Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, by Ernst Kris

Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art, by Ernst Kris. 2000 softcover. 394 pages, very nice condition.

Based on more than twenty-five years of research in psychology of art as well as clinical psychoanalysis, the essays collected in this volume afford a rare opportunity to follow the development of the author's thought and to experience with him the unfolding of his ideas. Kris not only practiced as a psychoanalyst, he also worked as an art historian and published articles on art history. As a psychoanalyst, he made some important contributions to the psychology of the artist and the psychoanalytic interpretation of works of art and caricature. In 1928, Kris intensified his working relationship with Freud, and he became a member of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. Between 1930 and 1938, Kris worked as a lecturer at the Vienna Psychoanalytic Institute. In 1933, Freud asked Kris to become editor of the Imago magazine, in which he published a paper relating art to psychology in 1936. He argued that the difference between the artist and the psychotic is that the artist can return from the world of his imagination to the real world, while the psychotic cannot.