ABSTRACT
Painting comes in as a jumping-off place; it was the surprise of discovering the power to make "free" drawings that concentrated the writer's attention on this problem of subjectivity or subjective action. At a comparatively late stage of emotional development, what is familiar in psycho-analytic literature about unconscious conflict between love and hate in interpersonal relationships is relevant, and indeed this paved the way for all other statements. Psycho-analysts are accustomed to thinking of the arts as wish-fulfilling escapes from the knowledge of the discrepancy between inner and outer, wish and reality. It may come as a bit of a shock to some of them to find a psycho-analyst drawing the conclusion, after careful study, that this wish-fulfilling illusion may be the essential basis for all true objectivity. In practice psycho-analysts, just like other people, love the arts and value the work of those who traffic in illusion.
