Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis III 1922 1.djvu/55

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THE UNCONSCIOUS ROOT OF AESTHETIC TASTE

BY

S. HERBERT

MANCHESTER

Psycho-analysis has made it evident that the ' source of artistic inspiration lies in the unconscious, the material worked up by the artist being his own deeper self, which finds expression in his creation as a projection of himself. Pfister has further shown that drawings may have unconscious symbolical meanings, quite apart from their pictorial value. But it is possible to go a step further still. It would seem that artistic taste in general is based — at least to a large extent— on unconscious associations that find a symbolic expression in conscious aesthetic predilections.

This comes out neatly in the following cases, which have come under the writer's notice during the course of psycho-analysis. In each instance aesthetic valuation was dependent entirely upon an unconscious complex.

Case I. Violent dislike of yellow.

Immediate association; mustard; further with mustard: sUmy, 'mashy' — dislike of 'mashy' food, and finally — diarrhoea. As a matter of fact, the patient had a strong coprophilic complex, of which the most obvious symptom was frequent attacks of nervous diarrhoea.

Case 2. Excessive delight in yellow.

The patient, a homosexual, loves to wear ties with yellow or orange in them, lives in a room with yellow wall-paper, etc.

Immediate association with yellow: his mother's hair, which was yellow, and of which she was extremely proud. The patient, like all homosexuals, passed through a period of strong fixation on his mother. Further association with yellow: the yellow colour of the anus (in hght-haired boys). Patient has a strong coprophilic complex with pederastic phantasies.

Yellow also leads him back to the yellow colour of infantile faeces and to the remembrance of a scene in his fifth year, when

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