The problem is not new, but the insights into its origin have become clearer. In a larger artistic context it is well to remember Bram Dijkstra’s study Idols of Perversity (1986) with its turn-of-the-century images of temptingly dangerous hypersexualized women. By studying paintings of the era he found “a veritable iconography of misogyny” which he linked to a crisis in late nineteenth-century masculinity and the coming fascist trend in Europe.17 Dijkstra’s startling compendium shows that art at the end of the Victorian era was anything but peaceably repressed, that it was as agitated by fear and avoidance of women as is our own, and that artists were highly resourceful in representing sexual anxiety. But this art had not yet supplanted the sentimental idealization of nature and domesticity, with men, women and children still set in hierarchical order. Dijkstra’s chosen painters were not yet true fantasy-leaders sweeping aside an old morality, though they were a portent of those capable of doing so. As his is a cultural phenomenology, Dijkstra does not attempt psychobiographical accounts of the painters’ reasons for idealizing and fearing women with such intensity. He does, however, set the stage for enquiring into reasons for feeling that women are treacherous and sometimes overpowering.
The present study of four artists stops short of a broader social analysis of how the arts in our time particularly have increased and intensified sadistic misogyny. To do so would require a larger sample and more systematic study. It would also need to ask cross-cultural questions about female subjugation and sacrifice in attempts to regulate relations between the sexes. A broad socio-anthroplogy is called for, with particular reference to the modern and post-modern western world. Imagery purveyed in films, television and the popular press would need to be surveyed. There is no doubt that Picasso, Bellmer, Balthus and Cornell present females as adored yet sacrificial objects. Had this been said in their presence, each would no doubt have taken it as an irrelevant accusation, pointing to the primacy of the art of painting (or constructing boxes) as its own justification. sacrifice of females was no part of conscious intention when the objective was only to complete a successful work of art. Anything else was beside the point. The purpose here is simply to use psychodynamic concepts to build psychobiographies showing readers where the imagery of anxiety and avoidance of women, characteristic of such European and American males, actually “comes from”. A family-system analysis, with emphasis on mothering, has been used to locate the probable sources of each artist’s sexual and relational anxiety. A new psychobiographical procedure derived from attachment theory is used throughout in the hope that further studies might refine it and improve its plausibility. By this means I have attempted to complete the circle of communication that art usually leaves enigmatically incomplete. There is no such thing as a fully isolated work of art.
Notes
1. In the Rites of Man: Love, Sex and Death in the Making of the Male (London: Grafton
Books, 1991), Rosalind Miles notices that for Freud, “mother love was inescapably sexual, violently emotional, and burdened with all the mother’s desires and drives as well as her son’s awakening needs” (p. 21), but she does not follow through with discussion of how this affects avoidance of normal sexuality as, for example, does Matthew Besdine in “The Jocasta Complex, Mothering and Genius (Parts 1 and 2),” Psychoanalytic Review 55 (1968).
2. Joan Smith,Misogynies (London: Faber & Faber, 1989), pp. 152-3.
3. Marilyn French, The War Against Women (New York: Summit Books, 1992), p. 182.
4. Rosalind Miles, The Rites ofMan, p. 211 Miles rightly calls male aggression “the principal
life-threatening disease of our time”, p. 210.
5. Ibid. p. 214.
6. Marilyn French, p. 163.
7. David D. Gilmour, Misogyny: The Male Malady (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), p. 155.
8. See Andrew Brink, Obsession and Culture: A Study of Sexual Obsession in Modern Fiction (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996), p. 36f for discussion of Besdine’s insights beyond the Oedipus complex.
9. Gilmour, p. 158.
10. Adam Jukes, Why Men Hate Women (London: Free Association Books, 1993), pp. xiv, xxix; see also p. xxxi and p. 321.
11. Ibid., pp. xxvi-xxvii.
12. Ibid., p. 5.
13. Ibid., p. 53.
14. Ibid., p. 156-7. As Jukes writes, “Reparation, to be successful, must have at its heart a true concern for the object and genuine guilt about the damage one is inflicting on it, both internally and externally. Without this, it is mere sentimentality.” (p. 156)
15. Lee Lakeman, Obsession with Intent: Violence Against Women (Montreaclass="underline" Black Rose Books, 2005), p. 17.
16. Peter Fonagy, “Male Perpetrators of Violence Against Women: An Attachment Theory Perspective”, Journal of Applied Psychoanalytic Studies, 1 (1999): 7-27; http://psychematters.com/papers/fonagy 5.htm. pp. 1, 7, 10. For the “D” (disorganized) attachment classification see especially Erik Hesse, “The Adult Attachment Interview: Historical and Current Perspectives) in Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research and Clinical Applications, Jude Cassidy and Philip R. Shaver eds. (New York: Guilford Press, 1999), p. 399 and Index. Fonagy points out that Donald G. Dutton’s The Abusive Personality (1998) misses the point that prior to conflict with father, there must have been a disordered predisposition from failure of mothering. (See Dutton, p. 145 etc.)
17. Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-De-Siecle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. viii. The analysis is continued in Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality and the Cult of Manhood (New York: Knopf, 1996). For misogyny in popular culture see Jane Caputi, Goddesses and Monsters: Women, Myth, Power and Popular Culture. (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004) .
Selected Bibliography
(The following is a selected bibliography designed to help readers find illustrations of the art objects referred to in the text. The asterisked titles** should be consulted for the most abundant and best produced illustrations.)
1 Introducing Attachment Theory
Bartholomew, Kim. “Avoidance of Intimacy: An Attachment Perspective.” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 70 (1990): 173.
-.“Attachment Styles Among Young Adults: A Test of a Four-Category
Model.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 61, no. 2 (1991): 226-44
Cassidy, Jude and Shaver, Philip R., eds. Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications. New York/ London: The Guilford Press, 1999.