Abstract
This paper compares three influential accounts of artistic creation: Didier Anzieu’s psychoanalytic theory of the Skin-Ego, Paul Ricoeur’s hermeneutic interpretation of Freud, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. Each situates art at the intersection of body, psyche, and meaning, yet they do so in distinct ways. For Anzieu, artistic activity functions as a work of containment: materials such as paint, clay, or sound operate as psychic envelopes that protect, stabilize, and repair the fragile boundaries of the self. Ricoeur, extending Freud, highlights art as a process of sublimation in which unconscious desire is symbolically mediated, allowing private impulses to be transformed into culturally meaningful works. Merleau-Ponty, by contrast, emphasizes artistic creation as embodied disclosure: through gesture, rhythm, and perception, art reveals new ways of inhabiting the world. By bringing these perspectives into dialogue, the paper argues that Anzieu’s tactile and reparative model complements rather than contradicts Ricoeur’s symbolic hermeneutics and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of expression. Together, they present a fuller account of artistic creation as at once reparative, interpretive, and disclosive—anchored in bodily experience, mediated by symbolic form, and transformative of perception.
Presenters
Kate MehuronProfessor of Philosophy, History and Philosophy Department, Eastern Michigan University, Michigan, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Artistry, Hermeneutics, Psychoanalysis, Phenomenology
