Abstract         

             Surrealism is a 20th century avant-garde movement in art and literature that seeks to unleash the creative potential of the unconscious mind. This essay examines the impact of Freud's psychoanalytic theory on the emergence of surrealism and how it is reflected in the Manifesto of Surrealism written by its founder, André Breton. Freud’s Psychoanalysis theory has had a huge impact throughout time on almost every field of knowledge. From the nineteenth century until now, psychoanalytic concepts such as the unconscious are deeply rooted in our contemporary general knowledge, reflected in art, science and political and ideological movements. Reflecting on this influence could help us to better understand not only ourselves and the role we play within society, but also how this theory helped the emergence of artistic movements such as surrealism, which developed artistic and poetic techniques similar to the therapeutic procedures of psychoanalysis. Breton made numerous attempts to include Freud in the surrealist movement, but the latter always stood aside to defend psychoanalysis as a science away from the world of occultism, magic and other psychoanalytical approaches that were related in one way or another to surrealism. Although surrealism was based on some of the principles of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory and his influence is unquestionable, its development took an independent form combining different psychoanalytic and psychological approaches.

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          Surrealism is a cultural movement that developed in Europe in the aftermath of World War I in which artists depicted unnerving, illogical scenes and developed techniques to allow the unconscious mind to express itself. Its aim was, according to leader André Breton in the Manifesto of Surrealism, to "future resolution of these two states, seemingly so contradictory, of dream and reality, in a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak” (10). It produced works of painting, writing, theater, filmmaking, photography, and other media. Some of the surrealistic artistic and poetic techniques, such as the exploration of dream images, automatic writing and voluntary simulation of states of mental abnormality are similar to the therapeutic procedures of psychoanalysis are mainly based on Freud's interpretation of dreams and free association of ideas. Although Breton, a former student of psychiatry, based surrealism on Freudian principles, there are considerable differences between the two approaches, which will be further discussed.

          At the end of the First World War, while Andre Breton was studying medicine, he worked in the neurological center in Nantes where he became passionately interested in the discourse of the insane, psychiatry and Freud’s psychoanalysis theory and had occasion to practice psychotherapy on the wounded in the hospital (Bracken 80). Breton’s training as a psychiatrist helps us understand the presence of analytic, psychiatric and psychoanalytic concepts and classifications, such as dreams, subconscious, pathological mental states, etc., that can be found in the Manifesto of Surrealism, written in 1924. The hospital shows him the trauma of war through some patients’ delirium that puts into tension the very reality of war and the desire to deny it, which marked him deeply. By 1919 he began to turn his interests from medicine to literature, and psychoanalysis was to provide him with a convenient bridge between the scientific attitude of medicine and the introspective approach of the poet (Bracken 80). From 1919 to 1924, when surrealism strictly speaking did not exist yet, the movement defined itself as such, distinct from Dadaism, while engaging in experiments in automatic writing, dream narratives and hypnotic sleep (Santos 2). Diverse works were carried out during this period, such as the poetic writing Les Champs magnétiques, written by Breton and his colleague Soupault in 1919, being one of the “first purely surrealist work” (Breton 28).                       This link between art and science allowed Breton to propose a novel way of perceiving and understanding reality itself, that was opposed to the mainstream over-rationalized culture. As Breton stated in the Manifesto of Surrealism: “The absolute rationalism still in fashion only allows us to consider facts directly related to our own experience. The aims of logic, in contrast, escape us. Pointless to add that our very experience finds itself limited. It paces about in a cage from which it is more and more difficult to free it” (7). Through the analysis of the subconscious mind and the interpretation of dreams as its gateway, both essential for the surrealistic artistic creation, the new reality, considered by Breton in as a “surreality” (10), would be able to escape from the shadows of rationalism and regain the protagonism that it deserves. Freud’s influence on the surrealism emergence is noticeable in the Manifesto of Surrealism, as Breton highly praises him for his work related to the subconscious, that facilitates a better understanding of human nature and reality: “We must give thanks to Freud for his discoveries. On the basis of his research, a current of opinion is at last flowing, by means of which the explorer of humanity will be able to push his investigations much further, authorized as he will be to take account of more than merely superficial realities” (7). The surrealistic approach emphasizes the importance of the imagination presented in the subconscious mind subjected to the control of reason in order to proceed with the surrealistic artistic creation: “Imagination may be on the point of re-asserting its rights. If the depths of our spirits contain strange forces capable of supplementing those on the surface, or waging victorious war against them, there is every reason to seize on them, seize on them and then, if needs be, submit them to the control of reason” (8). 

          The understanding of the subconscious mind precised the exploration of dreams and its  dream-images, which were used as well for creative purposes in surrealist poetry and painting. Thus, the surrealist movement considered creative production as a way of representing and understanding the subconscious mind. Breton points out the importance of dreams for surrealism, criticizes the small relevance that they have in the mainstream culture and praises Freud for his work of The Interpretations of Dreams: “Very rightly, Freud applied his critical faculties to dreams. It is unacceptable, indeed, that this considerable part of psychic activity…has still received so little attention” (8). In addition, Breton’s book Les Vases Communicants, which was a statement of the surrealist approach to dreams, was dedicated to Freud. However, while psychoanalysis used dreams in the process of interpretation, surrealism was to use dreams for creative purposes (Bracken 80). As Jorgensen pointed, Freud sees dreams as wish-fulfillments, rooted in reality, the products of an unconscious developed not from some a priori or cosmic knowledge but rather from reality and reality alone (24). Freud asserts that dreams are quite alien to waking consciousness, a posture that makes a clear distinction between the interior, unconscious world of the dream and the exterior, conscious world of the waking state. This is a distinction that denies any reciprocal influence of the oneiric on reality. Breton, in contrast, insists on a reciprocal relationship between the two, as has been established when he wrote in the First Manifesto: “I believe in the future resolution of these two states, seemingly so contradictory, of dream and reality, in a kind of absolute reality, a surreality, so to speak” (10). Breton considers the dreams events as relevant as the daily ones: “Why should I not expect more from dream-signs than I expect from a degree of consciousness daily more acute? Can the dream not also be applied to the solution of life’s fundamental questions?” (9). He also remarked that the awake state is so closely related to sleep: “ it seems that when the mind is functioning normally it does no more than respond to suggestions which come to it from the depths of that night to which I commend it” (9). For both Freud and Breton dreams are essential for understanding the depths of the human being and reality itself. Yet, while Freud establishes a clear barrier between the conscious and the subconscious mind, describing the mechanisms that both sides of the mind have to fight each other, such as the ego's defense mechanisms and Freudian slips, Breton believes in a unity between both states that would unveil the inherent truth of the human being and experience. 

          In addition to the analysis of dreams and the subconscious, the concept of automatism is no less important for surrealism. Breton was influenced by French psychiatric knowledge, which had automatism very present at the time. As Van der hart pointed, the automatism preponderance in the french psychiatrist movement reached its top especially at the end of the 19th century, when Pierre Janet defended his thesis on Psychological automatism, considering automatism as the most direct psychological defense against overwhelming experiences (3). For Janet, the phenomena of automatism respond to a mental dissociation, to an autonomous psychic activity that does not obey the control of the consciousness. Automatism is a sign of psychic weakness, and can reach several levels (Santos 5).  It is clear that if Breton retains the idea of an automatic activity performed outside consciousness, he does not consider it in any way as a sign of psychic weakness; on the contrary, it would be a sign of a liberation of the spirit necessary for poetic creation. When he defined surrealism, Breton considered psychic automatism as a dictation of thought suspended from any kind of censorship: "SURREALISM, n. m.  Pure psychic automatism in its pure state by means of which it is proposed to express, verbally, in writing, or by any other means, the functioning of thought. Dictation of thought, suspended from any control exercised by reason, alien to any aesthetic or moral concern” (19) whose main goal is to find an absolute reality, a surreality, product of a resolution between dream and reality. Automatism has a positive value as a mechanism that allows one to escape the control of consciousness, which is not far from Freud's notion of primary process. 

         The French psychiatrist movement introduced Breton to the concept of automatism which allowed him to do his own analysis and readings of Freud and other authors as Myers and Flourney. The influence that Freud’s free association method had on Breton is exposed in the Manifesto of Surrealism: “Totally preoccupied with Freud as I then was and familiar with his methods of investigation [free association] which I had some slight occasion to practice on patients during the war, I resolved to obtain from myself what one tries to obtain from others, namely a monologue delivered as rapidly as possible, on which the critical mind of the subject is unable to pass judgement, unembarrassed consequently by reticence, comprising, as precisely as possible, spoken thought” (17). As Breton explained in the above quote, his automatic writing is inspired by Freud's therapeutic method of free association, which allowed him to release a spoken thought free of judgements and moral concerns. However, Breton only mirrored the free association technique in the practical way, standing aside from Freud’s therapeutic purposes that are described by the latest in the following quote: “The advantage of this procedure [free association method] lies in the fact that I dissociate the patient’s attention from his conscious searching and reflecting...The pathogenic idea which has ostensibly been forgotten is always lying ready “close at hand” and can be reached by associations that are easily accessible” (Thurschwell 271). 

          The use of automatism led both Freud and Breton, in therapeutic and creative activities, respectively, to approach a hidden truth subjected to the forces of the conscious mind. The free association used by Freud left the responsibility of creating the associations to the patient and had as its main objective to find the patient's pathogenic idea. This method greatly interested Breton and inspired his automatic writing insofar as it aims to recover what was removed (repressed) from conscious discourse by censorship. The automatic writing involved the poet trying to shut out all outside distractions and producing a stream of words and images by the free play of association, not under conscious control. Breton kept with the possibility of, through association, creating an accidental thought, that is to say, not subjected to any moral or rational constraint and writing it down: “It appeared to me, and still does…that the speed of thought is no greater than that of speech, and does not necessarily defy capture in language, nor even the flow of the pen” (17). However, the version of automatism that Breton considered for engaging in the automatic writing technique wasn’t related to therapeutic purposes but to creative ones. Instead of reaching a pathogenic idea, Breton intended to create art by finding an inherent truth that is no longer oppressed by rational boundaries. As Breton stated on the Manifesto, through automatic writing he is able to notice the existence of new aspects of reality no less important than all rest: “On writing them, these elements are, to all appearances, as strange to you as to others, and naturally you are wary of them. Poetically speaking, they strike you above all by a high degree of instantaneous absurdity, the quality of this absurdity, on closer examination, being to make room for everything admissible, legitimate in the world: the disclosure of a certain number of properties and facts no less objective, in the end, than all the rest” (18). From these quotes it seems that Breton tried to conceive life and reality from a novel perspective through surrealism. As the founder of surrealism, he had total freedom to create his own theory, not limiting it to any specific field of knowledge or traditions. Breton does not conform to Freudian doctrine, nor to Myers', since his project could not be circumscribed to either the scientific or the therapeutic perspective. He even goes beyond the perspective of political engagement that, as we know, was a guideline of the surrealist movement (Santos 6).   

Freud’s unquestionable influence on the emergence of surrealism has been already discussed through the analysis of Breton’s Manifesto of Surrealism content and references to the psychoanalytic author’s work. Freud’s interpretation of dreams and free association technique are methods that influenced Breton's development of surrealist art techniques that seeked to be a way of the subconscious expression. Besides Freud’s influence, Breton enriched his theory by reading other authors, such as Myers, Janet and Flourney. These diverse influences made the psychoanalytic and surrealistic theories have remarkable differences. Jorgensen explains that Breton and Freud maintain incompatible conceptions about the interior and exterior realities, that is, how they interpret the unconscious and conscious mind: “Whereas in Freudian dream analysis one brings to consciousness, through deliberate, intellectual operation, a heretofore repressed unconscious desire, the surrealist experience allows to surface a deeper desire that cannot be consciously expressed” (25). Thus, the Freudian method requires active involvement from the patient and analyst while the surrealist method demands passivity from the artist, and subsequently from the reader/spectator. Additionally, Freudian analysis depends upon the conscious to interpret the unconscious through a language structure limited by literary and linguistic traditions that force the unconscious to fit within its constraints, thereby reducing its revelatory powers. By contrast, the surrealists attempt to tap into the language of the unconscious world avoiding the limits that the psychiatrist categories impose, through automatic writing and drawing techniques, such the paranoiac-critical method developed by Dali, in which paranoia is a mental mechanism which can be used by the artist in a controlled way to create artistic images (Bracken 80). Due to the therapeutic aim of psychoanalysis in opposition to the multidisciplinary surrealistic approach that englobes art, politics and philosophy, the surrealistic conceptions and techniques seem much more flexible than the psychoanalytic ones, that belong to a systematized therapeutic method. 

          Besides the aforementioned differences between the authors, there are other motives that explain why, despite Breton's numerous attempts to include Freud in the Surrealist movement, the latter always remained on the sidelines. After having a meeting in 1921 at the poet's request, Freud was later to confess that it was not at all clear to him what surrealism was about, showing a lack of interest for the avant garde movement: “Perhaps I am not made to understand it…for I am so far removed from art” (Bracken 84). One of the main reasons why Freud kept this distance from Surrealism is to defend psychoanalysis as a science far from the world of occultism and magic that surrealism was linked with. Breton’s automatic writing was used by the spiritual community because it provides the possibility of a text which “writes itself”, where the authorship no longer exists. The automatism that Breton’s automatic writing implies permitted radical speech and transgressive behavior because both were seen to originate from a spiritually elevated “elsewhere” and not from the body of the Spiritualist itself (Thompson 2). Besides that, surrealism was also related to other psychoanalytical approaches that were threatening Freud’s psychoanalysis status (Thompson 4). 

           Freud’s psychoanalytic theory’s influence on the emergence of surrealism is unquestionable. As it was already discussed, Breton mentioned Freud in the Manifesto of Surrealism regarding his work of The Interpretation of Dreams, his discovery of the unconscious mind and his practice of free association, which Breton mirrored in the aim of developing the automatic writing technique. However, the surrealist movement took his own form while combining different approaches. Breton does not conform to Freudian doctrine, since his project could not be circumscribed to either the scientific or the therapeutic perspective, which is reflected in his automatic writing, a form of automatism for creative rather than therapeutic purposes. Their conceptions of subconscious and conscious mind differ considerably, as Breton tries to unify both sides while Freud describes a clear barrier between them. Due to the therapeutic aim of psychoanalysis in opposition to the multidisciplinary surrealistic approach, the surrealistic conceptions and techniques are much more flexible and diverse than the systematized psychoanalytic ones. Breton’s attempt to create a new way of living, understanding and creating art while linking his theory to a multidisciplinary approach including politics, art and philosophy, is reflected in the Manifesto of Surrealism. However, he seemed to have gone beyond his own capacities, thus failing in reflecting concisely what Surrealism is about, which could be one of the reasons why Freud stood aside from him. Apart from that, Freud rejected Surrealism because it wasn't circumscribed exclusively to his psychoanalytical approach. Breton was in some way related to some spiritual practices and other psychoanalytical and non scientific traditions that could possibly threaten Freud's yet vulnerable status. 

 

Works Cited

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Breton, André, 1896-1966. Manifestoes of Surrealism. Ann Arbor :University of Michigan Press, 1972.

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Jorgensen, Jean. “André Breton and Sigmund Freud: Perspectives on the Contradiction between Interior and Exterior Realities.” Selecta: Journal of the Pacific Northwest Council on Foreign Languages, vol. 14, 1993, pp. 24–29. 

Rabaté, Jean-Michel. “Loving Freud Madly: Surrealism between Hysterical and Paranoid Modernism.” Journal of Modern Literature, vol. 25, no. 3–4, 2002, pp. 58–74. 

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Thompson, Rachel Leah. “The Automatic Hand: Spiritualism, Psychoanalysis, Surrealism.” Invisible Culture: An Electronic Journal for Visual Studies. 7 (2004): 1-18. 

Thurschwell, Pamela. Sigmund Freud Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2000.

Van der Hart, O., Horst, R. The dissociation theory of Pierre Janet. J Trauma Stress 2, 397–412 (1989). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00974598