Abstract
All study
focuses on Dali’s written
form and how he launches one of his theories, especially his PCM- critical
paranoid method. Dalí necessarily requires to Freud to see that writing of him
but meanwhile Freud would be saying that “Theretofore the surrealists
that in appearance had been selected me out as their saint, seemed to me some
crazy people 100 percent. This young Spaniard, with fanatic’s staring eyes and
his inevitable mastery had prepossessed me to reconsider my opinion. We are
talking about someone with serious psychological problems.” Sigmund Freud
Exactly,
we will examine the connection that Dalí wants to do with paranoid theories of
Freud, mis-comprehendsion by Freud and support that would have this theory of
critical paranoid method by Lacan in his doctoral thesis.
Methodology
The entire study is an approach between the theory of Dalí
on Paranoid Critical Method and various forms of perception of the object and the reality, the
symbolic and its interpretation. The connection is made between Dalíand
the symbolic, oneiric and perceptive theories of Freud. The methodology is based on literature
research and to some extent on the comparative study between the perceptual
forms of symbols in general.
Key words: psychological impacts, surrealism, symptoms, critical-paranoid method
Introduction
All creativity of Salvador Dalí speaks
about images and psychological and artistic concernments which are
not so simple to be understood by the masses, for this reason we have a permanent impact between
what the artist offers to be perceived and how realistically he
gain on to be understand
by the
society. His artworks are
filled with images that exceed what was proposed as a completely different form
of seeing and experiencing the reality. In fact also Mark Chagall by and in his artworks long before that surrealism
was flourished, spoke for oniric images where a donkey or a palace were losing their gravity by fling and
creating so an image quite different from that perceptive. Dadaist movement
also stepped toward a more revolutionary stance and was more against the human perception and logic.
Its founders played with linguistic and philosophical context, in terms of
perception and the meaning of an image or situation which split form and
content from what was taught to us before it. For
example, if the word “urinal” gives to us directly the idea
where it belongs to and for what serves, Duchamp displaces it by presenting into an art gallery and calling
it the fountain.
This new form where the word is depreciated and gets
another connotation when is placed into a
different location from where it used to be, creates to the observer not just a lingual
disturbance but also an
philosophical one in the sense of understanding and reconstruction of what
we have learned linguistically
before that. Another incitement would be that with the jar by which is traded the Meat and
other canned elements
to be consumed, but inside of
it was found not any food but was found some dejection
and will appear again as a work of art under the name
“The dejection of artist”.
But the following years of Dadaist movement
would bring another nuance and
shape of conceptuality closer to
metaphysics for example Max Ernst in the portrait of a man in a suit and with
apple in front of the portrait, or for example the artwork of Rene Magritte
“This is not a Pipe”. Surrealism would move closer to psychological that would
be touched by Dalí.
The end of the First World
War and then later the preparation of the Second would have been a provocative
not only for the human beings but also for the artists; many people suffered
mental illness and were hit by mass paranoid symptoms. Sigmund Freud would be
not just a revolutionary figure in the medical field but also an inspiration to
the Surrealists as a guide for a completely new path of perception, where the
paranoia would not be affected as an image and situation of confusion but
rather as a sense of feeling where the artist was putting himself as a patient
and then suddenly was taken on the role of the psychoanalyst where was putting
the observer in his former role (so the role of the patient) to study a process
almost absurd, which was the hypnotic situation and paranoid perception to
perceive a picture filled with images that do not have a historical, narrative,
academic or objective context. This seemingly chaotic process but with a
psychoanalytic content would not be touched by all surrealists except Salvador
Dalí. The latter would not be easily understood by Freud but according to the
study which Lacan would then make to the self-proposed theory by Dalí regarding
to self-induced paranoid state would
somewhat agree with this theory that in his opinion it can remain valid and not
opposed as a separate theory into an absurd context.
The society itself was then a chaotic society and the political situations
were into a constant moving ground for this reason the people were more and
more in conflict with the perception or nationality on what as far as and how
the events would go. The socio-political situation resembled actually a chaotic
surrealist picture where the observer is in front of what his perception and
his imagination failed to go, the shape how we understand and perceive this
picture or reality which is served to you resembles a hypnotic and
psychoanalytic session where the individual does not need to go necessarily to
a psychoanalyst but to face his own reality where either has to find a form in
order to perceive it becoming part of chaotic absurdity or to experience the
hallucinatory sensation and become part of the victims of this society and of
phenomena that it has presented him. The masses mainly tends to judge how
incomprehensible is a picture where the images have not a chronological
connection or where the pictures do not make a narrative connection with each
other, but masses also forgets that life we are facing everyday is filled with
such surreal situations which are as absurd as unrelated to our form of
thinking and foresight of things that look like exactly the "absurd"
sensation when facing a surreal picture. But precisely this logic so sharp was
not followed by masses, by sciences which studied the history of art as a
subject but not as logic neither a perceptive and sensory feeling. This logic
was not followed and therefore mea brought to mind of masses the artists who
reflected the dream, illogic, poetry or philosophy but never had been seen as a
completely vital form of human being. In fact all the artists then fought more
to set some theories which were related to literature than a theory which was
very close to human being. Meanwhile the only one that would make more
transparent the distinction between philosophy, poetry and tangible was
Salvador Dalí who was even called one of the greatest and the most
incomprehensible surrealists.The difference between him and his contemporary surrealists
in fact was that Dalí touched more closely this space of perception and
sensation.
The difference between paranoia and surrealism is that surrealism is
somewhat paranoid under visual aspect in terms of chaotic images that appear
into a picture. Dali’s surrealism consists in his theory concerning the
paranoid interpretation or self-induced paranoid state which is what Freud
would not accept nor fully understood that part which will be discussed below
how Lancan supports it as a theory.
Meanwhile the paranoia itself is a process which according to Freud is
self-induced but is not connected to the unconscious where we cannot possibly
do an objective explanation associated with this process which is rooted in
subconscious.
Paranoid symptoms and paranoid syndrome according to the summary text of
Oxford
According to Sigmund Freud paranoia is seen as a form of deviant reality
where the individual fails to do the objective secession between the reality
and imagination, between the delirium state or rambling state and the paranoid one that affects the
individual (patient or neurotic where Freud studied associated with typical cases
of his patients).
In fact although Dalí does not talk about symptoms, it may be that Dalí
has had an impact almost paranoid to see the outside world in a such view or
his PCM theory relates to terms of more expectations for the world precisely as
in such a paranoid Lacan had a quite interest on critical-paranoid method.
Lacan in 1930 paid a visit to Dalí to discuss about "rotten ass " and
after that, the psychoanalyst and the artist got a dialogue on several
publications on surrealism and paranoia, cited in 1932 in the publication of
the doctoral paper of Lacan “Paranoid psychosis in the process of dealing with
personality” – Original in French “De la psychose paranoïa que dans ses rapports
avec la personnalité”[3].
More in: Revista Haemus
* Social Sciences in Albania, Faculty of
Communication Sciences, European University of Tirana.
[2]Psychiatry - Text summary of Oxford (chapter tenth. P. 203 ) by Michael Gelder- Dennis Gath- Richard Mayou.
[3] Jacques
Lacan, De la psychoseparanoiaquedansses
rapports avec la personalite, Paris: Seuil, 1975; first published in 1932.
Salvador Dali, Comment on deviant Dali, op.cit.
(note 1), pp. 171-172. See also Elisabeth Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan.
Esquissed’une vie, historie d’un systeme de pensee, Paris: Editions Fayard,
1993, pp.55-6, 85. Dali reciprocated Lacan’s interest in his theories in the
essay ‘Nouvelles considerations generales sur le mecanisme du
phenomeneparanoiaque du point de vu surrealiste’. Minotaure, no.1 (May 1933),
in which he cites Lancan’s thesis, while Lancan published ‘Le probleme du style
et l conception psychiatrique des forms prnoiques de l’experience’ in the same
issue of Minoture. Lancan’s article,
owhile substantially material from his doctoral thesis, shows signs of
Surrealist influence in the introduction of Marxist terms, such as ‘revolution
theorique’, civilization bourgeoise’, and ‘superstructure ideologique’. See
Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan, op. cit.
(note 18), p. 94. Lacan’s encounter with Dali in 1930 was crucial to his early
writings; however, he was not the only Surrealist to influence the psychoanalyst;
Rene Crevel, Georges Batailleand Roger Caillois also influenced Lacan’s
subsequent thinking. See Carolyn Dean, The
Self and Its Pleasure: Batille, Lacan and the History of Decentered Self,
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992, and Roudinesco, Jacques Lacan, op.
cit. (note 1).