Sculpture and Psychoanalysis

The present collection of essays, unique in its field, shows how key metaphors of Freudian and Kleinian psychoanalysis - splitting, projection, sublimation, identification, the schizoid and reparative mechanisms - as well as Lacan's concepts of the stade du mirroir and the objet petit, can be fruitfully applied to a range of modern three-dimensional art, from Surrealism to the present day. Moreover the relationship is frequently a double one. As these essays show, figures such as Donald Judd, Barbara Hepworth, Gilbert and George, Jean-Jacques Lebel, Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, Rebecca Horn and others have often approached the material of sculpture with something like these mechanisms in mind. The need to unlock the levels of psychoanalytic connection between artist, object and viewer in recent debate has fuelled the diverse proposals of this original and important book.