Overview

This book explores the concept of estrangement from a psychoanalytic perspective, intertwining art and aesthetics to offer a paradigm of the aesthetic experience. Gabriela Goldstein suggests that an unexpected encounter with a work of art may lead to a state of poetic estrangement, promoting a possible reorganization of its subject’s psychic economy. The conceptual work is illuminated with vignettes exploring the experience of this state of estrangement, reflecting on the encounter between the subject and the other/Other, between analyst and patient and in the framework provided by the analytical situation. Finally, Goldstein considers how the metapsychology of aesthetic experience and its research contribute to clinical understanding of processes of deficient symbolization. Art and Psychoanalysis will be key reading for psychoanalysts, artists, researchers, and teachers of art and psychoanalysis. It will also be of great interest to art therapists, students of art and the humanities, as well as other readers interested in an in-depth understanding of the aesthetic experience and creative processes.

Full Product Details

9781032969763

Table of Contents

Reviews

Art and Psychoanalysis is a brilliant and deeply reflective work by Dr Gabriela Goldstein, where creativity and the unconscious engage in a powerful and illuminating dialogue. Drawing on her unique experience as a psychoanalyst, architect, and artist, Goldstein offers an original and sensitive exploration of aesthetic experience as a transformative event. The book presents an articulate and rigorous exploration of the aesthetic encounter, weaving together theoretical concepts and clinical experience. Goldstein interlaces Freud’s ideas on the unconscious and the uncanny, Winnicott’s theories on transitional space and creativity, and Lacan’s reflections on aesthetics, within a rich interdisciplinary framework. One of the most compelling threads in the book is the development of poetic estrangement—understood as a new form of sensibility and thought—which reveals the transfiguring power of both aesthetic experience and psychoanalysis. This concept is tightly linked to the dialectic of the Other, which permeates both the creative process and the encounter with the artwork, opening a space where the aesthetic becomes inherently ethical. For Goldstein, the aesthetic experience is not passive contemplation, but an affective, mobilizing, and potentially transformative event that calls the subject to a reconfiguration of their internal reality and their bond with others—and with Otherness. This is a key book for psychoanalysts, scholars in the humanities, educators, and all those interested in the intersection of psychoanalysis and art. It invites readers into a transformative encounter—with art, with the unconscious, and with the eros of the psyche. Reading it is a journey—one that reveals, page after page, surprise, pleasure, and a profound encounter with the deepest layers of the oneself. Dr Carlos Weisse, Trainnig analyst, Asociacion Psicoanalítica Argentina (International Psychoanalytical Association, FEPAL), Writer, and Faculty in (AEAPG)

Author Information

Gabriela Goldstein, PhD, is a training analyst of International Psychoanalytical Association and FEPAL, and the former president of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association. She is the author of several books including Art in Psychoanalysis and an architect and painter.

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