“The Portable Analyst” Part 2

Part 2 of 4 The discovery of self ; Louise Bourgeois; analysis and reparation in a room, in which we explore more deeplythe experience of an individual.

…I come from that background where we repaired the damage on the tapestries and the idea of repairing has stayed with me….Wanting to repair the past involves the experience of guilt, and guilt is present in all my work. (Bourgeois, 2019)

Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), the Franco-American artist famous for her enormous spider scultptures, was in analysis with Dr. Henry Lowenfeld from 1952 until his death in 1985. Towards the end of her life a dossier of “dreams, symptoms, memories, fantasies, anxieties, desires and complaints, interleaved with drawings, notes from her reading, post-session reflections, and occasional nuggets of analytic wisdom” (Nixon, 2012) emerged. It cannot be said on reading the notes and uncompromisingly honest reflections on her own internal landscapes or viewing the often tortured expressions of that internal world in her art, that she would have been a comfortable patient. Frances Morris, Director of Tate Modern interviewed her and said that she always felt intimidated by her. (Tate Museum of Modern Art, 2022)

A lightening discharge runs between my 2 temples and the challenge is experienced as terror, it is the chapter of Fear...fear or rather terror slays me, confuses me and makes me spinning around and completely deprived. It is not a question of learning for I am totally destroyed by fear…I am on the other side of despair, and this happens to me 4 times a day, I am fed up. (Bourgeois, 2019)

This is an extraordinary trove of the work of psychoanalysis continuing outside the consulting room. Rooms often appear in her work, some of them almost life size representations of uncanny homes and houses; some created as cells; reflecting the “container contained”. There is so much that one can distill from her thoughts, her work and her life that the temptation is to run away with her altogether. But for the purposes of the portable analyst perhaps we can focus on Bourgeois’ exhausting daily terror, from which she transforms “hate into love” (Tate Museum of Modern Art, 2022). The terrors can drive her into states of rage, for which she must make reparation; and from which she creates archetypes of the alchemy of the therapeutic relationship. Let us take a closer look at the Lady in Waiting in her room.

We see the room through a window, so it has light. There is a small figure in a beautifully tapestried chair, so we have the image of the joint work of patient and therapist, the tapestry of a narrative. If you see the original work, you will become aware that what look like piercing pins, are in fact spider legs. Spiders fascinated and inspired Bourgeois representing for her a protective maternal nature. Many people who see her artwork are disquieted by a fear of spiders in Western European culture while trying to accept her view. Disquiet is part of the work, too. (Küster, 2018)

If she breaks free might the tapestry be damaged and need to be repaired? Is she the patient? Or might she be the therapist pinned forever in the chair, not free to take breaks or leave without permission until repairs are completed?

Figure 1 Louise Bourgeois, Lady in Waiting, 2003, tapestry, thread, stainless steel, steel, wood and glass, 82 x 43 ½ x 58 inches (208 x 110 x 147 cm) © The Easton Foundation/VAGA at Artists Rights Society.

Click here for Part Three

Note:

“The portable analyst” - I borrowed the title from Mignon Nixon, describing a sculpture of Lowenthal by Louise Bourgeois. (Nixon, 2012)This is the second in a series of Clinical Memoirs. The first, Therapists and Patients at the Epicentre of a Pandemic of Not knowing can be found here www.therapyroute.com/article/therapists-and-patients-at-the-epicentre-of-a-pandemic--of-not-knowing-by-a-foster

Anne Foster, MA, FPC (Fellow), UKCP is a psychodynamic psychotherapist in private practice in Buckinghamshire, UK, although one of the strange gifts of the pandemic is the ability to be present for people through technology that makes borders truly liminal. She is a writer and presenter. anne@annefosterpractice.com

Works Cited - This bibliography refers to works consulted and cited in all four parts, and will be repeated in each part

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Akhtar, S. (2009). Comprehensive Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. London: Karnac.

Arquitectura-G. (2021). Leopold Banchini: Not Nomadic. apartamento(27), pp. 193-216.

Bourgeois, L. (2019). The Spider and the Tapestries. Berlin: Hatje Cantz Verlag.

Bronfen, E. (2012). Contending with the Father: Louise Bourgeois and her Aesthetics of Reparation. In P. Larratt-Smith (Ed.), Return of the Repressed (Vol. 1, pp. 101-114). London: Violette Ltd.

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Schinaia, C. (2016, 05 22). Psychoanalysis and Architecture: The Inside and the Ouside, by Cosimo Schinaia. Retrieved 05 29, 2018, from https://karanacology.com: karnacology.com/2016/05/22/psychonalysis-and-architecture

Schinaia, C. (2016). Psychoanalysis and Architecture; The Inside and the Outside. London: Karnac.

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Tate Museum of Modern Art. (2022, March 18). The Art of Louise Bourgeois. Retrieved 2022, from www.tate.org.uk/art/artists: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351/art-louise-bourgeois

The Art Of Memory; Pierre Bonnard. (2019, January 2021). London, England. Retrieved November 14, 2021, from https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/pierre-bonnard-781/art-memory

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Who is Louise Bourgeois. (2022, March 18). Retrieved from www.tate.org.uk/kibds: https://www.tate.org.uk/kids/explore/who-is/who-louise-bourgeois

Zagajewski, A. (2021, May 14). Tart Cherries, Sweet Cherries. Times Literary Supplement, 11. (C. Cavanagh, Trans.)