Podcast Summary: Michael Parsons – Psychoanalysis and Art

Podcast: Talks On Psychoanalysis
Host: International Psychoanalytical Association
Guest: Michael Parsons
Date: March 13, 2021

Episode Overview

This episode delves into the nuanced relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts—specifically visual arts, literature, and music. Michael Parsons, experienced psychoanalyst and author, draws on his books and broader psychoanalytic thought to critique Freud’s and the psychoanalytic tradition’s approach to art, arguing for a more receptive and contemplative way of experiencing artworks akin to psychoanalytic listening.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Freud’s Struggle with Art

• Freud’s visit to Michelangelo’s Moses (02:07): Freud is moved by the statue, yet confesses his difficulty in appreciating art for its own sake. He feels compelled to interpret works of art through psychological explanation.
  • Quote (Freud, 03:12):
    “Why should the artist's intention not be capable of being communicated and comprehended in words, like any other fact of mental life? To discover the artist’s intention... I must... interpret it.”
• Freud experiences both profound effect from art and intellectual discomfort, leading to “highly colored writing and deliberate self-mockery.”
• While admiring works like The Brothers Karamazov, Freud’s admiration often comes with an analytical critique, reflecting ambivalence.

Art, Interpretation, and Psychoanalysis

• Parsons points out the limitations of trying to capture an artwork’s meaning through words and interpretation alone.
  • Anecdote (08:55): Parsons, moved by a novel, is disappointed by the author’s banality in discussing it—realizing the depth is within the work, not in explanations about it.
• Quote (Parsons, 10:45):
  “The intention of the artist is a fact of mental life which... is not susceptible of being fully represented or interpreted in words. It resides in the work itself.”
• Parsons critiques Freud’s and Ernest Jones’s approach to art (treating works like dreams to be decoded and then discarded), illustrating how this diminishes the ongoing power and presence of the artwork.
  • Example: Freud’s interpretation of King Lear and Jones’s reading of Hamlet reduce the impact of the plays to psychological explanations.

Beyond Explanation: Listening and Receptivity

• Rethinking how psychoanalysis relates to art:
  • Parsons suggests a shift from interpretation to receptive contemplation, analogous to psychoanalytic listening with a patient.
    • Quote (Parsons, 18:38):
      “Instead of using psychoanalysis to explain a work of art, we could try using it to listen to a work of art.”
• He advocates seeing the parts of a play (or any artwork) not just as characters but as aspects of an organic emotional totality.
• Poetry & Music as examples:
  • Seamus Heaney’s approach to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land: Heaney found deeper meaning by listening receptively to the poem rather than analyzing it academically.
    Quote (Heaney cited by Parsons, 22:00):
    “In the heft and largesse of the poem’s music, I thought I defined an aural equivalent of the larger transcendental reality. The breath of life was in the body of sound.”
  • The way an analyst listens to a patient’s many internal “voices” mirrors attentive listening to the contrapuntal voices of a Bach fugue.

Visual Art & Psychoanalytic Contemplation

• Vermeer’s The Kitchen Maid (29:50):
  • Rather than analyze, Parsons exhorts viewers to repeatedly, quietly contemplate the painting.
  • He likens the painting’s stillness—a suspended moment between past and future—to the psychoanalytic session, another suspended moment in time.
  • Quote (Parsons, 32:05):
    “Contemplating Vermeer’s Kitchen Maid, without seeking to explain her, but with the peaceful alertness I am trying to describe, turns out to be a surprisingly psychoanalytic experience.”

Film: Antonioni’s Encounter with Moses

• Antonioni’s film “Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo” (34:30):
  • Filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, in his 90s, films himself simply looking contemplatively at Michelangelo’s Moses—no analysis, no words, just attentive presence.
  • The silence and the simplicity mirror the psychoanalyst’s “relaxed intensity” of listening.
  • The ambiguity of the film title (“The gaze of Michelangelo”) raises the question—who is gazing at whom? Antonioni or the statue? Analyst or patient?
  • The film—Antonioni’s last—serves as a metaphor for life’s end:
    Quote (Parsons, 38:20):
    “One of the tasks of analysis is to help patients confront the inevitability of their death... the way this man in his 90s walks down a corridor of light... says much to analysts about what they hope their patients will take with them... when they leave the consulting room for the last time.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Freud’s Approach:
  “Before the problem of the creative artist, analysis must, alas, lay down its arms.” (Freud, 05:56)
• On Artistic Meaning:
  “If the artist's intention behind the work has been understood, put into words and interpreted, the work of art itself becomes superfluous. The obvious absurdity of this shows there is something wrong with treating a work of art like a patient on the couch.” (Parsons, 15:10)
• On New Ways of Engagement:
  “Analysts do not only explain; the most important thing they do is listen.” (Parsons, 19:20)

Timestamps for Important Segments

• [02:07] Freud’s visit to Michelangelo’s Moses and Freud’s difficulties with appreciating art
• [05:45] Freud’s troubled admiration of Dostoevsky
• [10:00] The inadequacy of artist interviews vs. works of art themselves
• [12:30] Critique of reducing art to psychoanalytic explanation (King Lear, Hamlet)
• [18:38] Proposal for psychoanalytic “listening” to art instead of analyzing
• [22:00] Seamus Heaney on listening to poetry and its psychoanalytic quality
• [27:30] Parallels between musical composition and psychoanalytic listening
• [29:50] Vermeer’s The Kitchen Maid and suspended time
• [34:30] Antonioni’s film as psychoanalytic encounter with art and death

Takeaways

• Parsons urges psychoanalysts to abandon reductive explanations of art and instead engage with works of art, literature, and music through attentive, receptive contemplation—mirroring the psychoanalytic process.
• This approach respects the integrity and presence of the artwork, its ongoing effect, and the limits of verbal interpretation.
• The episode is as much a critique of psychoanalytic tradition as it is an invitation for analysts and audiences to deeply experience art on its own terms.