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Aaron H. Esman 59/1

PSYCHOANALYSIS AND
SURREALISM: ANDRÉ BRETON
AND SIGMUND FREUD

T he relation between psychoanalysis and Surrealism, a movement

that played a dominant role in art and culture in the Western world
for at least a generation between the wars, is an episode in the history of
psychoanalysis that has been of greater interest to art historians than to
psychoanalysts. A very few references appear in the psychoanalytic lit-
erature (e.g., Kaplan 1989; Davis 1973), while the field of art history is
replete with articles, books, and passing observations; Freud’s name is
scattered through them like autumn leaves on the grass. In his classic
History of Surrealist Painting, for instance, Marcel Jean (1959) cites
Freud five times, while Peter Webb (1985), in his book on the multimedia
artist Hans Bellmer, refers to Freud on eleven occasions. Polizzotti’s
biography of André Breton (1995) has over thirty such references, and
Mundy (2002), in Surrealism: Desire Unbound, refers to him twenty times,
cites eighteen of his writings, and provides a listing of French translations
of his works from 1896 to 1969.
The Surrealists’ romance with Freud and psychoanalysis began with
the litterateur André Breton, who, at a time of enormous literary and cul-
tural ferment in Europe (exemplified by the iconoclastic Dada movement
founded in Zurich in 1917), worked during his youthful service in World
War I as a psychiatric aide in a military hospital. Breton had long been
partial to German literature and philosophy, and under the tutelage of one
Dr. Leroy, a psychiatrist with whom he worked, discovered and became
fascinated by Freud’s writings, particularly The Interpretation of Dreams.
Thus by 1919, then under the influence of Dada, Breton wrote (a few
years later), “Completely occupied as I still was with Freud at that time,
and familiar as I was with his methods of examination . . . I resolved
to obtain from myself what we were trying to obtain from [patients],
namely, a monologue spoken as rapidly as possible, without any interven-
tion on the part of the critical faculties . . . unencumbered by the slightest

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 Book Essay

inhibition . . .” (Polizzotti 1995, p.104). This was the beginning of Breton’s

advocacy of automatic writing, which he mistakenly thought of as equiv-
alent to free association and which became central to the Surrealist enter-
prise as an entrée to the wellsprings of creativity in the unconscious
and, ultimately, to the liberation of the individual from the constraints of
bourgeois society.
Breton’s relations with Freud were, to say the least, complex. In
October 1921 he traveled to Vienna for the sole purpose of obtaining an
interview with Freud. Here is Polizzotti’s account of that meeting:

During his first days in the capital Breton could not find the courage to make the
planned visit. . . . He finally contacted the analyst who, although “having very
little free time in these days,” sent a note of invitation to his hotel on the 9th. At
three o’clock the following afternoon . . . Breton rang at the door of Berggasse 19.
The meeting was a disappointment. Breton first had to sit in the waiting room
alongside a dozen patients. . . . When he was finally ushered into the famous
study, the interview proved hardly worth the anticipation: despite Breton’s
expectations, Freud considered his visitor a poet rather than a scientist, and saw
little relation between his research and the young Frenchman’s literary interests.
Breton, whose knowledge of the theory and practice of psychoanalysis was, in
reality, superficial, had little to interest the Austrian. In addition, the two were
clearly speaking at cross-purposes: Freud considered the practical techniques and
raw materials of psychoanalysis the means to a therapeutic end, where for Breton
their primary aim should be “the expulsion of man from himself.” Finally, there
were insurmountable differences in age . . . culture and and taste in literature,
which for Freud meant the classics. Busy, bored, and eager to move on to his next
client, Freud soon drew the conversation to a close. Breton, who had looked for-
ward to the meeting with excitement, returned to the café . . . sad and discouraged.
. . . [Breton] vented his disappointment in a short article, “Interview du
Professeur Freud,” describing the pioneer analyst as a “little old man with no
style, who receives clients in a shabby office worthy of the neighborhood. . . . I
try to make him talk by throwing names such as Charcot and Babinski into the
conversation, but either because the memories I’m calling on are too distant [!!]
or because he maintains a posture of cautious reticence with strangers, I can only
get him to speak in generalities.” Years afterward, Breton dismissed his “inter-
view” as “a regrettable sacrifice to the Dada spirit,” but the sacrifice had less to
do with Dada than it did with Breton’s own feelings of spite and disappointment.
As the future would show, these feelings died hard [pp. 162–163].

Throughout, Breton’s primary interest in psychoanalysis rested in

the theory of dreams and their interpretation. This preoccupation reached
its zenith in 1932 in Les Vases Communicants (Communicating Vessels), in
which he spelled out the theory of Surrealism as a solution to the problem

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 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SURREALISM

of despair or “miserableness,” using, as his translator Mary Ann Caws

(1990) puts it, “the enabling ‘capillary tissue’ between the exterior world
of facts and the interior world of emotions, between reality . . . and the
imagination” (p. ix). In this book he described and analyzed, in extensive
detail, some of his own dreams, emphasizing their meaning in respect to
recent events and conflicts in his everyday life. He was bitterly critical of
Freud—“a relatively unlearned philosophic mind” (p. 22)1—for his reti-
cence about personal matters in his own dream interpretations: “I cer-
tainly have no intention . . . of reducing the importance of sexuality in
unconscious life, since I think it is nearly the most important acquisition
of psychoanalysis. On the contrary, I reproach Freud for having sacri-
ficed all that he could have drawn from this, as far as he was concerned,
to commonplace self-interested motives” (p. 22).
It was in this context that he engaged in an epistolary exchange with
Freud that reveals the ambivalence of his idealization. Breton’s letters
are lost, but Freud’s remain, as does Breton’s commentary on the cor-
respondence.2 Apparently in 1932 Breton had sent Freud a copy of Les
Vases Communicants. Following is Freud’s reply (Davis 1973), dated
December 13, 1932:

Dear Sir:
You may be assured that I will read with care your little book . . . in which
the explanation of dreams plays a prominent part. . . . I am writing to you
because I find on p. 19 one of your ‘impertinences’ that I cannot really explain
to myself. You reproach me that there is no mention in the bibliography of
[Johannes] Volkelt who discovered the symbolism of the dream, although I have
used his ideas. This is serious, for it is contrary to my usual practice. As a mat-
ter of fact, it is not Volkelt who discovered the symbolism of dreams, but [Karl]
Scherner. . . . Both authors are mentioned many times in . . . my text. . . . Both
names are also contained in the bibliography. Thus, I have the right to an
explanation from you. In your defense I notice at this moment that the name
of Volkelt is not to be found in the bibliography of the French edition.
Yours faithfully,
Freud
1
Whitebook (2010) spells out in detail Freud’s early fascination with philosophy
and the extent of both his reading and his Gymnasium and university education in the
subject.
2
With regard to the Freud-Breton correspondence in the appendix to the transla-
tion of Les Vases Communicants, the publishers state that that material is “available
only in this book.” They appear not to have known of Davis’s publication, which
anticipated theirs by seventeen years.

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 Book Essay

This letter was followed the next day (December 14) with a longer
letter, in which Freud explains that the French edition was taken from the
seventh German edition, and that after the fourth German edition he had
handed over the care of the bibliography to Otto Rank, who made an excus-
able error, “in view of the fact that Volkelt is not the one whose authority
is to be considered in the matter. . . .” Finally, on December 26, Freud
wrote again:

I thank you very warmly for your detailed and kind letter. You could have
answered more succinctly. . . . But you took into consideration my particular
susceptibility about this matter, which is no doubt a form of reaction against the
unbounded ambition of childhood, successfully overcome. I cannot take excep-
tion to any of your other critical remarks, although I can find in them many
causes for controversy. Thus, for example, I think that if I have not pursued the
analysis of my own dreams as far as that of others, the cause is only rarely due
to timidity toward sexual matters. The fact is that I would have had to discover
that the secret basis of all the series of dreams had to do with my relations with
my father who had just died. I maintain that I had the right to set a limit to the
inevitable exhibition. . . . Although I receive so much evidence of the interest that
you and your friends show toward my researches, for myself I am not in the
position to explain what Surrealism is or what it is after. It could be that I am not
in any way made to understand it. I am at such a distant position from art.
Very cordially yours
Freud

Breton’s response bespeaks the ambivalence of his involvement with

Freud. On the one hand, he invokes The Psychopathology of Everyday
Life to propose that what he insists was Freud’s “error” was a “symptom-
atic act” that could not be denied by defensively passing off the respon-
sibility to someone else (Rank), “who is no longer among your friends.”
On the other, he ends by affirming his “respect and admiration” for
Freud’s “ever vivid and marvelous sensitivity” (Caws 1990, pp. 154–155).
Clearly Breton was out to catch Freud in both a factual error and an
ethical lapse, and Freud’s somewhat defensive reply did not serve to clear
the atmosphere between them. Four years later, Breton suffered another
disappointment when Freud refused to submit, in the absence of the
dreamers’ associations, interpretations of a number of dreams Breton had
collected from friends and was readying for publication. Still, when Freud
came under threat from the Anschluss in 1938, Breton was active in efforts

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 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SURREALISM

to rescue him from the Nazis, urging that “a symbolic guard of honor be
organized around him . . . to secure his immediate and complete libera-
tion . . .” (quoted in Polizzotti 1995, p. 452).
Needless to say, Surrealism had a strong influence on the developing
work of Breton’s countryman, Jacques Lacan. He was a friend of Breton,
and one of his earliest papers, “The Problem of Style and the Paranoiac
Forms of Experience,” was published in the first number of the Surrealist
magazine Minotaure in 1933. It was a “psychiatric” response to an essay
by Dali (1933) in which the painter proposed a “paranoid-critical” theory
of art rooted in Surrealist concepts. Lacan’s ultimate emphasis on the
central role of language in psychoanalysis was consistent with that of
Breton with respect to creativity in general and to literature in particular.
Unlike Freud, Breton conceived psychoanalysis as the foundation of
a weltanschauung, one that would favor psychic reality over “common
sense,” and that would promote revolutionary action against a sick and
repressive society (Kuspit 1988). Such action would be based on feeling
rather than reason, limited only by those societal rules that would keep
one from being judged “mad” and forced into an institution. Indeed, as his
passion for Freud abated, he became increasingly enthusiastic about Marx,
Lenin, and especially Trotsky as guides to revolutionary action, turning
against them only later when, at the time of the Popular Front, the French
Communist party sought to dictate the content of art and literature.
Surrealism was predominantly a literary movement, insofar as it ex-
pressed itself through automatic writing and its analogues. Breton thought
of himself as, among other things, a poet, and many of his closest associ-
ates in the movement—Louis Aragon, Paul Éluard, René Char, Tristan
Tzara—were poets too. But a number of visual artists were associated with
it as well, most prominently Max Ernst, Salvador Dali, Man Ray, and René
Magritte, with Miró, Giacometti, and even Picasso on the edges (Picasso
designed the cover for the first edition of Minotaure). Ernst was very famil-
iar with Freud’s writings, having studied them at university in Cologne
between 1911 and 1913, even before his involvement with Dada. Dali
made a big deal of his admiration, actually succeeding in visiting Freud in
London in 1938 and presenting him with a portrait sketch. Freud was
impressed by Dali’s technical skill but, as always, said he couldn’t under-
stand what the artist—or Surrealism in general—was trying to say. Each of
these artists, in his own way, sought to render dreamlike experiences using

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 Book Essay

Figure 1. René Magritte, Le Viol (The Rape)

© 2011 C. Herscovici, London / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

As Viederman (1987) has pointed out, Magritte was scornful of psychoanalysis and, indeed, of
any effort to “interpret” his paintings, to find “symbols” in them, or to associate them with
dreams. Still, one can, I think, speak of his use of both displacement (upward) and condensation
in the creation of this highly eroticized image.

primary process–like imagery and erotic and symbolic representations to

create auras of mystery and ambiguity (for examples, see Figures 1–3).
Characteristically, Dali combined (condensed) distortion, eroticism,
and strange juxtapositions to create an aura of mystery enhanced by his
exceptional technical skill.
Breton and Freud suffered a mutual incomprehension. Yet in many
ways their life paths converged. Each was the founder and intellectual
leader of a movement that first gained a body of dedicated local followers
but that, in time, spread its influence over much of the Western world.

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 PSYCHOANALYSIS AND SURREALISM

Figure 2. Max Ernst, The Virgin Chastizing the

Infant Jesus, with Observers

© 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

Beyond Ernst’s obvious blasphemy, he has created a blatantly sadomasochistic image, with
three voyeurs (himself, Breton, and Paul Éluard) peeking though a window at what clearly is a
variant of a primal scene.

Each was something of an autocrat, expecting adherence to his system of

ideas and excommunicating those who insisted on deviating from them
(Breton was known as the “pope” of Surrealism). And each was forced
to leave his native soil and emigrate (in Breton’s case temporarily) in the
face of the Nazi onslaught. Each was vehemently antireligious, yet each (or

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Figure 3. Salvador Dali, The Great Masturbator

© 2011 Salvador Dali, Fundació Gala–Salvador Dali / Artists Rights

Society (ARS), New York
In Les Vases Communicants Breton selected this painting as a paradigm of the use of dream
imagery in a work of art.

at least some of his followers) nourished somewhat utopian, even revo-

lutionary hopes for his movement as a source of liberation for the human
spirit and the evolution of a better society.
In the end, neither movement succeeded in its utopian aims. As Kuspit
(1988) complains, Freud’s psychoanalysis betrayed its originary fervor,
settling for a melioristic program that emphasized individual emotional
growth over social revolution, while Breton’s Surrealism played itself
out in internecine conflicts, to be supplanted in the postwar years by
other art movements and literary styles. The page was turned, the chapter
closed.

REFERENCES

Breton, A. (1932). Communicating Vessels, transl. M.A. Caws & G.T. Harris.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Caws, M.A. (1990). Introduction: Linkings and reflections; appendix. In
Communicating Vessels, ed. A. Breton, transl. M.A. Caws & G.T. Harris.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, pp. vii–xxiv, 149–156.
Dali, S. (1933). Interpretation paranoiaque: Critique de l’image obsedante.
“L’Angelus” de Millet. Minotaure 1:65–67.

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Davis, F. (1973). Three letters from Sigmund Freud to André Breton. Journal
of the American Psychoanalytic Association 21:127–134.
Jean, M. (1959). The History of Surrealist Painting. New York: Grove Press.
Kaplan, D.M. (1989). Surrealism and psychoanalysis: Notes on a cultural
affair. American Imago 16:319–327.
Kuspit, D. (1988). Surrealism’s re-vision of psychoanalysis. In Signs of Psyche
in Modern and Postmodern Art. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1993, pp. 51–60.
Lacan, J. (1933). Le problem du style et des formes paranoiaques de l’experience.
Minotaure 1:68–69.
Mundy, J. (2002). Surrealism: Desire Unbound. Princeton: Princeton University
Press.
Polizzotti, M. (1995). Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Viederman, M. (1987). René Magritte: Coping with loss—reality and illusion.
Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 35:967–998.
Webb, P. (1985). Hans Bellmer. London: Quartet Books.
Whitebook, J. (2010). Freud as physician-philosopher. Paper read to the
Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine, New York, January.

115 East 86th Street

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E-mail: [email protected]

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