ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the artistic nature of self as one of its core features; this is also central for psychoanalysis as well as therapeutically. The self builds continuity, composing and narrating. It is the narrating subject and object of the narrative. In the dream, the self is simultaneously the subject and the object, same as in art and psychotic delusion. The endless work of the self to sew up the shreds of subjectivity torn by suffering may be silent, as while sleeping/dreaming, when various brain regions communicate to consolidate or erase memories. The sailing ships indeed; an emerging self, always laboriously brought back to the surface, which leaps and bounces above the silent waters of the temptation of eternal rest; a self which is prevented from sinking through a word, a brushstroke. In madness and in the work of art, the one (the signifier) cannot be reduced to other (meaning), but they recombine in the subjective perception of the receiver.
