S. Dresden's "Psychoanalysis and Surrealism"

Today, I visited the Library of Congress again. As soon as I arrived, I requested a book that I assumed would be extremely useful to my research: Freud and the Humanities edited by Peregrine Horden. This book even contains an entire essay titled "Psychoanalysis and Surrealism" by S. Dresden.

Upon reading the first few pages of the essay, I found, much to my surprise, that Dresden's comparison of Surrealism and Psychoanalysis both confirmed my own views of their parallelism and also drew many contrasts between the two movements. These qualifications are definitely necessary in Dresden's analysis but do not retract from my thesis: the contrasting elements that Dresden points out are largely superficial and furthermore do not deny that Surrealism was in fact influenced by Freud in many ways.

S. Dresden's essay begins with a comparison of the beginnings of Surrealism and psychoanalysis. On pages 111 of the book itself (Freud and the Humanities), the essay ("Psychoanalysis and Surrealism") compares the beginnings of the movements, referencing frequent schisms early on:

Within the movement itself, which Freud would so dearly have liked to see firmly organized, schisms occurred again and again, and these...have continued right up to the present. The initial picture offered by the Surrealist school is remarkably similar.

Furthermore, the essay compares Sigmund Freud to Andre Breton on page 112. Referring to Breton, Dresden states that

Much like Freud, this leader would resort to excommunication (occasionally followed by reconciliation), and would dictate policies with an unflinching sense of his own superiority.

Aside from these superficial comparisons, which proved to be an interesting introduction, S. Dresden also reaffirms some of the ideas about which I have already written. For example, on page 120, he discusses automatic writing:

...the method of the [psycho]analyst consists primarily in allowing the patient to speak without guidance.... In many respects, therefore the process exactly resembles what Surrealism was aiming at in its automatic writing.... 

What matters is to see the parallel with the Surrealists's methods, a parallelism beautifully evidenced in the identical terms they used.

This analysis alone was enough to make me happy: after all, I have come to an identical conclusion (see my previous post, Free Associations and Automatism).

Dresden also reaffirms my theory that the Freudian theory of displacement had a major influence on Surrealist painting. On page 116, Dresden states

We may be even more surprised when we recall the fundamental importance to psychoanalysis of what Freud called the primary process -- condensation, displacement and symbolization. The Surrealists were certainly very much aware of these concepts; they availed themselves of them in both their literature and their art.

Again, I have already come to an identical conclusion (see my previous post, Dream-Displacement and Magritte's "Blank Signature").

Although most of S. Dresden's analyses are followed, almost universally, by a qualification stating "we find a crossing of paths -- and a rapid subsequent divergence" (page 126),  these analyses have still completely reaffirmed my own thoughts in almost identical rhetoric. Most of Dresden's attempts at contrasting the two movements are only superficial, making irrelevant and obvious statements like "They did not share a starting-point, nor did they intend to reach the same destination" (page 118), or referencing Freud's disgust for Surrealism [Freud is quoted on page 115 as calling the Surrealists "absolute (let us say 95 per cent, like alcohol) cranks"].