ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Freudian psychology to grasp the fundamental principles of the psychoanalytic aesthetic, developed in recent years by Freud and his many disciples. Baudouin distinguishes two different classes of complex, innate and acquired, 'les complexes primitifs' and 'les complexes personnels', the former, seated in the primitive unconscious, being inherited and common to the entire human race, the latter, seated in the subconscious, being determined by the peculiar environment of each individual and therefore varying according to circumstances. Therefore the work of art represents the result of the unconscious activity of its creator, while contemplation releases in its turn a similar subconscious activity in the listener, the reader, or the spectator. The fundamental characteristic of the poet is to be found in his capacity, owing to the peculiar development of his instinctive life, for expressing certain universally human conflicts in a socially recognized form.
