"My dear love". Reflections on a letter from the young Freud to his girlfriend Martha Bernays

Journal title PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA
Author/s Gaetana Filippi
Publishing Year 2022 Issue 2022/2
Language Italian Pages 13 P. 113-125 File size 184 KB
DOI 10.3280/PSP2022-002006
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The author reflects on the letter the young Freud wrote to his girl-friend, Martha Bernays, after a visit to the Gedalmegalerie in Dresden. The representation of speech in three paintings, by Raphael, Holbein the Younger, and Titian, highlighted the transformation Freud felt he had experienced by being in touch with those great masters. In order to enjoy art, a gift not everyone has, as Freud would later argue, we rely on unconscious mechanisms, such as the ability of sublimation that ac-tivates the operating modes of representation, symbolization, poetic language. The unconscious encounter between the Artist and the Art viewer, through the work of art, relies on an unconscious area that is the same as that of a psycoanalytic encounter. And art, that is a nour-ishment and consolation for all its viewer, is also an indispensable supply of energy for the therapist. In this letter Freud, even before discovering psycoanalysis, already knew, unconsciously, what a psyco-analyst should be like.

Keywords: sublimation, unconscious area, artist, art viewer, nourish-ment, refueling.

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Gaetana Filippi, "Amore mio caro". Riflessioni intorno a una lettera del giovane Freud alla fidanzata Martha Bernays in "PSICOTERAPIA PSICOANALITICA" 2/2022, pp 113-125, DOI: 10.3280/PSP2022-002006