Psychoanalytic Aesthetics

Psychoanalytic Aesthetics

Psychoanalytic Aesthetics rethinks the classical account of the relation between art and madness, creativity and psychoneurosis, and the distinction between the primary and secondary processes. It covers a great deal of ground and reviews many psychoanalytic writers (predominantly of the British tradition) on aesthetics, as well as many of the aestheticians using a psychoanalytic background. More than this, the book is also a work of psychoanalytic scholarship, being a masterly overview of psychoanalytic schools of thought, and an in-depth study of the British object-relations schools. It amply achieves its overriding goal to demonstrate that the work of the British School presents a significant contribution to psychoanalytic aesthetics and criticism, updating Freud, Kris and the classical contributions to the field. It is therefore potentially a very useful source book for future scholars of both psychoanalysis and of aesthetics.