1st Edition
Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art The Cut in Creation
Scansion in Psychoanalysis and Art examines a strain of artists spanning more than a century, beginning at the dawn of photography and culminating in the discussion of contemporary artists, to illustrate various psychoanalytic concepts by examining artists working in a multitude of media.
Drawing on the theories of Sigmund Freud, who applied psychoanalytic methods to art and literature to decipher the meaning and intention of the creator, as well as Jacques Lacan’s dissemination of scansion as a powerful disruption of narrative, the book explores examples of the long and rich relationship between psychoanalysis and the fine arts. Whilst guiding readers through the different artists and their artforms – from painting and music to poetry, collage, photography, film, performance art, technology and body modification – Sinclair interrogates scansion as a generative process often inherent of the act of creation itself.
This is an intriguing book for psychoanalysts, psychologists and creative arts therapists who wish to explore the generative potential of scansion and the relationship between psychoanalysis and the arts, as well as for artists and art historians interested in a psychoanalytic view of these processes.
Acknowledgments; Preface; Introduction; Part I - Sowing Seeds/Setting the Stage; Chapter 1: A Cut in Time: The Advent of Photography; Chapter 2: Reimagining the Frame: The Birth of Modern Art; Part II - Unleashing the Unconscious; Chapter 3: The Art of Noise; Chapter 4: Psychoanalysis and Dada; Chapter 5: Collage, Photomontage and Assemblage; Chapter 6: Disrupting the Expected: Marcel Duchamp; Part III - Revolution of Mind; Chapter 7: Surrealism/Acéphale; Chapter 8: Double-bind: Cutting the Bonds of Gender; Chapter 9: The Cutting Edge: Avant-garde and Experimental Cinema; Chapter 10: The Cut-up Method of the Beats; Part IV - When Art Becomes Life (and Death); Chapter 11: Acting Out: Pop, Street and Performance Art; Chapter 12: Cut from the Collective: Alternative Communities; Chapter 13: Body Modification, Polymorphous Perversity and Pandrogeny; Chapter 14: Technology, Morbidity, Death and the Unexpected; Index
Biography
Vanessa Sinclair, PsyD, is a psychoanalyst based in Stockholm. Dr Sinclair is the author of Switching Mirrors (2016), editor of Rendering Unconscious: Psychoanalytic Perspectives, Politics and Poetry (2019), and co-editor of On Psychoanalysis and Violence: Contemporary Lacanian Perspectives (2018) with Dr Manya Steinkoler.
