- Email: [email protected]
Vincent Van Gogh: A psychological study
46
BOOK REVIEWS
drawing it, writing poems about it, etc. H e r style and sense of energy clearly are involving, and this certainly enriched her students. H e r descriptions of the workshops are perhaps the strongest part of the book. H o w e v e r , we are left hanging with the question of what to do with all of this material. It is where I, as an art therapist, became frustrated. Ms. Robertson has difficulty responding to the question. In fact, several times in her own frustration, she w r i t e s , " I don't know what it means . . . . " H e r honesty is refreshing but the result is disappointing. She describes her journeys through remote rooms in museums, searching for pieces of art similar in theme or style to her student's work, or her pilgrimages through Greek mythology seeking answers. Ultimately, she seems to worship the mysterious, the obscure, the unknowable. The symbols fail to take on the multilayered richness of personal significance. She seems to miss many of the opportunities that arise between her and the students to
develop real insights. Although Ms. Robertson does not explicitly discuss the boundaries between art education and art therapy, her work certainly raised these issues in this reader's mind. Archetypes sometimes emerge from the structure she provides, and other times spontaneously. She attempts to explore many symbols (themes) such as: the sea, harbor, waterfall, cave, forest, the family group, heros, various animals, mythological creatures, and much focuses on two central a r c h e t y p e s - - t h e rosegarden and the labyrinth. These are symbols for the entire process of self-discovery, the process of transition from one state to another, of initiation and rebirth. To accompany Ms. Robertson through this intuitive rite of passage is a worthwhile journey. Gordon L. Neale, MPS, ATR Supervisor of Art Therapy Charter Peachford Hospital Atlanta, Georgia
Editor's Note: The following review is to inform readers who may have overlooked this significant book.
Vincent Van Gogh: A Psychological Study H u m b e r t o Nagera, MD (New York: International Universities Press, 1967. 182 pages. $20)
VAN G O G H : M I S S I N G P A T I E N T Is there a quality peculiar to Van Gogh's genius that makes us, already deeply impressed by the art and letters, wonder, " I s this book quite n e c e s s a r y ? " Van Gogh's madness has become, as Archie Bunker might say, " l e g i o n a r y " ; why not a resolve to have no truck with whatever could further inflate the stereotypic bubble of the artist qua lunatic? H u m b e r t o Nagera suggests in a preface that resistance to such investigations derives from our naive desire to compartmentalize the " g o o d " and " b a d " in human nature. True, but there is also something reassuring about people's frailties; like the ghoulish headlines of The New York Post, they give us something to thrill to and, of course, feel comfortable with. It is hard to respect Van Gogh's seriousness, his dedication and, if you will, " m o r a l i t y , "
without a backward glance at oneself. Principles and courage like his are rare in our or any society. So is there not a belittling, a destructive, wish lurking within the benign professionalism of books like this? The answer, for this book at least, is no. The primary justification for treating the subject as patient is that he did something we expect of " p a t i e n t s " ; he broke down, he killed himself. While Nagera refers in detail to a few paintings, his focus is on these tragic facts and on the selfinflicted aspect of the life's myriad difficulties, facts all the more poignant when we recall that the art was beginning to excite interest just at the end. The analyst offers an explanation for the craziness other than sheer genius, one that is selective and biased perhaps, but one which we must consider unless something else (the epilepsy or alcoholism arguments, for instance) is
BOOK REVIEWS substantiated. Nagera is not patronizing, nor does he offer to ~'explain" genius psychologically. His concern is with what Theo called, with brotherly feeling, "the poor fighter, and poor, poor sufferer." A psychoanalytic account goes in two simultaneous directions, backward from historical events, forward from hypothetical causes. A sketch of the forward argument runs as follows: the parents' first baby (also Vincent) died at birth; Van Gogh as a child felt that the dead one was an ideal by which he fell short. Hence, in later development, separation from the family aroused anxiety because it signified rejection. As a young adult, Van Gogh began a successful first career, but, when rejected in love and separated from home and native land, he regressed. This took the form of withdrawal and religious fanaticism. Stubborn and eccentric ("anal") qualities made him a difficult employee and he was given notice. Since he idealized his pastor father to defend against oedipal hostility, he prepared himself for the ministry. Although the family helped, he could (or would) not master the academic requirements, notably Greek. He then tried to become a lay minister and was given a trial period as Evangelist to the miners of the Borinage, Belgium. He followed Christ's teaching so scrupulously in giving away his possessions and wearing rags that he was dismissed. He showed his superiors (i.e., his father) what a real Christian was like. Having begun and sabotaged two careers, he now quarrelled intensely with his father and renounced the church. He began to study art seriously, placing himself in complete economic dependence on the family (i.e., Theo) for the rest of his life. While the quarreling was at its height, the father died of a sudden heart attack, and the son felt unconsciously that he had killed him, although the letters express no remorse about his behavior. From the Paris period Theo knew from bitter experience how difficult his brother could be, with his egocentric behavior and excessive demands. Knowing this, it is surprising Gauguin went to him in Aries at all; Nagera conjectures that Gauguin was broke and did it to please Theo, who might help sell his pictures. Less than two months after arriving, Gauguin told Theo he would leave again because of "temperamental incompatibilities." Van Gogh's first serious attack of
47
psychotic behavior was precipitated by homicidal impulses against Gauguin, a father-substitute who was leaving him. At the same time (Christmas, 1888), he was aware of an impending change in Theo's emotional life that might disturb the "sheltered environment" their relationship had become for him. For the first time these impulses broke out into the open and were deflected onto himself in self-mutilation. In painting the two empty chairs--his and Gauguin's--Van Gogh was sentencing both to death. His insanity was a form of death, i.e., a self-punishment, and he shot himself a year and a half later. Nagera connects each breakdown to a precipitating threat to his frail inner security, i.e., Roulin's departure for Marseilles, Theo's marriage, his sister-in-law's pregnancy, the exhibition of some paintings at the Independents, later at the Vingtistes, the birth of the nephew (another Vincent) and last, but not least, the beginnings of recognition in the form of Aurier's article in the Mercure de France. (His response was to write and tell Aurier he did not deserve all that praise; some should have gone to Gauguin.) The portrait that emerges here is of a tenacious mind of considerable probity, intent on having things its own way and forcing others (critical fathers) to recognize and accept its personal style, warts and all. The other side of this coin is a terror of (often provoked) rejection by others, a desire to regress, depend and submit to powerful authority for safety. Hence the striving for, yet fear of, successful rivalry with the father, with the businessman younger brother, with the idealized dead sibling. Nagera sees his choice of art as (a) a path already beaten by other family members like uncle Vincent of the Paris firm of Goupil, (b) a means of escaping and defying the paternal influence, (c) the only way to hold on to human relationships (i.e., securing the models and "getting" them on paper or canvas) and (d) an outlet for sexual and anal impulses--Van Gogh was nothing if not a " m e s s y " painter! In art one can be both a failure and, with death as the necessary and poignant prelude, an immortal success.
Although it ramifies beyond this, the nub of Nagera's case is oedipal guilt superimposed on a weak foundation in the mother-child relationship. Since the analyst assumes important unconscious determinants, evidence is a difficult
48
BOOK REVIEWS
matter. The letters themselves do not reveal preoccupation with either o f these themes, but of course the analyst would not expect them to. The very lack of overt guilt about the father's death can be adduced as evidence of its presence in repressed form. As is so often the case, the power of this book to create conviction will depend on the reader's tolerance for the psychoanalytic view of the motivating role of the unconscious. It must be said that Nagera does little to help the skeptical with problems of evidence, either because he believes that without the leap of faith into unconscious conflict the reader would become enmeshed in complex argument, spoiling what has been neatly presented as a down-to-earth narrative; or Nagera is insufficiently aware that even in the psychological community (his title uses the word) a straightforward Freudian approach is not given automatic credence. There is something seductively reassuring in his seeming to beckon you onto his couch far from the madding crowd of disputants. You f o r g e t - - y o u are intended to forget--that Vincent Van Gogh: A Psychological Study is really an argument about the forces that turn people into patients. Nagera has presented a probing and respectful case history, which is not the same thing. A case history has the patient to provide crucial material corroboration. Where the patient is in question and there is no corroboration, Nagera supplies it himself--e.g., " I have thus reconstructed what might have been Vincent's own associations" (p. 141). These characteristic and disarming words are in his interesting analysis of the two empty chair studies, which he links directly to the first psychotic episode: Just before Christmas, and before attempting to attack Gauguin with a razor, he painted his own empty chair and Gauguin's empty chair, thus expressing on canvas
the drama that was to develop in no more than a few hours. (p. 136) H o w e v e r , there is a problem with the dating of both painters' letters. Consequently, Jan Huisker's The Complete Van Gogh gives the pictures earlier dates, D e c e m b e r 2-6 (p. 378), and Ronald Pickvance's catalogue for the 1984 New York exhibition, Van Gogh in Aries, has N o v e m b e r 23, with additional work on Gauguin's chair on January 17 (p. 235). If Nagera's case rests, in part, on supplying what "might have b e e n " Van Gogh's associations at the time, exact dating could be an important link in the causal chain. Do these minor uncertainties matter? The answer depends on whether we are being "scientific" in a broad or narrow sense. The value of such an interpretation does not depend on whether the painter worked on N o v e m b e r 23 or December 23. The stimulus could still have been repressed homicidal wishes and suicidal guilt about them. The problem is that it is one step to say we know that the painter was full of such feelings when he worked; it is yet another to show that they influenced the form of that work. Since the patient is missing, Nagera makes both steps in one and gives the second hypothesis as proof of, rather than sequel to, the former. In a case history the patient's session productions would be basic data around which larger hypotheses could build--interpretive hypotheses if the patient were an artist. We do not have these here, yet Nagera's bent, when he is most himself, is to act as though we do. What we have, then, is one indubitable genius of a painter, some interesting analytic hypotheses, a lunatic, and a missing patient. Is that a little or a lot? Dominick Grundy, PhD 545 West End Ave., New York, N.Y. 10024
BOOK REVIEWS
drawing it, writing poems about it, etc. H e r style and sense of energy clearly are involving, and this certainly enriched her students. H e r descriptions of the workshops are perhaps the strongest part of the book. H o w e v e r , we are left hanging with the question of what to do with all of this material. It is where I, as an art therapist, became frustrated. Ms. Robertson has difficulty responding to the question. In fact, several times in her own frustration, she w r i t e s , " I don't know what it means . . . . " H e r honesty is refreshing but the result is disappointing. She describes her journeys through remote rooms in museums, searching for pieces of art similar in theme or style to her student's work, or her pilgrimages through Greek mythology seeking answers. Ultimately, she seems to worship the mysterious, the obscure, the unknowable. The symbols fail to take on the multilayered richness of personal significance. She seems to miss many of the opportunities that arise between her and the students to
develop real insights. Although Ms. Robertson does not explicitly discuss the boundaries between art education and art therapy, her work certainly raised these issues in this reader's mind. Archetypes sometimes emerge from the structure she provides, and other times spontaneously. She attempts to explore many symbols (themes) such as: the sea, harbor, waterfall, cave, forest, the family group, heros, various animals, mythological creatures, and much focuses on two central a r c h e t y p e s - - t h e rosegarden and the labyrinth. These are symbols for the entire process of self-discovery, the process of transition from one state to another, of initiation and rebirth. To accompany Ms. Robertson through this intuitive rite of passage is a worthwhile journey. Gordon L. Neale, MPS, ATR Supervisor of Art Therapy Charter Peachford Hospital Atlanta, Georgia
Editor's Note: The following review is to inform readers who may have overlooked this significant book.
Vincent Van Gogh: A Psychological Study H u m b e r t o Nagera, MD (New York: International Universities Press, 1967. 182 pages. $20)
VAN G O G H : M I S S I N G P A T I E N T Is there a quality peculiar to Van Gogh's genius that makes us, already deeply impressed by the art and letters, wonder, " I s this book quite n e c e s s a r y ? " Van Gogh's madness has become, as Archie Bunker might say, " l e g i o n a r y " ; why not a resolve to have no truck with whatever could further inflate the stereotypic bubble of the artist qua lunatic? H u m b e r t o Nagera suggests in a preface that resistance to such investigations derives from our naive desire to compartmentalize the " g o o d " and " b a d " in human nature. True, but there is also something reassuring about people's frailties; like the ghoulish headlines of The New York Post, they give us something to thrill to and, of course, feel comfortable with. It is hard to respect Van Gogh's seriousness, his dedication and, if you will, " m o r a l i t y , "
without a backward glance at oneself. Principles and courage like his are rare in our or any society. So is there not a belittling, a destructive, wish lurking within the benign professionalism of books like this? The answer, for this book at least, is no. The primary justification for treating the subject as patient is that he did something we expect of " p a t i e n t s " ; he broke down, he killed himself. While Nagera refers in detail to a few paintings, his focus is on these tragic facts and on the selfinflicted aspect of the life's myriad difficulties, facts all the more poignant when we recall that the art was beginning to excite interest just at the end. The analyst offers an explanation for the craziness other than sheer genius, one that is selective and biased perhaps, but one which we must consider unless something else (the epilepsy or alcoholism arguments, for instance) is
BOOK REVIEWS substantiated. Nagera is not patronizing, nor does he offer to ~'explain" genius psychologically. His concern is with what Theo called, with brotherly feeling, "the poor fighter, and poor, poor sufferer." A psychoanalytic account goes in two simultaneous directions, backward from historical events, forward from hypothetical causes. A sketch of the forward argument runs as follows: the parents' first baby (also Vincent) died at birth; Van Gogh as a child felt that the dead one was an ideal by which he fell short. Hence, in later development, separation from the family aroused anxiety because it signified rejection. As a young adult, Van Gogh began a successful first career, but, when rejected in love and separated from home and native land, he regressed. This took the form of withdrawal and religious fanaticism. Stubborn and eccentric ("anal") qualities made him a difficult employee and he was given notice. Since he idealized his pastor father to defend against oedipal hostility, he prepared himself for the ministry. Although the family helped, he could (or would) not master the academic requirements, notably Greek. He then tried to become a lay minister and was given a trial period as Evangelist to the miners of the Borinage, Belgium. He followed Christ's teaching so scrupulously in giving away his possessions and wearing rags that he was dismissed. He showed his superiors (i.e., his father) what a real Christian was like. Having begun and sabotaged two careers, he now quarrelled intensely with his father and renounced the church. He began to study art seriously, placing himself in complete economic dependence on the family (i.e., Theo) for the rest of his life. While the quarreling was at its height, the father died of a sudden heart attack, and the son felt unconsciously that he had killed him, although the letters express no remorse about his behavior. From the Paris period Theo knew from bitter experience how difficult his brother could be, with his egocentric behavior and excessive demands. Knowing this, it is surprising Gauguin went to him in Aries at all; Nagera conjectures that Gauguin was broke and did it to please Theo, who might help sell his pictures. Less than two months after arriving, Gauguin told Theo he would leave again because of "temperamental incompatibilities." Van Gogh's first serious attack of
47
psychotic behavior was precipitated by homicidal impulses against Gauguin, a father-substitute who was leaving him. At the same time (Christmas, 1888), he was aware of an impending change in Theo's emotional life that might disturb the "sheltered environment" their relationship had become for him. For the first time these impulses broke out into the open and were deflected onto himself in self-mutilation. In painting the two empty chairs--his and Gauguin's--Van Gogh was sentencing both to death. His insanity was a form of death, i.e., a self-punishment, and he shot himself a year and a half later. Nagera connects each breakdown to a precipitating threat to his frail inner security, i.e., Roulin's departure for Marseilles, Theo's marriage, his sister-in-law's pregnancy, the exhibition of some paintings at the Independents, later at the Vingtistes, the birth of the nephew (another Vincent) and last, but not least, the beginnings of recognition in the form of Aurier's article in the Mercure de France. (His response was to write and tell Aurier he did not deserve all that praise; some should have gone to Gauguin.) The portrait that emerges here is of a tenacious mind of considerable probity, intent on having things its own way and forcing others (critical fathers) to recognize and accept its personal style, warts and all. The other side of this coin is a terror of (often provoked) rejection by others, a desire to regress, depend and submit to powerful authority for safety. Hence the striving for, yet fear of, successful rivalry with the father, with the businessman younger brother, with the idealized dead sibling. Nagera sees his choice of art as (a) a path already beaten by other family members like uncle Vincent of the Paris firm of Goupil, (b) a means of escaping and defying the paternal influence, (c) the only way to hold on to human relationships (i.e., securing the models and "getting" them on paper or canvas) and (d) an outlet for sexual and anal impulses--Van Gogh was nothing if not a " m e s s y " painter! In art one can be both a failure and, with death as the necessary and poignant prelude, an immortal success.
Although it ramifies beyond this, the nub of Nagera's case is oedipal guilt superimposed on a weak foundation in the mother-child relationship. Since the analyst assumes important unconscious determinants, evidence is a difficult
48
BOOK REVIEWS
matter. The letters themselves do not reveal preoccupation with either o f these themes, but of course the analyst would not expect them to. The very lack of overt guilt about the father's death can be adduced as evidence of its presence in repressed form. As is so often the case, the power of this book to create conviction will depend on the reader's tolerance for the psychoanalytic view of the motivating role of the unconscious. It must be said that Nagera does little to help the skeptical with problems of evidence, either because he believes that without the leap of faith into unconscious conflict the reader would become enmeshed in complex argument, spoiling what has been neatly presented as a down-to-earth narrative; or Nagera is insufficiently aware that even in the psychological community (his title uses the word) a straightforward Freudian approach is not given automatic credence. There is something seductively reassuring in his seeming to beckon you onto his couch far from the madding crowd of disputants. You f o r g e t - - y o u are intended to forget--that Vincent Van Gogh: A Psychological Study is really an argument about the forces that turn people into patients. Nagera has presented a probing and respectful case history, which is not the same thing. A case history has the patient to provide crucial material corroboration. Where the patient is in question and there is no corroboration, Nagera supplies it himself--e.g., " I have thus reconstructed what might have been Vincent's own associations" (p. 141). These characteristic and disarming words are in his interesting analysis of the two empty chair studies, which he links directly to the first psychotic episode: Just before Christmas, and before attempting to attack Gauguin with a razor, he painted his own empty chair and Gauguin's empty chair, thus expressing on canvas
the drama that was to develop in no more than a few hours. (p. 136) H o w e v e r , there is a problem with the dating of both painters' letters. Consequently, Jan Huisker's The Complete Van Gogh gives the pictures earlier dates, D e c e m b e r 2-6 (p. 378), and Ronald Pickvance's catalogue for the 1984 New York exhibition, Van Gogh in Aries, has N o v e m b e r 23, with additional work on Gauguin's chair on January 17 (p. 235). If Nagera's case rests, in part, on supplying what "might have b e e n " Van Gogh's associations at the time, exact dating could be an important link in the causal chain. Do these minor uncertainties matter? The answer depends on whether we are being "scientific" in a broad or narrow sense. The value of such an interpretation does not depend on whether the painter worked on N o v e m b e r 23 or December 23. The stimulus could still have been repressed homicidal wishes and suicidal guilt about them. The problem is that it is one step to say we know that the painter was full of such feelings when he worked; it is yet another to show that they influenced the form of that work. Since the patient is missing, Nagera makes both steps in one and gives the second hypothesis as proof of, rather than sequel to, the former. In a case history the patient's session productions would be basic data around which larger hypotheses could build--interpretive hypotheses if the patient were an artist. We do not have these here, yet Nagera's bent, when he is most himself, is to act as though we do. What we have, then, is one indubitable genius of a painter, some interesting analytic hypotheses, a lunatic, and a missing patient. Is that a little or a lot? Dominick Grundy, PhD 545 West End Ave., New York, N.Y. 10024