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art that Freud has made.1 To put it briefly here, Freud had some il
HE question of the mental health of the artist has engaged
luminating and even beautiful insights into certain particular works
the a
of art which made complex use of the element of myth. Then, with
:tention of our culture sine� the beginning of the Ro
.
mantic Movement. Before that time 1t was commonly said
out specifically undertaking to do so, his "Beyond the Pleasure Printhat the poet was "mad," but this was only a manner of speaking, ciple" offers a brilliant and comprehensive explanation of our intera way of saying that the mind of the poet worked in different fashion est in tragedy. And what is of course most important of all-it is a
from the mind of the philosopher; it had no real reference to the
point to which I shall return-Freud, by the whole tendency of his
mental hygiene of the man who was the poet. But in the early ninepsychology, establishes the naturalness of artistic thought. Indeed, it teenth century, with the development of a more elaborate psychology
is possible to say of Freud that he ultimately did more for our underand a stricter and more literal view of mental and emotional norstanding of art than any other writer since Aristotle; and this being mality, the statement was more strictly and literally intended. So
so, it can only be surprising that in his early work he should have
much so, indeed, that Charles Lamb, who knew something about
made the error of treating the artist as a neurotic who escapes from
madness at close quarters and a great deal about art, undertook to
reality by means of "substitute gratifications."
refute in his brilliant essay, "On the Sanity of True Genius," the
As Freud went forward he insisted less on this simple formulation.
idea that the exercise of the imagination was a kind of insanity. And
Certainly it did not have its original force with him when, at his
some eighty years later, the idea having yet further entrenched itself,
seventieth birthday celebration, he disclaimed the right to be called
Bernard Shaw felt called upon to argue the sanity of art, but his
the discoverer of the unconscious, saying that whatever he may have
cogency was of no more avail than Lamb's. In recent years the condone for the systematic understanding of the unconscious, the credit nection between art and mental illness has been formulated not only
for its discovery properly belonged to the literary masters. And psyby those who are openly or covertly hostile to art, but also and more choanalysis has inherited from him a tenderness for art which is real
significantly by those who are most intensely partisan to it. The latter
although sometimes clumsy, and nowadays most psychoanalysts of
willingly and even eagerly accept the idea that the artist is mentally
any personal sensitivity are embarrassed by occasions which seem to
ill and go on to make his illness a condition of his power to tell the
lead them to reduce art to a formula of mental illness. Nevertheless
truth.
Freud's early belief in the essential neuroticism of the artist found
This conception of artistic genius is indeed one of the character-
1 See "Freud and Literature."
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Art and Neurosis
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an all too fertile ground-found, we might say, the very ground
the bourgeois or philistine public. Some of the "blame" must rest
from which it first sprang, for, when he spoke of the artist as a
with the poets themselves. The Romantic poets were as proud of
neurotic, Freud was adopting one of the popular beliefs of his age.
their art as the vaunting poets of the sixteenth century, but one of
Most readers will see this belief as the expression of the industrial
them talked with an angel in a tree and insisted that Hell was better
rationalization and the bourgeois philistinism of the nineteenth centhan Heaven and sexuality holier than chastity; another told the tury. In this they are partly right. The nineteenth century established
world that he wanted to lie down like a tired child and weep away
the basic virtue of "getting up at eight, shaving close at a quarterthis life of care; another asked so foolish a question as "Why did I past, breakfasting at nine, going to the City at ten, coming home at
laugh tonight?"; and yet another explained that he had written one
half-past five, and dining at seven." The Messrs. Podsnap who instiof his best poems in a drugged sleep. The public took them all at tuted this scheduled morality inevitably decreed that the arts must
their word-they were not as other men. Zola, in the interests of
celebrate it and nothing else. "Nothing else to be permitted to these
science, submitted himself to examination by fifteen psychiatrists and
... vagrants the Arts, on pain of excommunication. Nothing else
agreed with their conclusion that his genius had its source in the
To Be-anywhere!" We observe that the virtuous day ends with
neurotic elements of his temperament. Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verdinner-bed and sleep are naturally not part of the Reality that Is, laine found virtue and strength in their physical and mental illness
and nothing must be set forth which will, as Mr. Podsnap put it,
and pain. W. H. Auden addresses his "wound" in the cherishing
bring a Blush to the Cheek of a Young Person.
language of a lover, thanking it for the gift of insight it has bes
The excommunication of the arts, when it was found necessary,
towed. "Knowing you," he says, "has made me understand." And
took the form of pronouncing the artist mentally degenerate, a device
Edmund Wilson in his striking phrase, "the wound and the bow,"
which eventually found its theorist in Max Nordau. In the history
has formulated for our time the idea of the characteristic sickness of
of the arts this is new. The poet was always known to belong to a
the artist, which he represents by the figure of Philoctetes, the Greek
touchy tribe-genus irritabile was a tag anyone would know-and
warrior who was forced to live in isolation because of the disgusting
ever since Plato the process of the inspired imagination, as we have
odor of a suppurating wound and who yet had to be sought out by
said, was thought to be a special one of some interest, which the
his countrymen because they had need of the magically unerring
similitude of madness made somewhat intelligible. But this is not
bow he possessed.
quite to say that the poet was the victim of actual mental aberration.
The myth of the sick artist, we may suppose, has established itself
The eighteenth century did not find the poet to be less than other
because it is of advantage to the various groups who have one or
men, and certainly the Renaissance did not. If he was a professional,
another relation with art. To the artist himself the myth gives some
there might be condescension to his social status, but in a time which
of the ancient powers and privileges of the idiot and the fool, halfdeplored all professionalism whatever, this was simply a way of prophetic creatures, or of the mutilated priest. That the artist's neuasserti
ng the high value of poetry, which ought not to be comprorosis may be but a mask is suggested by Thomas Mann's pleasure mised by trade. And a certain good nature marked even the snubin representing his untried youth as "sick" but his successful mabing of the professional. At any rate, no one was likely to identify turity as senatorially robust. By means of his belief in his own sickthe poet with the weakling. Indeed, the Renaissance ideal held poetry ness, the artist may the more easily fulfill his chosen, and assigned,
to be, like arms or music, one of the signs of manly competence.
function of putting himself into connection with the forces of spiri
The change from this view of things cannot be blamed wholly on
tuality and morality; the artist sees as insane the "normal" and
THE UBERAL IMAGINATION
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157
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"healthy" ways of established society, while aberration and illness
This is an admirable piece of work, marked by accuracy in the reappear as spiritual and moral health if only because they controvert porting of the literary fact and by respect for the value of the literary
the ways of respectable society.
object. Although Dr. Rosenzweig explores the element of neurosis in
Then too, the myth has its advantage for the philistine-a double
James's life and work, he nowhere suggests that this element in any
advantage. On the one hand, the belief in the artist's neuroticism
way lessens James's value as an artist or moralist. In effect he says
allows the philistine to shut his ears to what the artist says. But on
that neurosis is a way of dealing with reality which, in real life, is
the other hand it allows him to listen. For we must not make the
uncomfortable and uneconomical, but that this judgment of neurosis
common mistake-the contemporary philistine does want to listen,
in life cannot mechanically be transferred to works of art upon which
at the same time that he wants to shut his ears. By supposing that
neurosis has had its influence. He nowhere implies that a work of art
the artist has an interesting but not always reliable relation to reality,
in whose genesis a neurotic element may be found is for that reason
he is able to contain (in the military sense) what the artist tells him.
irrelevant or in any way diminished in value. Indeed, the manner
If he did not want to listen at all, he would say "insane"; with
of his treatment suggests, what is of course the case, that every neu
"neurotic," which hedges, he listens when he chooses.
rosis deals with a real emotional situation of the most intensely mean
And in addition to its advantage to the artist and to the philistine,
ingful kind.
we must take into account the usefulness of the myth to a third
Yet as Dr. Rosenzweig brings his essay to its close, he makes use
group, the group of "sensitive" people, who, although not artists, are
of the current assumption about the causal connection between the
not philistines either. These people form a group by virtue of their
psychic illness of the artist and his power. His investigation of James,
passive impatience with philistinism, and also by virtue of their
he says, "reveals the aptness of the Philoctetes pattern." He accepts
awareness of their own emotional pain and uncertainty. To these
the idea of "the sacrificial roots of literary power" and speaks of "the
people the myth of the sick artist is the institutional sanction of their
unhappy sources of James's genius." "The broader application of the
situation; they seek to approximate or acquire the character of the
inherent pattern," he says, "is familiar to readers of Edmund Wilartist, sometimes by planning to work or even attempting to work son's recent volume The Wound and the Bow . ... Reviewing the
as the artist does, always by making a connection between their own
experience and work of several well-known literary masters, Wilson
powers of mind and their consciousness of "difference" and neurotic
discloses the sacrificial roots of their power on the model of the Greek
illness.
legend. In the case of Henry James, the present account . . . pro
The early attempts of psychoanalysis to deal with art went on the
vides a similar insight into the unhappy sources of his genius."
assumption that, because the artist was neurotic, the content of his
This comes as a surprise. Nothing in Dr. Rosenzweig's theory
work was also neurotic, which is to say that it did not stand in a
requires it. For his theory asserts no more than that Henry James,
correct relation to reality. But nowadays, as I have said, psychoanalypredisposed by temperament and family situation to certain mental sis is not likely to be so simple in its transactions with art. A good
and emotional qualities, was in his youth injured in a way which he
example of the psychoanalytical development in this respect is Dr.
believed to be sexual; that he unconsciously invited the injury in the
Saul Rosenzweig's well-known essay, "The Ghost of Henry James."2
wish to identify himself with his father, who himself had been similarly injured-"castrated": a leg had been amputated-and under 2 First published in Character and Personality, December 1943, and reprinted in
Partisan Review, Fall, 1944.
strikingly similar circumstances; this resulted for the younger Henry
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James in a certain pattern of life and in a preoccupation in his work
In the ingrained popular conception of the relation between
with certain themes which more or less obscurely symbolize his
suffering and power there are actually two distinct although related
sexual situation. For this I think Dr. Rosenzweig makes a sound
ideas. One is that there exists in the individual a fund of power
case. Yet I submit that this is not the same thing as disclosing the
which has outlets through various organs or faculties, and that if
roots of James's power or discovering the sources of his genius. The
its outlet through one organ or faculty be prevented, it will flow
essay which gives Edmund Wilson's book its title and cohering printo increase the force or sensitivity of another. Thus it is popularly ciple does not explicitly say that the roots of power are sacrificial and
believed that the sense of touch is intensified in the blind not so
that the source of genius is unhappy. Where it is explicit, it states
much by the will of the blind person to adapt himself to the necesonly that "genius and disease, like strength and mutilation, may be sities of his situation as, rather, by a sort of mechanical redistribuinextricably bound up together," which of course, on its face, says tion of power. And this idea would seem to explain, if not the
no more than that personality is integral and not made up of deorigin of the ancient mutilation of priests, then at least a common tachable parts; and from this there is no doubt to be drawn the
u
nderstanding of their sexual sacrifice.
important practical and moral implication that we cannot judge or
The other idea is that a person may be taught by, or proved by,
dismiss a man's genius and strength because of our awareness of his
the endurance of pain. There will easily come to mind the ritual
disease or mutilation. The Philoctetes-legend in itself does not sugsuffering that is inflicted at the tribal initiation of youths into full gest anything beyond this. It does not suggest that the wound is the
manhood or at the admission of the apprentice into the company of
price of the bow, or that without the wound the bow may not be
journeyman adepts. This idea in sophisticated form found its way
possessed or drawn. Yet Dr. Rosenzweig has accurately summarized
into high religion at least as early as Aeschylus, who held that man
the force and, I think, the intention of Mr. Wilson's whole book; its
achieves knowledge of God through suffering, and it was from the
several studies do seem to say that effectiveness in the arts does debeginning an important element of Christian thought. In the ninepend on sickness.
teenth century the Christianized notion of the didactic suffering of
An examination of this prevalent idea might well begin with the
the artist went along with the idea of his mental degeneration and
observation of how pervasive and deeply rooted is the notion that
even served as a sort of countermyth to it. Its doctrine was that the
power may be gained by suffering. Even at relatively high stages
artist, a man of strength and health, experienced and suffered, and
of culture the mind seems to take easily to the primitive belief that
thus learned both the facts of life and his artistic craft. "I am the
pain and sacrifice are connected with strength. Primitive beliefs
man, I suffered, I was there," ran his boast, and he derived his
must be treated with respectful alertness to their possible truth and
authority from the knowledge gained through suffering.
also with the suspicion of their being magical and irrational, and
There can be no doubt that both these ideas represent a measure
it is worth noting on both sides of the question, and in the light of