Irina Simidchieva, artist and second-year psychoanalytic candidate at the Manhattan Institute, shares her views on what psychoanalysis and art have in common. “Art and psychoanalysis,” she writes, “communicate the idea that parallel to objective reality there exists another one… no less important, perhaps even more so, than the ‘real’ reality.” Please read and comment below!

Freud, in his article “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” (1908), treats the question of the common roots of creativity and fantasy by making a reference to the child and its play. Everyone is fantasizing, points out Freud, but the child does not find anything wrong with it and does not hide it, unlike grown-ups who find something indecent in their fantasies and try to hide them; they are ashamed of them.

What actually is fantasy? Fantasmic mother-and-child play, for example, is a kind of creative, erotic game. It is the creation of a supplemental reality which, just like in art, is both real and unreal. This is a fictional, uniquely created reality that does not necessarily correspond to the objective one. But is this “fake” reality something more than just an imperfect attempt to replicate the real world? Is it not an effort to correct, rectify and control the actual reality? What is art? Isn’t it a creation of fantasmic reality, a desire for a better, different reality? A child, says Freud in his essay, just as an artist, approaches with all seriousness and “extracts” characters and objects from reality and puts them in this game, investing in this business a huge amount of affective energy. In creating this imaginary world, similar to the mechanism of action in dreams, desires achieve satisfaction that cannot be achieved in reality. Freud’s general view is that nothing of the psychic energy is ever lost; it is only transformed, repurposed and channeled. The inheritance of children’s games transforms into fantasy and humor in adulthood. Fantasizing brings pleasure, which, tested once in a child’s play, does not disappear throughout life. According to Freud, a happy man does not fantasize; only the discontent, the dissatisfied fantasize, because in fantasizing man finds satisfaction of his unfulfilled desires.

Reality and art, reality and fantasy interact, oppose and complement each other. The problem of the relationship between reality and art in the mind of the artist is of paramount importance for a theoretical understanding of what constitutes the creative act. Reality and creation are a fundamental pair in any art, their interaction the essence of any creative act. This relationship is intricately interwoven into the nature of both art and psychoanalysis.

I think that art is the human perspective on reality; the answer, the reaction of people to it. Art always starts or pushes itself from, refers to, symbolizes or attempts to transform reality. The reality or perception of reality (which is the answer of our consciousness to the existing world) gives a meaning to creativity. Philosophically viewed, art is always an interpretation of the problem of reality—a response, a reaction to reality in which we are forced to live. It is criticism, praise or correction of reality. Art is creating an ideal model of reality or sometimes, on the contrary, its negation.

Every piece of drawing or canvas is “speech,” metaphorically transferred from the unconscious mind of the artist. An abstract image of a painting that is far from any direct analogue in reality provokes associations very similar to our experience of poetry and music.

This is exactly what is common between psychoanalysis and art: both represent an ongoing research of states of mind and feelings in relation to their connection to reality.

In art, just like in psychoanalysis, we create a parallel reality, a representational reality, a reality that is not the objective one, and yet we fully participate in it with our real feelings, thoughts and desires—and that makes it even more meaningful, more real than the actual reality. In analysis we transfer feelings, thoughts and desires and create a fantasized world, that of the therapeutic relationship. The analyst and the patient are now two actors playing roles, creating an imaginary relationship that is a real relationship at the same time.

Here we meet another commonality between art and psychoanalysis: they both explore man’s inner world of human fantasies and desires.

Consider the word “representational.” It describes something that represents reality, but is not reality itself. It is something that questions reality. In this way, representational reality is closely related to metaphor. A metaphor is the symbolic representation of something else. When we use metaphor we say something that is actually something else. Our inner worlds, our fantasies, are already a metaphor; in psychoanalysis we metaphorically transfer feelings, thoughts and emotions. And the relationship between patient and therapist is also a metaphor: the two parties are co-creating an imaginary relationship based on their own existing relationships. Maybe the concept of representational reality can be understood similarly: as a psychological phenomenon that turns the literal into the figurative.

Art as a strict representational reality phenomenon is only a reference, a symbol, a sign. Both the creation and perception of art are in essence receiving or consuming something for something other than itself. Art does not create in the material sense. It is rather a metaphorical reference to that which is beyond and that we have no access to except through the creative process. Representational reality is the magic that turns the particular into something deeper, something more than itself. It is the breakthrough into the objective world, which helps us penetrate its essence and go beyond.

Both art and psychoanalysis communicate to us the idea that parallel to objective reality there exists another one, that of our feelings, thoughts and desires—and that reality is no less important, perhaps even more so, than the “real” reality.

Irina Simidchieva is an artist, social worker, and second-year psychoanalytic candidate at the Manhattan Institute for Psychoanalysis. 

References

Freud, S. (1908). Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming, Chapter IX, Collected Papers, Vol. 4, Basic Books Inc.

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