The Pictorial Language of Schizophrenics [antikvár]

Preface Paintings and drawings done by mental patients have been the subject of numerous studies but no precise terminology has yet been applied to this form of creative activity. In the Russian literature it is most often called "art activity", "representational behaviour of mental patients" or "pathological art activity". In the present paper, however, we use the term "pictorial expression" to define the creative pictorial activities of mental patients. Studies of the art activities of mental patients are dominated by three points of view, A number of investigators exclude works created by mental patients from the realm of art as such, drawing a sharp distinction between the creative endeavours of sick and healthy people: others, while noting traits of similarity, single out substantial differences, and, lastly, a third group see no fundamental difference between the artistic self-expression of the mentally ill and the exponents of modern avant-garde art (expressionism, abstract painting, surrealism). A special investigation into the aesthetic value of surrealistic and pathological works of art has been carried out by one of the major French psychiatrists H. Ey.* hallucinations, delirious experiences, nostalgia. fear, etc., are very demonstrative and are often used for didactic purposes. It is apparent that such an approach to the examination of the art activities of mental patients is predominantly of a practical character. The pictorial material presented in this collection has been used as the subject of a clinical analysis based not on the special features of transient psychopathological syndromes, but on the dynamics of the pathological process as a whole. This allowed the authors to demonstrate that, despite the different capacities and professional training of patients, as well as differences in genre and the objects depicted, the type of pictorial language used in drawings and other graphic representations by schizophrenic patients is largely determined by the course of the disease and the negative changes it has brought about. Academician A. V. Snezhnevsky, Director of the Institute of Psychiatry ofthe Academy of IVIedical Sciences, Moscow, USSR There are different aspects to the study of the artistic output of mental patients in scientific psychiatr/. Attention is most frequently attracted to the illustrative aspect - the reflection in drawings and other graphic representations of morbid manifestations -delirium, delusions of comprehension, acute affective disorders. Drawings depicting visual ¦Ey H.: La psychiatrie devant le surréalisme. Evol. Psychiat., 1948.