Owning It
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n the Arts OWNING IT Joel Miller
What is the distinction, if any, between who we are as people and what we believe and how we practice as psychoanalysts? For me, art played a vital affirmation that there was a world full of larger ideas and feelings in contrast to the desiccated environment my parents had created. From grade school, through my training as an analyst to the present, art has not only elucidated who I am but expanded my sense of being a creative individual. From the procession of viewing art and engaging with it, to making and acquiring art pieces, the discovery was not only that I owned these pieces but that their impact challenged the ‘who’ I thought I was if I was willing to own up to it. The information that informs our personal beliefs and practice in psychoanalysis comes from such an openness to new experiences from many directions in our daily lives, and challenges who we believe we are. Art adds to analytic knowledge, not by giving us an interpretation for our lives, but by stimulating the genuinely creative process of self-reflection.
KEY WORDS: art; self-reflection; self-analysis; analytic learning; contemporary art; Jeanette Winterson. DOI:10.1057/palgrave.ajp.3350041
This paper was originally given as part of a conference titled “Art/ psychoanalysis; Threat and Relief of the Unrealized Life.” It was a talk about my lifelong interest in art from reading art books, going to museums and galleries, to most recently collecting art. At that conference, I stated that as a child art was a vital affirmation that there was a world full of larger ideas and feelings that were only nascent in me and gave me the experience that the desiccated environment my parents had carefully constructed for our family was not the only life possible. I also stated that I had come to realize the importance of viewing art and reading art history in Joel Miller, M.D., Psy.D., is a training and supervising analyst at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles and a member of the International Federation for Psychoanalytic Education. He maintains a private practice in Pasadena, California. Address correspondence to Joel Miller, M.D., Psy.D., 2810 E. Del Mar Blvd, Suite 9, Pasadena, CA 91107; e-mail: [email protected]
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constructing my personal analytic theory; and more generally, how analytic knowledge is acquired. In attendance that day at the conference was Edward Goldman, the art critic for the local National Public Radio Station. A very erudite and sophisticated man, in his monthly program, Mr. Goldman characterized our conference by saying, “…tell me your favorite artist (or what you collect), and I’ll [the psychoanalyst] tell you who you are.” So, from the onset of this paper, I want to make it as clear that the statement of Mr. Goldman is nearly the anti-thesis of what I, or the other presenters, had in mind. Art and the viewer/collector require no interpreter, such as the psychoanalyst. How dismissive of art that would be. Art suspends, transports, informs and deepens us i
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