The aesthetic development : the poetic spirit of psychoanalysis : essays on Bion, Meltzer, Keats

225 Pages·2010·0.95 MB·English

by  Bion

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CHAPTERTITLE I
THE AESTHETIC
DEVELOPMENT
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THE AESTHETIC
DEVELOPMENT
The Poetic Spirit of Psychoanalysis
Essays on Bion, Meltzer, Keats
Meg Harris Williams
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Published in 2010 by
Karnac Books Ltd
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
Copyright © 2010 Meg Harris Williams
The right of Meg Harris Williams to be identified as the author of this work
has been asserted in accordance with §§77 and 78 of the Copyright Design
and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the
prior written permission of the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A C.I.P. for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 85575 617 5
Edited, designed, and produced by The Studio Publishing Services Ltd
www.publishingservicesuk.co.uk
e-mail: [email protected]
Printed in Great Britain
www.karnacbooks.com
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CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS vii
ABOUT THE AUTHOR ix
INTRODUCTION xiii
CHAPTER ONE
Psychoanalysis: an art or a science? 1
The limitations of Promethean science. Artistic openings.
The new idea.
CHAPTER TWO
Aesthetic concepts of Bion and Meltzer 25
Aesthetic conflict. Catastrophic change.
CHAPTER THREE
The domain of the aesthetic object 53
The symbol. The caesura. Poetic inspiration.
Psychoanalytic faith.
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vi CONTENTS
CHAPTER FOUR
Sleeping beauty 91
Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale”. “Ode on a Grecian Urn”.
Moneta’s mourn.
CHAPTER FIVE
Moving beauty 119
Beneficence in space: on life-drawing.
CHAPTER SIX
Psychoanalysis as an art form 133
The stuff of dreams. Symbolic congruence. Objects in common.
A note on terminology.
AFTERWORD
My Kleinian ancestors 171
REFERENCES ANDBIBLIOGRAPHY 185
INDEX 195
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to thank Irene Freeden, Dorothy Hamilton, and Neil
Maizels for generously diverting attention from their own work to
scrutinize mine, enabling me to correct some of its infelicitations;
the colleagues who attended my series of talks of the same title and
whose response likewise helped with last-minute clarifications, and
especially Jonathan Bradley for chairing them; and above all my
husband, Adrian Williams, who, as always, read every draft of the
book as it came along. I would also like to thank Meriel Gold and
Morag Donnelly for their inspiration in the life-drawing studio, and
all my wonderful models.
I also thank the editors of the periodicals in which sections of
this book were first published: The British Journal of Psychotherapy:
“Inspiration: a psychoanalytic and aesthetic concept”, Vol. 14(1),
1997, pp. 33–43; “Psychoanalysis; an art or a science?”, Vol. 16(2),
1999, pp. 127–135; “The three vertices: science, art, religion”, Vol.
21(3) 2005, pp. 429–441; “Psychoanalysis as an art form”, Vol. 25 (3),
pp. 381–392; Encounter: “‘Knowing’ the mystery: against reduction-
ism”, Vol. 67, June 1986, pp. 48–53; “Looking with the mind: psy-
choanalysis and literature”, Vol. 74, May 1990, pp. 33–38; Journal of
Melanie Klein and Object Relations: “The aesthetic perspective in the
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viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
work of Donald Meltzer”, Vol. 16(2), 1998, pp. 209–218; The
Psychoanalytic Review: “The role of incantation: lifedrawing as an
analogue to psychoanalytic process”, Vol. 95(3), 2008, pp. 463–472.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Meg Harris Williams is a writer and visual artist with a lifelong
psychoanalytic education; her mother was Martha Harris of the
Tavistock Clinic, and her stepfather Donald Meltzer. She read
English at Cambridge and Oxford universities and her first book to
marry poetic and psychoanalytic epistemologies was Inspiration in
Milton and Keats(1981). Since then she has continued to write on the
poetic origins of psychoanalytic thinking and the aesthetic im-
plications for psychoanalysis in many books and articles including
A Strange Way of Killing (1987), The Apprehension of Beauty (1988,
with Donald Meltzer), The Chamber of Maiden Thought (1992,
with Margot Waddell), ATrial of Faith: Horatio’s Story(1996), The Vale
of Soulmaking (2005) and Bion’s Dream (to be published in 2010).
She has also written and illustrated a book of Shakespeare stories
for children, Five Tales from Shakespeare (1996). She is editor of the
Harris Meltzer Trust publications. Websites: www.artlit.info and
www.harris-meltzer-trust.org.uk
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