The Psychoanalysis of Aesthetic Experience: Self, Relationship and Culture

In The Psychoanalysis of Aesthetic Experience: Self, Relationship and Culture, George Hagman eloquently provides an overview of ideas regarding the aesthetic foundation of human experience and the way in which this aesthetic perspective can shed light on human development, culture, and analytic clinical process.

The book discusses the relationship between the psychology of art and the aesthetics of psychoanalytic treatment. Hagman presents a comprehensive psychoanalytic model of the psychology of aesthetics, creativity, beauty, ugliness, and the sublime, as well as a theory of aesthetics across the dimensions of subjectivity, self, intersubjectivity, and culture. Starting from the point of early childhood development, he argues for the importance of exploring the implications of this important psychological phenomenon for clinical practice, highlighting how aesthetics can shed light on a dimension of the psychotherapeutic process that has thus been neglected.

This book is an illuminating and informative read for all psychoanalysts, and anyone interested in the intersection of psychoanalytic practice, aesthetics, creativity, and culture.

George Hagman is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst in private practice in Stamford, USA. He is on the faculty of the Training and Research Institute for Self-Psychology, and the Westchester Centre for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. He is the author of Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists (2016), Creative Analysis: Art, Creativity and Clinical process (2014) and The Artist’s Mind: A Psychoanalytic Perspective on Creativity, Modern Art and Modern Artists (2010).