The Emergence of Art through the Unconscious

Abstract

Art is considered by Freud as a kind of way of reconciling the oppositional principles of "reality" and "pleasure", contributing to the elimination of conflict-causing impulses and maintaining mental balance, that is, it acts as therapy, or a kind of treatment leading to self-purification and "dissolution" of unconscious drives in the process of creative activity. In terms of meaning, such therapy can be compared with the "catharsis" of Aristotle, with the important difference that if only tragedy is his means of spiritual purification, then Freud notes this as the specifics of all art as a whole, designed to compensate for the artist's dissatisfaction with the real state of things. Moreover, not only the artist, but also people who perceive art, who, finding themselves on the same wavelength with the creator in the process of perception, find satisfaction of their unconscious desires, carefully hidden from everyone, including themselves. Art undoubtedly contains the function of compensation, which under certain conditions can even come to the fore, as in the case of reconciling a person with social reality, by distracting him from everyday worries, real problems. However, despite all this, compensation is not the main and even more so not the only function of art.