sigmund Freud Child Development Lab and Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky’s Positive Activity and Wellbeing Lab. In the future, Katherine plans to pursue a PhD in Clinical Psychology and continue exploring her interests in Art History. FACULTY MENTOR Dr. Susan Laxton Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art Susan Laxton is an Associate Professor in the Department of the History of Art . She earned her PhD in Art History from Columbia University, with a dissertation on ludic strategies in Surrealism, the subject of her first book, Surrealism at Play (Duke University Press, 2019). Professor Laxton has held fellowships from Princeton University, The Institute for Advanced Study, and the hellman Foundation . Her work has appeared in Critical Inquiry, October and Papers of Surrealism, and in a number of catalogs and anthologies that treat her main interests: photography, play, and the alternative art practices of the 20th century avant-gardes . She is currently preparing a book manuscript, Post-Industrial Photography, on mid- century photographic practices . U C R U NDE R G R AD U ATE R ESEA rc H J O ur NAL 2 1 PSYCHOANALYTIC FEMINISM AND THE DEPICTION OF WOMEN IN SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPHY INTRODUCTION clinical observations of Bertha Pappenheim, a female The photographic artwork of the early twentieth century patient of Josef Breuer, a physician and peer of Freud . Surrealist movement was defined by illusionistic images Pappenheim was given the pseudonym Anna O . by Freud evoked from the artist’s unconscious mind. Through the and Breuer for their published book, Studies on Hysteria camera, Surrealist artists captured peculiar scenes of (1895) .3 Clinical observations of Pappenheim, and patients people and objects in faux dream realms . This way of using with similar symptoms, led Freud and Breuer to originally the camera was paradoxical, as the device’s intended use to hypothesize that hysteria was caused from unresolved document reality was replaced with the artists’ manipulation emotions and experienced trauma . Later on in his research, of the photograph in conjunction with psychoanalytic Freud revised the theory to include psychic conflict related theory to translate their unconscious dreams into an to sexuality as a primary cause 4. From the research on altered reality. A visual analysis of Salvador Dalí’s photo hysteria, Freud developed his original psychoanalytic collage, The Phenomenon of Ecstasy, reveals the ways in theory of the mind. Freud’s psychoanalysis theorizes that which psychoanalytic theory was applied by Surrealist unconscious thoughts and motivations, rooted in primitive artists to create bizarre photographic images, often drives toward sex and aggression, are the underlying cause exploiting female subjects at the center of the works . From of human behavior 5. This definition of psychoanalysis a contemporary feminist prospective, the photographed became Freud’s preliminary explanation of the psyche’s women in Surrealist works were purposely sexualized and mechanisms . Dream interpretation, free association, and used as passive muses of the artists’ fantasies. Arguably, the hypnosis were some of Freud’s treatment approaches used misogynistic elements at the foundation of psychoanalysis to reveal the mind’s unconscious conflict. These Freudian had a substantial influence on Surrealist images. Freud’s techniques were manipulated in Surrealist art practice to theories functioned as an inspiration and justification for exemplify the irrationality of human behavior and bring Surrealist artists, like Salvador Dalí, to derogatorily portray unconscious desires to visual awareness 6. While these women in photographic artworks . psychoanalytic ideas inspired the Surrealists, the theories on hysteria and animalistic impulses, rooted in cultural Freud and Psychoanalysis misogyny, had negative repercussions on the movement’s The version of psychoanalytic theory that influenced art. The repercussions translated into the movement’s Surrealism was based primarily on the research of shocking depictions of women as sexually objectified and Sigmund Freud, a leading researcher in psychoanalysis . In submissive to the viewer . the late nineteenth century, Freud began his psychological research through an apprenticeship under the French Freud’s interests soon progressed toward psychosexual neurologist Jean-Marc Charcot in Paris, France 1. Charcot development, a concept that has caused considerable was performing research on patients to understand and controversy since its first appearance in Freud’s Three treat hysteria, a mental illness believed to derive from a Essays on the Theory of Sexuality (1905) . Psychosexual weak neurological system and the repression of traumatic development theorizes that humans have an instinctual events .2 Patients diagnosed with hysteria exhibited libido that develops during childhood 7. According to the symptoms of excessive anxiety, exaggerated emotional theory, humans progress through five phases of sexual responses, and disturbed somatic functioning . Historically, development, beginning at birth and continuing after the illness was diagnosed predominantly in female patients, puberty . The controversial aspect of the theory, other than as the exhibited symptoms were dramatic in appearance its reference to sexual desire in children, comes from the and, for the early twentieth century, culturally seen as a third phase of psychosexual development: the phallic manifestation of femininity . To treat his patients, Charcot phase . Freud states that during the phallic phase, between used hypnosis in an attempt to bring suppressed memories the ages of three and six, there is a divergence between from the unconscious to the conscious mind . male and female psychosexual growth 8. This divergence occurs when children become conscious of the biological Freud began his own research on hysteria primarily through difference between male and female genitalia, causing 2 2 U C R U NDE R G R AD U ATE R ESEA rc H J O ur NAL PSYCHOANALYTIC FEMINISM AND THE DEPICTION OF WOMEN IN SURREALIST PHOTOGRAPHY the emergence of the Oedipus complex . According to the dream interpretation as fundamental for understanding the theory, females develop penis envy and resentment toward deeper meaning of existence, as “the human explorer will the mother for not providing her with a penis 9. On the be able to carry his investigation much further, authorized contrary, males compete with the father to sexually possess as he will henceforth be not to confine himself solely to the mother and subsequently develop castration anxiety, the most summary realities .”15 Breton’s text denounces the or fear of
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