Lecture
Psychology of art — a branch of psychology aimed at establishing the most general patterns of all forms of artistic activity, revealing the mechanisms by which the personality of the human creator is formed, and analyzing the various forms of art's influence on a person.
The specificity of the psychology of art in relation to other disciplines that study art lies not only in its subject matter but also in its methods. The strength of psychology in the study of art lies in its command of experimental methodology and its ability to build its concepts not only on theoretical considerations and self-observation data, but also on experimentally obtained factors. It is precisely psychology that has access to the study of specific particular mechanisms and subtle individual differences in the perception of and response to art. Contemporary psychology of art still lacks a generally accepted concept of its subject matter: whether art is a form of knowing something, of transforming something, of what exactly, and so on. L. Vygotsky criticizes a one-sided view of art as cognition.
The following approaches to studying the psychology of art can be distinguished:
Rational systems
In these systems, communication between subject and object is placed at the forefront. Models of the systems approach include various schemes of interaction. This involves a detailed study of all the components of the process of interaction and functioning of the object and the subject. Variants of such systems are presented in the works of L. Ya. Dorfman, V. P. Morozov, E. A. Golubeva, A. L. Gotsdiner, L. L. Bochkarev, and others.
As a system and subsystem, a person is capable of creating and perceiving an artistic image. A person's integral individuality is understood as a wholeness, a large system in which hierarchical levels of individual properties are distinguished, between which there exist special kinds of connections — many-to-many or polymorphic ones (according to V. S. Merlin).
The hierarchical levels contain individual properties representing different levels of the development of matter, ranging from biochemical properties to a person's social status in a group and society. Thus, more general systems encompass ever more particular ones. Research material accumulates like a snowball that can no longer be controlled.
For the concepts of this group of researchers, the important questions are: What is music as an informative medium? How can it be transmitted and perceived?
Music carries fairly ambiguous information, which must be perceived by the subject in an appropriate way. The "play" of art as an activity fundamental to all of culture (as understood by J. Huizinga) presupposes, on the basis of perception, the active recreation of an image in which (regardless of the degree of its concreteness) cognitive, emotional, and perceptual (modal) components are fused (at least potentially).
The main tenets of the researchers of this group are:
The main proponents of this theoretical concept in foreign musicology are H. Mersmann, A. Halm, and H. Kayser. In their view, when studying musical perception, the subject of scientific research should be the process of the transition of the listener's individual consciousness into transcendental consciousness, the merging of the "self" with the music of the cosmos ("transcendental reduction").
The phenomenological approach unites many competing concepts within the framework of a higher-level system. Like a system of chemical elements, it defines the structure, the nature of connections, and the interactions of elements based on a certain predetermined harmony. The goal of phenomenology is to construct a new science.
N. L. Nagibina has proposed a system of psychological types: rational, irrational, and mixed. Each type is characterized by its own style and goals of creativity
| Type with a dominant rational function | Type with equally weighted rational and irrational functions | Type with a dominant irrational function |
|---|---|---|
| Art serves the people.
Art educates and guides. Agitational character. Aimed at the masses. Symphonism of musical thought. Passions are controlled by reason. Emotional accessibility. Topicality of subject matter. |
Art provokes an escape from the ordinary, forming a view of life (including the life of each participant) as a problematic, critical situation (M. Bakhtin). At the same time, the artistic form makes one perceive something new in life. Recreating the meaning of this new thing is "aesthetic pleasure."
Playing with combinations of feelings and images. Equal significance of the emotional and cognitive components of style. Contemporaneity and mythological quality of images. |
"Art for art's sake,"
Art reveals the best sides of people, introduces them to the meaning of universal harmony, helps them express themselves. Aestheticism Refined expressiveness of sound production A cult of refined sensuality and all-consuming passions. |
Into a work of art the creator puts their thoughts, feelings, and temperament. Self-disclosure, self-knowledge, self-actualization, self-presentation, self-expression, and other forms of presenting the self appear most vividly in creative work. Many outstanding musical, literary, and artistic works are deeply autobiographical.
Archetypal images always accompany a person. In mythology, religion, and art, the vague and frightening within archetypes is culturally transformed into symbols that become ever more beautiful in form and universal in content. (This path can be traced, for example, by comparing the retellings of ancient Greek myths by R. Graves, Ya. Golosovker, and N. Kun). Mythology was the initial means of embodying archetypal images, but archetypes have never disappeared from the arts, manifesting themselves at least in marginal genres (detective fiction, fantasy, the so-called "gothic" genres of the 20th century, and so on).
The future, as represented by human fantasy, is usually cast in certain stereotypical images, which futurists operate with and beyond which they cannot go, since the foundation of all representations of the future is the experience of the past and of a present that is constantly slipping into the past. Moreover, when an artist truly achieves "perfection" in breaking away from the past, from traditions and the classics, he inevitably arrives at a level of images even more archaic and primitive than he could even imagine. This is because ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, and development is always progressive, and nothing is born from nothing — a natural "return to square one" occurs. Denis Chernov, "Modernity and the Classics: Continuing the Debate on the Ancient and the New"
The process of artistic creative activity is highly individual (see "Psychology of Art: A Typological Approach").
A schema of artistic creative activity (in general terms):
1. The search (conscious or unconscious) for a stimulus for creative movement.
"If we are not mistaken, each of his poems began with a thought, but a thought that, like a fiery point, flared up under the influence of a deep feeling or a strong impression; consequently, if one may put it this way, owing to the nature of its origin, Mr. Tyutchev's thought never appears to the reader naked and abstract, but always merges with an image drawn from the world of the soul or of nature, becomes imbued with it, and inseparably and indivisibly imbues it in turn" (I. Turgenev on F. Tyutchev).
2. Material embodiment: trials in the material.
Before it begins to sing,
It walks a long time, worn callous by fermentation,
And quietly flounders in the mire of the heart
The foolish roach of imagination.
V. Mayakovsky
3. Bringing it to a final version, in which content and form harmoniously complement one another: numerous attempts, close in basic character but differing in nuances, at the artistic embodiment of the conception.
Poetry — is the same as mining radium.
For a gram, years of toil.
You wear yourself out for the sake of a single word
Extracting a thousand tons of verbal ore.
V. Mayakovsky
The idea that the process of poetic creation cannot be reduced to the application of known rules and norms is reflected in Anna Akhmatova's poem "The Secrets of the Craft. Creativity":
I have no use for odic hosts
Nor the charm of elegiac pursuits.
For me, everything in verse should be out of place,
Not as it is for other people.
Contemporary authors of research on the psychology of abilities are increasingly inclined to the view that both scientific and artistic abilities develop and improve to an equal degree. In artistic creation, the question of primary gifts versus practice, skill, and imitation stands in the same way as it does in any critical form of cognition, in any scientific discovery. At the Institute for Creative Problems in California, a study was conducted of creative personalities across large groups of well-known writers. American researchers proceed here from the assertion that "the cultural phenomenon of invention in art and science is analogous and is characterized by the same fundamental psychic processes."
Thus, F. Barron, based on a study of 56 professional writers, of whom 30 are widely known and highly original in their work, identified thirteen indicators of ability for literary creation:
Abilities are the capacity to perform some activity with a certain degree of success. Talent is outstanding ability, a high degree of giftedness in some area. The study of musical, literary, and artistic abilities has a long tradition. Classifications of special abilities are numerous and varied. For the most part, elementary abilities are widely studied. Recently there has been a noticeably increased interest in higher abilities in the field of art and in creating methods for diagnosing them.
What distinguishes talent from genius? Schopenhauer figuratively described this distinction as follows: talent is a marksman who hits a target that many can see but no one else can hit, while genius shoots at targets so distant that no one can even see them. That is why talents (an ancient monetary unit) are often wealthy — many people can appreciate them — whereas geniuses rarely are — they can be properly appreciated only by talents, and even then only after some time has passed.
In practical life, genius is of no more use than a telescope at the theater. Arthur Schopenhauer
Genius is the talent for inventing that which cannot be taught or learned. Immanuel Kant
Aesthetics, as the science of the beautiful, invariably emphasizes the civilizational aspect of any art. The connections between art and civilization are always two-sided: an era and a society shape taste and aesthetic views in art, while creators shape stylistic transformations, movements, and diversity.
Important ideas explaining the reasons for the opposition between art and civilization were put forward by Spengler (1880—1936). In his work "The Decline of the West: Causality and Destiny," art serves for Spengler as a symbol of a culture's fate and evidence of sociocultural change. Spengler's method consisted of transferring the morphological structure of the life cycle from the domain of nature into the domain of culture. Every culture has a limited number of possibilities for its expression; it appears, matures, withers, and never rises again. Epochal cycles have no clear connection with one another — in their historical life, the goal turns out to be life itself, not its result. The relations between civilization and culture within each cycle constitute the main driving force behind all historical collisions and transformations.
The problems of the mutual influence between art and civilization in the 20th century concerned Albert Schweitzer (1875—1965). In his view, the beginning of any full-fledged life is an unwavering devotion to truth and its open profession; the great task of the spirit is the creation of a worldview. The acceleration of social processes in the 20th century breeds superficiality and a bad infinity in everything: "the spirit of our time deliberately throws us into a whirlwind of activity so that we do not come to our senses and ask ourselves what this 'self-forgetful devotion to this or that goal' actually means for the meaning of the world and of our life?"
The English sociologist Toynbee seeks to differentiate theoretical models of the mutual influences of civilization and art, presenting the full complexity of the factors at work together, both negative and positive in form.
"A historical view of the world reveals to us the physical cosmos moving in a circle through four-dimensional Space-Time, and Life on our planet, evolving within a five-dimensional frame of Space-Time-Life. And the human soul, rising into the sixth dimension through the gift of the Spirit, rushes through the fateful attainment of spiritual freedom toward the Creator or away from Him." Arnold Toynbee, A Study of History.
In developing a typology of listeners, viewers, and readers, there are three main directions. Some authors base their classification on a single feature — for example, receptiveness and interest in what is new and unknown in art, or, conversely, attachment to what is old and familiar ("superficial glancers" and "old believers" in V. Belinsky's terms, "innovators" and "imitators" in J.-M. Guyau's terms, "unstable" and "stable" viewers in A. V. Lunacharsky's terms), level of education and general culture (A. Zilberman), or specialized (musical) education (R. Francès). Other authors, sensing the inadequacy of any "one-dimensional" (K. Kienemann) classification, attempt to combine several features at once within a single typological scheme. Thus Yu. Davydov identifies the following five types of public attitude toward art (and, correspondingly, 5 types of perceivers):
T. Adorno, in "Introduction to the Sociology of Music," examines eight types of listeners:
Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist. He was the founder of the Marxist research tradition for studying higher psychological functions and building an avant-garde, futuristic "science of the Superman" of the communist future, as well as a new psychological theory of consciousness.
"The Psychology of Art" was written by Vygotsky during the years of the formation of Soviet psychological science. This was a time when battles were still being fought against the openly idealist psychology that dominated the main scientific-psychological center — the Institute of Psychology at Moscow University.
This book, first, summed up the author's previous work from 1915—1922, and, second, prepared new ideas in psychology. It can be said that "The Psychology of Art" became a transitional work for L. S. Vygotsky.
Soviet art criticism was still only taking its first steps. This was a period of reassessment of old values and the beginning of a great "reckoning" in literature and art: in the circles of the Soviet intelligentsia there reigned an atmosphere created by conflicting aspirations. The words "socialist realism" had not yet been uttered.
In his book L. S. Vygotsky raises such important questions as the psychological problem of art, art as cognition, art as device, art and psychoanalysis, and art as catharsis. A special place in this work is occupied by the analysis of aesthetic reaction.
In it, the author turns to classic works — to the fable, the novella, the Shakespearean tragedy. The main question he poses to himself is: what makes a work artistic, what turns it into a creation of art?
In his book he argues against traditional psychologism in the treatment of art. The method he chooses is objective and analytical. His intention was, by analyzing the features of the structure of an artistic work, to recreate the structure of the reaction, of the inner activity, that it evokes.
A considerable part of the book is also devoted to a critique of one-sided views of art, of the specificity of its human and, at the same time, social function. L. S. Vygotsky argues against reducing the function of art to that of cognition proper, of gnosis. If art does perform a cognitive function, it is a function of a special kind of cognition, carried out by special means.
The analysis of the structure of a work of art constitutes the main content of Vygotsky's "Psychology of Art." An analysis of structure is usually associated in our minds with the idea of a purely formal analysis, abstracted from the content of the work. But in Vygotsky, the analysis of structure does not abstract from content, but penetrates into it. After all, the content of a work of art is not the material, not the plot; its actual content is its effective content — that which determines the specific character of the aesthetic experience. Content understood in this way is not simply introduced into the work from outside, but is created within it by the artist.
The subject of study in "The Psychology of Art" is works of fiction.
One of L. S. Vygotsky's achievements is his brilliant analysis of the overcoming of the "prosaicness" of linguistic material, the elevation of its functions within the structure of works of fiction. But this is only one plane of analysis, abstracting from the main thing carried within the structure of the work. The main thing is the movement that Vygotsky calls the movement of "counter-feeling" (protivochuvstvovanie). It is this that creates the effectiveness of art, giving rise to its specific function.
"Counter-feeling" consists in the fact that the emotional, affective content of a work develops along two opposite directions that nonetheless strive toward a single culminating point. At this culminating point something like a short circuit occurs, resolving the affect: a transformation takes place, an illumination of feeling.
To denote this main inner movement, Vygotsky uses the classical term catharsis.
For Vygotsky, catharsis is not simply the discharge of suppressed affective drives. It is, rather, the resolution of a certain personal task, the discovery of a higher, more humane truth about life's phenomena and situations.
Analysis of the aesthetic reaction and L. S. Vygotsky's formalism
I. A. Bunin's “Light Breathing” as interpreted by L. S. Vygotsky
In one of the chapters devoted specifically to the reader's aesthetic reaction, the author discusses the anatomy and physiology of the story, its disposition and composition, the characterization of the material, and the functional significance of the composition. Also a very important idea in the spirit of formalism is "the annihilation of content by form." L. S. Vygotsky chooses precisely this novella for his analysis because it is a typical example of the classic and contemporary novella, and precisely because it has not been subjected to public rationalization.
Vygotsky begins his analysis of the story with "the elucidation of the melodic curve that found its expression in the words of the text." He constructs a schema in the form of a straight line, on which he depicts "all the events found in this story, in the chronological order in which they actually took place or could have taken place in life." Thus, before us appear the disposition — the real sequence of events — and the composition — the sequence of events in the novella. In doing so, the author identifies "2 curves" of the work, distinguishing not only the events of the life of the main heroine, Olya Meshcherskaya, but also of the class mistress.
Thus, having deciphered the "anatomy" of the novella, the psychologist moves on to its "physiology," in order to understand what is being told to us by the system of actions and events that stands out from this story as its obvious plot. Here L. S. Vygotsky introduces the concept of "everyday murk" — this is how we might characterize what happens in the story. "In the plot of this story itself there is decisively not a single bright feature, and if one takes these events in their vital and everyday significance, before us is simply an unremarkable, insignificant, and meaningless life of a provincial schoolgirl, a life that clearly grows from rotten roots and, from the point of view of an evaluation of life, produces a rotten bloom and remains altogether fruitless. Perhaps this life, this everyday murk, is at least somewhat idealized, embellished in the story; perhaps its dark sides are shaded over; perhaps it has been elevated to a 'pearl of creation,' and perhaps the author is simply depicting it in a rosy light, as people usually say?" [Vygotsky 1986: 194].
It is also important to note L. S. Vygotsky's idea regarding the title of the novella. In his opinion, the title constitutes the essential core of the story. The events are arranged so that the reader does not get a sense of heaviness or of that very murk. If we had encountered these events in their dispositional order, our inner tension would have gradually built up. We would have learned of the light and carefree life of the schoolgirl, who quickly grew up, then this world would have collapsed and changed for us – just as it changed for Olya Meshcherskaya at the moment of her liaison with Malyutin. And then, through the class mistress, we learn this terrible secret. Then the situation grows heated, and Olya is already promising the officer that she will be his wife. The murder and death of the heroine is the extreme point of the story, its climax. But what actually appears before us? The events are interwoven in such a way that their weight and significance lose their heaviness for us. At the very beginning of the story we learn that Olya Meshcherskaya will die, so we wait for the resolution of this "conflict": "why did she die, and how?" L. S. Vygotsky says that the central theme of the novella is not Olga Meshcherskaya, but precisely "light breathing," a sensation of which arises in the reader too, since such terrible events do not produce in us the response they should.
As a result, all these "leaps" directly extinguish the impression that the events depicted could otherwise have made on us. This is how the annihilation of content by form is expressed. Also, as L. S. Vygotsky notes, the annihilation by form can be seen not only in the composition of the novella, but also in the construction of individual scenes, individual episodes, individual situations. (For example, the shot that kills Olya is described as a minor detail of the story.)
The types of art therapy found in psychology and medicine correspond to the existing forms of art. There are art therapy proper, music therapy, dance therapy, drama therapy, fairy-tale therapy, bibliotherapy, mask therapy, ethnotherapy, play therapy, color therapy, phototherapy, doll therapy, origami, and the like. In addition, each of these types has numerous art-therapeutic techniques that are used to resolve internal and interpersonal conflicts, crisis situations, traumas, and neurotic and psychosomatic disorders.
The experimental and psychoanalytic paradigms in the study of creative style run through the entire history of aesthetics. They reflect the existence of objective and subjective patterns in the psychology of creativity. A work of art is always a synthesis of objective and subjective laws. The dominance, in each specific case, of one set of patterns or the other is often linked to the psychological type of the creator.
The systemic-typological approach to the problem of literary, musical, artistic, and similar abilities presupposes the existence of a unified complex of natural predispositions, of abilities developing on their basis, of psychophysiological and psychological characteristics, and of conditions of development, upbringing, and environmental influences. In this case, the central problem of any abilities becomes the problem of individual differences. The personal characteristics of artistic intellect, perception, memory, and thinking, the value-motivational sphere, worldview attitudes, the creative process, and the manner of creating a work of art determine the author's individual creative style, technique, and language. The basis of this complex is the psychological type of the personality.
The unity of artistic, cognitive, and personal characteristics, including a dominant worldview attitude of a typological character, determines the creative style of the writer, musician, or artist. The formula "Style is the man" is confirmed by Flaubert's famous words: "Madame Bovary — c'est moi."
"To the writer belong all forms of creation; his are the arrows of irony, his are tender, light words; his are the theatrical characters, his the boundless labyrinths of fairy tales and fictions, his all the flowers, his all the thorns; he dons all garments, penetrates the depths of all hearts, experiences all passions, comprehends all interests. The writer's soul strives toward the world and reflects it" (H. de Balzac).
"In my view, the true contemporary world is a world created by the artist; it is the mirage that has appeared to him. The artist bears no responsibility before society; the artist is responsible only to himself" (V. Nabokov).
The system of psychological types — psychocosmology, proposed by N. L. Nagibina and her research team, is built on the relationship between the principles of cognition: the rational and the irrational. In every person, one of the modes of cognition dominates; the second mode of cognition may be subordinate to or equal to the first (transitional types). The rational type is one in which thinking is dominant and reflexive, and which treats thinking as a higher value within its cognitive sphere than sensory cognition. The irrational type is one in which thinking is not dominant, the process of cognition is not mediated by reflexive operations, and which treats intuition and sensation as a higher value within its cognitive sphere than reflexive cognition. Within the system of psychological types there are four rational types (A, B, D, E) and four irrational types (B, C, F, G), as well as four transitional types (AB, CD, EF, GH), in which the rational and irrational principles of cognition carry equal weight.
In this approach, the figure of the creator sounds as the dominant note. The phenomenological approach makes it possible to organically unite scientific and hermeneutic methods of personality research. An original project has been proposed for studying the stylistic features of creative work in the context of their conditioning by the psychological type of the creator.
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