ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses preliminary issues concerning "Freud's aesthetics". It examines the account of art and the artist in relation to central features of psychoanalysis such as dream analysis. The chapter seeks to explore these psychoanalytic views about art and the artists in terms of key long-standing questions in philosophical aesthetics. S. Freud's views on art, artists and the nature of artistic creation are intrinsically connected to psychoanalysis. His discussion of the meaning of an artwork is virtually always cast in terms of psychoanalytic theory. On Freud's account, to understand art it is necessary to focus on artists and the artistic process as psychoanalytically conceived. Artists, like academics, may like to believe that they are sacrificing money, power, and prestige for the integrity of their art or intellectual pursuits. Elaborating Freud's views on artists and art takes us further into psychoanalytic theory generally rather than in the direction of his specific views on art.
