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Art and Psychoanalysis : a Topographical, Structural, and Object- Relational Analysis Illustrated by a Study of Shakespeare's Hamlet

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Art and Psychoanalysis : a Topographical, Structural, and Object- Relational Analysis Illustrated by a Study of Shakespeare's Hamlet University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2000 Art and psychoanalysis : a topographical, structural, and object- relational analysis illustrated by a study of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Patricia E. Scarbrough University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Scarbrough, Patricia E., "Art and psychoanalysis : a topographical, structural, and object-relational analysis illustrated by a study of Shakespeare's Hamlet." (2000). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2332. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2332 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ART AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: A TOPOGRAPHICAL, STRUCTURAL, AND OBJECT-RELATIONAL ANALYSIS ILLUSTRATED BY A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET A Dissertation Presented by PATRICIA E. SCARBROUGH Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY February 2000 Department of Philosophy © Copyright by Patricia E. Scarbrough 2000 All Rights Reserved ART AND PSYCHOANALYSIS; A TOPOGRAPHICAL, STRUCTURAL, AND OBJECT-RELATIONAL ANALYSIS ILLUSTRATED BY A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE'S HAMLET A Dissertation Presented PATRICIA E. SCARBROUGH Approved as to style and content by: — Robert Jokn Ackermann, Member ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the members of my dissertation committee, especially my chair, Bob Wolff, without whose unwavering support 1 would not have been able to complete this project. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to Murray Schwartz whose guidance through the intricacies of psychoanalysis was a necessary prerequisite to my own explorations. Bob Ackermann and Bruce Aune have each, in their own way, provided examples of the philosophic ideal. All four have been generous, inspiring teachers, and their voices are now a permanent part of my inner landscape. I would also like to thank my fellow students and friends who have also been my teachers. Those of us in the “Alternate Track” of the Philosophy Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst brought varied backgrounds to the discipline of Philosophy, and we were well aware of our status as a unique learning community. The opportunity to share our individual interests in the rigorous atmosphere provided by the AT professors has been a treasured experience. The Amherst Circle, a support group of Philosophy dissertation writers, provided a wonderful forum for friendship and learning, and I thank Alison, Tammy, Nancy, Cheryl, Cindy, and Maryann-all doctors now!-for their support and inspiration. Maryann Sushinsky, my fellow “womi of the dust” in this dissertation-writing adventure, was there from starting point to finish line, and I would not have made it without her many contributions as a sympathetic but critical reader. I about the unconscious I am grateful to Dr. Stephen Dashef, from whom learned through first-hand; to Mary Schultz, who provided the financial assistance that got me some very lean years; to Sally Donelson, who offered encouragement and IV practical advice; and to Jim Bleech, who provided me with “a room of my own” when I desperately needed a place to work. And, to my sons Bradley and Mark, who grew up watehing Mom read Plato and Kant and Freud, thank you for the intellectual enthusiasm and love that prevented me from giving up when it seemed that this adventure, like some analyses, had become interminable. V ABSTRACT ART AND PSYCHOANALYSIS: A TOPOGRAPHICAL STRUCTURAL, AND OBJECT-RELATIONAL ANALYSIS ILLUSTRATED BY A STUDY OF SHAKESPEARE’S HAMLET FEBRUARY 2000 PATRICIA E. SCARBROUGH B.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Ph.D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Robert Paul Wolff In this paper I examine the nature of the relationship between art and reality, arguing for the centrality of the role of art in the creation and cognition of the shared reality which is the human world. 1 support this argument through reference to the developing discipline of psychoanalysis, specifically considering three “stages” of psychoanalysis: classic Freudian psychoanalysis, ego psychology, and object relations theory. I take the position that if we are to reap the full benefit of the explanatory power of psychoanalysis as it may be applied to an understanding of aesthetics, we must treat psychoanalysis as we do any other growing body of theory, recognizing that initial formulations may be transformed, superceded, or restricted to a circumscribed area of applicability by advances based on new evidence. To this end, I examine classic Freudian psychoanalysis in terms of concepts such as conscious/unconscious, repression, instinctual derivatives, primary and secondary process functioning, condensation and displacement, phantasy, symptom, and dream. I also consider the development of the psychoanalytic techniques of free association, the transference analysis, and interpretation. I look at ego psychology in terms of VI mechanisms of defense, the fomiation of the superego, adaptation, the “conflict free sphere of ego functioning,” and “regression in service of the ego.” And I examine object relations theory in terms of Melanie Klein’s inner and outer reality, D.W. Winnicott’s transitional space, and the elaboration of world and self through mechanisms of identification, introjection, projection, and regression to dependence. I tie each of the psychoanalytic theories to a theory of aesthetics developed from the psychoanalytic premises, and I provide concrete examples through interpretations of Hamlet based on each of the three aesthetic theories. I conclude that Winnicott’s object relations theory grounds the most robust theory of aesthetics, one which supports the centrality of the role of art in our constitution of our selves and our world. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ABSTRACT CHAPTER INTRODUCTION 1 1 . ART AND THE UNCONSCIOUS 11 2. ART AND THE STRUCTURAL THEORY 76 3. OBJECT RELATIONS: D.W. WINNICOTT 126 4. TOWARD A WINNICOTTIAN THEORY OF AESTHETICS 157 5. POTENTIAL SPACE AND SHAKESPEARE’S 168 BIBLIOGRAPHY 222 viii INTRODUCTION In the Republic, Plato raises some interesting and complex issues about the nature of the relationship between art and the individual personality and its grasp of reality. He argues that art appeals to the appetitive and emotional aspects of the personality at the expense of the rational, and that art, as imitative of the objects of appearance in the natural world, is at three’ removes from the reality represented by the fomis of the intelligible world. is Art thus doubly dangerous, in the first place because it promotes an incorrect balance among the parts of the soul, and in the second because it acts as a decoy and prevents the intellect from focusing on the true objects of cognition which are attainable only through reason. Though we have since Plato’s time developed a more sophisticated understanding of both the nature of reality and the nature of human psychology, we are still influenced by a number of his assumptions about the nature of art. The perpetually recumng issue of censorship attests to a lingering fear that art, through a tendency to circumvent critical thought, may be subversive of individual or social stability; simultaneously, the tendency to view art as less than essential is reflected not only in the popular educational slogan, “Back to the Basics,” but also in the secondary role of aesthetics in departments of philosophy where metaphysics and epistemology have traditionally held pride of place. What is the nature of the relationship between art and reality? Can objects of art be objects of cognition appealing to our rational selves at the same time that they appeal 'Three removes because the Greeks counted the first as well as the last term ol a series. to our aesthetic and desiring selves? In my dissertation I will look at the developing discipline of psychoanalysis as it has reflected a number of positions regarding the nature of the relationship between art and the human personality and its grasp of reality, and 1 will argue for the centrality of the role of art in the creation and cognition of the shared reality which is the intersubjective world. Freud analyzed the symptoms presented by his neurotic patients and developed an interpretive theory which made sense of their illness as the expression of repressed desire. The obsession or hysteria which manifested itself in a bewildering array of incomprehensible behavior yielded to a complex process of translation which read backwards from the surface presentation to the hidden wish. Freud argued that the same process which provided the key to understanding the hysteric’s symptoms and the obsessive’s compulsions could be applied to dreams, to slips of the tongue and pen, to jokes, even to works of art. He saw the language of rational discourse as constantly disrupted by an archaic “primary” thought process which was driven by desire, found identity in similarity, substituted part for whole, operated in an eternal present, and spoke in symbols. For Freud, the great foundational event in the constitution of the self was the successful resolution of the
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