Art: The Counterforce

[David Morris]

Norman O. Brown in _Love Against Death_ posits a Freudian-based theory of art
in which art is a function of the pleasure-principle's prime-goal, "play,"
emerging into the social and conscious realm, the realm normally designed to
suppress such expression:

(p.63) Art, if its object is to undo repressions, and if civilization is
essentially repressive, is in this sense subversive of civilization.  Some of
Freud's formulations on the role of the indespensable third person suggest that
the function of art is to form a subversve group, the opposite of that
authoritarian group the structure of which Freud analyzed in _Group Psychology
and the Analysis of the Ego_.  The indespesible third person must be suffering
the same repressions as the creative artist.  The relationship between the
artist and the third person is one of identification, and identification is the
relation which, according to _Group Psychology_, binds together members of an
authoritarian group.  In contrast with the repressive structure of the
authoritarian group, the aim of the partnership between the artist and the
audience is instinctual liberation.







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