2006 Fiscal Year Final Research Report Summary

The Utility and the limit of Psychoanalysis in the interpretation of art

Research Project

Project/Area Number	15520085
Research Category	Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
Allocation Type	Single-year Grants
Section	一般
Research Field	Aesthetics/Art history
Research Institution	Kyoto University
Principal Investigator	OKADA Atsushi Kyoto University, Integrated Human Studies, 教授 (50177044)
Project Period (FY)	2003 – 2006
Keywords	Freud / lacan / Psychoanalysis / Iuteupretation / Art
Research Abstract	I have researched into the problem of the possibility and the limit of psychoanalysis in the interpretation of art. This problem has an origin in two Freud's text: "Leonard da Vinci and his memory of infancy"(1910); "Michelangelo's Mose"(1914).The former applies the method of psychoanalysis to the interpretation of art, using its important concepts, unconscious, repression, return of repression, sexuality etc. The later, on the other hand, does not mention any of these concepts, but has a point of departure from the reaction of an observer (Freud himself).Freud, in this text, analyzes the detail of the "Mose" of Michelangelo, from which he deduces the unexpected interpretation. The detail functions as the "symptom." This method seems apparently to have nothing to do with the psychoanalysis. In this text, however, art becomes an event or an encounter to be renovated each timed think that "Michelangelo's Mose" of Freud could give an more renovative perspective to the interpretation of art.