Neuroaesthetics and Psychoanalysis

Lois Oppenheim is Professor Emerita at Montclair State University, where she was named University Distinguished Scholar, and on the faculty of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute. She has previously authored or edited fifteen books, including Imagination from Fantasy to Delusion which was awarded the Courage to Dream Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association.

'Lois Oppenheim offers a brilliant consideration of what makes us human by investigating the question of why we value art. Her interdisciplinary approach through aesthetics, neuroscience, and psychoanalysis models the value of integrative thinking on an understanding of how we approach the crisis of not knowing what we need to know, the crisis of uncertainty. Her focus on the grounding of consciousness in feeling argues strongly against a reductive deterministic approach to human experience. Her presentation of the interrelation of curiosity, creativity, and crisis inspires hope for the future of humankind in the context of sociopolitical crisis.'Harriet Wolfe, M.D., Past President, International Psychoanalytical Association‘At last, a neuroscience of aesthetics based on a systematic exploration of the basic emotions.’Oliver Turnbull, Prof of Neuropsychology, Bangor University Wales, UK‘Deftly combining neuroscience, psychoanalysis and art, Lois Oppenheim opens up new ways of thinking about creativity. Challenging deterministic understandings of the aesthetically-engaged mind—whether in artists and writers or viewers and readers—she brings her immense erudition to bear on questions of what impels “the curiosity and creativity that characterize human experience.” Taking the mind to be an active agent, and imagination a human need, Oppenheim writes clearly, thoughtfully and with urgent concern about the crises jeopardizing the artistic freedoms she champions.’Nancy Princenthal, author, Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art and Unspeakable Acts: Women, Art, and Sexual Violence in the 1970s.

• 1. “Becoming Mind” 2. Beyond “Beyond the Pleasure Principle” 3. Curiosity and the Crisis of Uncertainty 4. The Imageless Image 5. Post Postmodernism 6. Conclusion: The Devalorization of the Intellectual in the 21st Century