Freud Quote by Peter Watson
““...for example, if Freud is wrong, as i and many others believe, where does that leave any number of novels and virtually the entire corpus of surrealism, Dada, and certain major forms of expressionism and abstraction, not to mention Richard Strauss' 'Freudian' operas such as Salome and Elektra, and the iconic novels of numerous writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Franz Kafka, Thomas Mann and Virginia Woolf? It doesn't render these works less beautiful or pleasurable, necessarily, but it surely dilutes their meaning. They don't owe their entire existence to psychoanalysis. But if they are robbed of a large part of their meaning, can they retain their intellectual importance and validity? Or do they become period pieces? I stress the point because the novels, paintings and operas referred to above have helped to popularise and legitimise a certain view of human nature, one that is, all evidence to the contrary lacking, wrong.””
About This Quote
Source Essay: “The Limits of Psychoanalysis” in The New Yorker, 2015
He questions whether rejecting Freud undermines the significance of modernist art and literature, suggesting their value may persist beyond psychoanalytic interpretation.
In simple terms: Rejecting Freud may not erase artistic value.
Key Takeaway
Art can retain value without psychoanalysis.
Themes
reexamine artistic meaning
embrace multiple lenses
Mood
critical
skeptical
Type
analytical
philosophical
When to use this quote
- literary analysis
- art education
- museum curation
- academic debate
Key Concepts
psychoanalysis
modernism
art criticism
Questions to Reflect On
- Can art be fully understood without theory?
- What alternative frameworks can explain modernist works?
A Different Perspective
Some works may lose contextual depth without psychoanalytic frameworks.
![“By what psychoanalyst friends tell me, in the field of the emotional subconscious, the emotional resistances to be overcome are no longer the ones most people felt in Freud's [..] day. The moralizing respectability and the fear of sex evidenced in Freud's day no longer exist. I am told that…” quote by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/3bc/massimo-piattelli-palmarini-26_friendship_by-what-psychoanalyst-friends-tell-me-in_70209.jpg)
