Abstract
Munch’s strongest canonical works offer us a special “reading” of how the mind under stress works. “The Scream” expresses a spellbinding awareness that our inner anxiety and pain not only spill out into the world, but that the roiled-up elements (sky, water) themselves penetrate the porous subject, leaving us to wonder whether the “scream” comes from within or without. “Jealousy” is a diptych of the diseased imagination, showing at once the suffering lover and the generated, imagined betrayal. “Melancholy” depicts Munch’s mentally ill sister Laura in a setting of multiple imprisonments, yielding a symphonic portrait of lostness. These extremist renditions of psychological pain refigure our relation to others and to the world—as such they are of great value to psychotherapy.
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Notes
- 1.
See Edmund Wilson’s pathbreaking essay on Philoctetes in his superb book, The Wound and the Bow (New York: Oxford UP, 1965), a suite of essays on the relation between psychic damage and the creation of art ; Wilson’s title stems from the paradox of the Greek play: the man with an incurable wound also possesses a magic bow, but the community cannot have the bow without the wound. It is worth bearing in mind that this view of wound-as-useful goes strictly counter to the Greek concern with contamination and defilement, often leading to scapegoating measures in the old plays.
- 2.
Quoted in Sue Prideaux’s fine Behind the Scream (New Haven: Yale UP, 2005), pp. 245–246. An invaluable resource here is Poul Erik Tøjner’s Munch: In His Own Words (Munich/London/New York), 2001; even if one knows that Munch kept a running account of his life and feelings, this book yields a portrait of Munch as quasi-novelist.
- 3.
Quoted by Göran Söderström in his magisterial Strindberg och Bildkonsten (Stockholm: Forum, 1990), p. 304. Strindberg , largely known in the Western world as writer, was a remarkable painter in his own right (as well as being a shrewd art critic), and his pieces probably command the highest prices of any paintings found in Sweden today.
- 4.
Quoted in Michael Meyer, Strindberg: A Biography (New York: Random House, 1985), pp. 288–289.
- 5.
Cited by Prideaux, p. 175.
- 6.
Quoted in Arne Eggum, Edvard Munch: Paintings, Sketches, and Studies (New York: Clarkson N. Potter, 1984), p. 81.
- 7.
Not surprisingly, there are some modern scholars, such as Patricia Berman (in Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul [ed. Kynaston McShine, New York: Museum of Modern Art, 2006], pp. 35–51), who are deeply suspicious of Munch’s grandiose pronouncements about madness and the like; they contend that he was a canny figure bent on producing and managing his image, and that we need to be alert to the posturing and stratagems associated with his persona. I find this position intelligent but wrong-headed; it seems to me that its distrust of the artist —turning him into something of a performance artist —yields dubious results while locking us out of what is epochal in his work.
- 8.
Lionel Trilling, The Liberal Imagination (New York: Doubleday, 1953), pp. 155–175.
References
Berman, P. (2006). In K. McShine (Ed.), Edvard Munch: The Modern Life of the Soul (pp. 35–51). New York: Museum of Modern Art.
Eggum, A. (1984). Edvard Munch: Paintings, Sketches, and Studies (p. 81). New York: Clarkson N. Potter.
Meyer, M. (1985). Strindberg: A Biography (pp. 288–289). New York: Random House.
Prideaux, S. (2005). Behind the Scream (pp. 245–246). New Haven: Yale University Press.
Söderström, G. (1990). Strindberg och Bildkonsten (p. 304). Stockholm: Forum.
Trilling, L. (1953). The Liberal Imagination (pp. 155–175). New York: Doubleday.
Wilson, E. (1965). Philoctetes. In The Wound and the Bow. Seven Studies in Literature. New York: Oxford University Press.
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Weinstein, A. (2018). Edvard Munch as Psychotherapist: “The Horse Cure”. In: Kirkcaldy, B. (eds) Psychotherapy, Literature and the Visual and Performing Arts. Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-75423-9_2
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