Art history has now and then been structured around psychoanalytic theory and method of inquiry. Clinical method and therapy have often been relied upon to interpret paintings as well. Nevertheless, the two modes of inquiry, historical and therapeutic, have been wary of each other’s conclusions, and therefore a relationship that varies from outright antagonism to interdisciplinary merger has characterized their past. That history is usually thought to begin with Sigmund Freud’s studies of Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and brief references to other artists. As a matter of fact, the psychological interpretation of painting goes much further back, to Pliny the Elder and Giorgio Vasari and, among literary artists, Dante, Giovanni Boccaccio, and others in the quattrocento.

However, inquiries that attempt a thorough and thoughtful interdisciplinary psychoanalytic history of art have not been undertaken, certainly not with the psychoanalytic side represented by actual clinical case histories that open up the meanings of individual paintings, and by paintings that help us to see more deeply into the cases reported by psychoanalysts. Gisela Schmidt’s Mirror Image and Therapy does just that, bringing forth a wealth of examples that makes this study wide ranging and unique.

The book is divided into two parts: 1) theory; and 2) “double” interpretations. The first section discusses psychoanalytic interpretation as a method of inquiry, drawing heavily upon the German tradition, inspired by the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer, that is usually referred to as “hermeneutic psychotherapy.” (Gadamer has written an introductory note to this study, recommending it as consonant with the philosophical-psychological position he represents.) Hermeneutic method conceptualizes mirror imaging and the mirror both as a stage in development and as a therapeutic concept. The book expands upon these insights by giving a full account of the mirroring in the work of several contemporary thinkers, such as Jacques Lacan, Heinz Kohut, Wilfred Bion, and D. W. Winnicott. Schmidt then asserts her claim for the use and presence of mirrors in painting as a means to understand actual psychoanalytic case studies as they have been reported from the clinical setting.

The second section, on double interpretations, pairs eight paintings with eight case studies to demonstrate the many ways in which the cases can be applied to paintings as an avenue to a deeper understanding of the paintings, and the ways in which the paintings can be used as a means to expand upon the interpretations of patients given by the psychoanalysts who reported these cases. The paintings yield often-overlooked aspects and thoughts through psychoanalytic readings, just as the works in turn expand the analysands’ cases under the penetrating eye of the painter.

In the course of section one, psychoanalytic ideas and concepts are systematically presented. Art historians will be interested in those that are relevant to their own ways of working. For example, the concepts of “constitutive blanks” and “scotomization” help to interpret those areas of a painting where “places have been kept deliberately ‘blank,’ ‘indeterminate,’ or hidden, e.g. by curtains or doors…[so that] this place of indeterminacy can be invested with meaning. Constitutive blanks are seen here to be comparable to ‘scotomization’ in psychoanalytic therapy.” “Scotomization” refers to “something which consciously or unconsciously is witheld from the therapist” (68–69).

The concept of mirroring is central to the argument of this study because mirrors as both real and painted objects have been a thematic preoccupation of psychoanalytic therapy and to painting for all of its history. Chapter 5, “Mirrors and Mirroring,” presents examples in art history that summarize the many ways mirrors appear in painting. Here one is reminded of the recent studies by David Hockney of the ways in which painters used real mirrors (and other optical devices) in the composing of the works, and how artists depicted mirrors in the paintings themselves. Controversial as Hockney’s claims have proven to be, we know how ubiquitous and powerful the presentations of mirrors are in painting since the Renaissance. We are equally aware of the fascination mirrors have had for painters, that is, how frequently mirrors appear in paintings and how they stand as metaphors for painting itself. Thus a study such as Mirror Image and Therapy makes a substantial contribution to this ongoing discussion and should be read in conjunction with Hockney’s hypothesis.

The great variety of mirroring possibilities in painting, as examined in the second part of this study, are themselves of interest to art historians. Each work is paired with an actual psychoanalytic clinical study, and the following examples give a good map of the book’s terrain: convex mirroring: Jan van Eyck, Arnolfini Marriage; narcissistic mirroring: James Ensor, Ensor Surrounded by Masks; reluctant narcissistic mirroring: Nicolas Poussin, Self-Portrait; reverse narcissistic mirroring: Rene Magritte, Not To Be Reproduced; anamorphic mirroring: Anonymous, Cupid and Psyche; Janusian mirroring: Max Beckman, Family Picture; Medusan mirroring: Edward Burne-Jones, The Baleful Head; Athenean mirroring: Francisco de Goya, Hasta la muerte.  Each of these is paired with a psychoanalytic clinical study. Of greatest interest to me are the studies of Poussin, Beckman, Burne-Jones, and Goya.

The interpretation in Poussin’s Self-Portrait emphasizes the artist’s reluctance to paint a self-portrait, to present himself. Poussin forces the viewer to entertain a number of “mitigating” elements: a beautiful classical female profile and several hidden mysterious paintings. These create “a number of constitutive blanks…. One is given visual indications that there is more to be seen…but at the same time knowledge is withheld” (292–93). The work is paired with a case of an unwilling patient who witholds information to the analyst and seals up what should be disclosed.

In Beckmann’s Family Picture, the discussion points out the artist’s distortion of space and personal iconography. It is “a moving and disturbing picture of his own life” (365). Schmidt writes, “No person and no object is in a relation which can be read” (360). The painting is paired with a patient who has “created a similar disorganized organization to produce a double face” (376).

The theme of the Medusa head has been treated in psychoanalytic interpretations and in many paintings. In Burne-Jones’s The Baleful Head, Schmidt examines the artist’s tranquil reworking of a usually violent, rigidifying image of the Gorgon, as exemplified by Caravaggio’s horrific Medusa. The painting includes a mirror image that unites, as in a utopian pairing, a man and a woman. The author notes that “the petrifying danger of the Medusa is over: while the polished shield was used with calculating resourcefulness, this artificial mirror for the killing of the Gorgon has been transformed back into a natural one of still water” (384). The painting is paired with an analysis of a male child suffering from violent impulses directed toward his father. Now in therapy, the child “can look into a mirror rather than his own early experiences” (392).

Hasta la muerta, Goya’s etching of an old woman “admiring” herself in a mirror and surrounded by young men and women whose postures and facial expressions are easily read as contempt, pity, and sympathy, presents several blanks as background and as a table covered by a cloth. Does the table hide something? Is it empty space? It looks like a sarcophagus, which suggests that the mirror on its top “is an allusion to such a representation” (405). Death may be imminent, yet the illusion of youthfulness is never given up. Freud’s famous case of Dora is matched with the Goya etching because the case enabled Freud to come to a deeper understanding of transference and countertransference as mirroring relationships between patient and analyst. Illusions of many kinds were worked out in the course of Freud’s coming to a self-interpretation as well as an interpretation of the ways in which the patient saw herself mirrored in the analyst.

My description of the book’s content gives but samples of its richness as an unusual art-historical study. The examples open up many ways in which both art history and psychoanalysis can be expanded through an interinanimation of the two disciplines.