The Apprehension of Beauty: The Role of Aesthetic Conflict in Development, Art and Violence

279 Pages·2008·10.42 MB·English

by  Donald Meltzer

THE APPREHENSION OF BEAUTY

THE APPREHENSION
OF BEAUTY
The Role of Aesthetic Conflict in
Development, Art, and Violence
Donald Meltzer
and
Meg Harris Williams
Published for
The Harris Meltzer Trust
by
KARNAC
O The Roland Harris Educational Trust
First published 1988
This edition published in 2008 by
Karnac Books Ltd.
118 Finchley Road, London NW3 5HT
Reprinted with corrections 2008
Copyright O 2008 by Meg Harris Williams and The Harris Meltzer Trust
Copyright O 2008 Afterword by Maria Rhode
The rights of Donald Meltzer and Meg Harris Williams to be identified as
the authors of this work have 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
AC.1.P. for this book is available from the British Library
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Biddles Ltd.,
King's Lynn, Norfolk
www.k arnacbooks.com
www.harrisme1tzer-trust.0rg.uk
To
Our Own and All
Ordinary Beautifil Devoted Mothers
We Dedicate This Book
And that same day, too, gazing far down from the boat's side into the same
golden sea, Starbuck lowly murmured: "Loveliness unfathomable, as ever
lover saw in his young bride's eyes! Tell me not of thy teeth-tiered sharks,
and thy kidnapping cannibals ways. Let faith oust fact; let fancy oust
memory; I love deep down and do believe."
And Stubb, fish-like, with sparkling scales, leaped up in the same golden
light: "I am Stubb, and Stubb has his history; but here Stubb takes oaths that
he has always been jolly."
Ch. CXIV-"The Gilder"
in Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
CON TENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
ABOUT THE AUTHORS xi
FOREWORD xiii
Introduction
1 The Apprehension of Beauty (1 973)
2 Aesthetic Conflict: Its Place in Development
3 On First Impressions
4 On Aesthetic Reciprocity
5 The Role of the Father in Early Development
6 The Problem of Violence
7 The Undiscovered Country:
The Shape of the Aesthetic Conflict in Hamlet
Meg Harris Williams
.. .
Vlll CONTENTS
8 The Place of Aesthetic Conflict in the Analytic Process
9 The Retreat from Aesthetic Conflict: Cynicism,
Perversity and thevulgarization of Taste
10 Recovery of the Aesthetic Object
11 Holding the Dream: The Nature of Aesthetic Appreciation
Meg Harris Williams
12 The Shadows in the Cave and the Writing on the Wall
ADDENDUM I: The Social Basis of Art: A Dialogue
with Adrian Stokes (1 963)
ADDENDUM II: Mindlessness-The Developmental Relation
of Psychosomatics, Hyperactivity,
and Hallucinosis
AFTERWORD
Maria Rhode
ACKNOWL EDCEMENTS
T
he authors would like to thank the fellow contributors to
this book; these are the psychoanalytic colleagues who have
presented their intimate experiences to teaching seminars in
the form of clinical material: Giuliana Fortunato of Milan, Romana
Negri of Bergamo, Ma rja Schulman of Helsinki, Sveien Haugsjerd
of Oslo; Giuditta Alberio of Novara, and the staff of Pietro Pfanner
from the University of Pisa (Calambrone). They also wish to thank
Ann Stokes and Lawrence Gowing for permission to reprint the dia-
logue between Donald Meltzer and Adrian Stokes.
I would like to thank Maria Rhode and the Journal of Child Psycho-
therapy for permission to reprint her review of the original (1988) edi-
tion of the book here as an Afterword and Ian Craine for preparing
an index for the present edition.
Meg Harris Williams