Toward the separation of memory and hope: applications of psychoanalysis to art in the writings of Martha Wolfenstein.
My aim in the foregoing article has been to demonstrate, by a brief study of Martha Wolfenstein's selected works, the value of applying clinically derived interpretative schema to the realm of art. It has not been possible here to recapitulate in all its intricacy the argument of each of Wolfenstein's papers under discussion; only a thorough reading of her papers themselves can provide that measure of detail. Beginning with an overview of Wolfenstein's theoretical contributions to the theme of parental loss in childhood, I have shown how her psychoanalytic understanding of this theme is brought to bear on the artistic products of both a poet and a painter who were themselves in childhood bereaved, as were the patients in Wolfenstein's clinical case studies. I hope in so doing to have conveyed a sense of the range and depth of Wolfenstein's work. I believe her work offers us a legacy not only substantive but paradigmatic, a legacy of humane concerns, passionate scholarship, remarkable ingenuity, and stunning leaps of insight.
D006801:Humans; D008568:Memory; D011939:Mental Recall; D009042:Motivation; D011573:Psychoanalytic Interpretation; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory