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18 November 2019

Parallels can be drawn between the technique of psychoanalysis as described by Freud in this article and Art Practice. Freud explains how ‘free association’ (the expression of the content of consciousness without censorship) can enable a patient to recollect a traumatic event at the root of a mental illness and eliminate the associated memory through catharsis. He describes how patients resist remembering such events and instead unconsciously repeat or act out behaviours associated with the memory, for example a patient does not remember he was defiant or critical of his parent’s authority and instead behaves in this way to the analyst. This resistance, the repetition of behaviour or acting out, is a way of remembering but also being protected from the memory but without facing it and without facing it its detrimental effect on our psychological state cannot be helped. In order to alleviate the patient’s current symptoms, the analyst assists the patient to recognise, make conscious, their resistance to the memory and then to work it through and ultimately effect powerful change.

 

In the field of Art Practice unconscious resistance or censoring of ourselves when we are in the process of making occurs in different guises. We can be too concerned with the ultimate outcome, the finished piece of work or classically be too overawed by the plain white canvas or sheet of paper. To overcome this our response is often to revert to familiar ways of working or habitual mark making because it is less challenging doing things which are unfamiliar, working out of our comfort zone. Making ourselves conscious of habitual practice or creating rules or guidelines for ourselves that stop us returning to our ‘usual’ way of doing things is a powerful way to effect change in our practice. Examples of this can be found in the work of artists for instance Lee Krasner’s decision to make collages in 1955 from paintings that she had ripped up and abandoned on the studio floor effected a dramatic change in her practice.

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Remembering, repeating and working through’ Sigmund Freud

‘Further Recommendations in the Technique of Psychoanalysis II: Recollection, Repetition and Working-Through’ The present translation, with changed title is a modified version of the one published in 1924 vol 12 Standard Edition 1950