Alice Miller (née Alicija Englard) was born on the 12th of January 1923 in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, into a Jewish family. She established herself in Switzerland in 1946, studying philosophy in Basel, then psychoanalysis in Zurich. Her book The Drama of the Gifted Child , initially published in 1979 in Frankfurt, caused a stir in 1981, becoming an […]
Category Archives: Psychology
Yves Tanguy: Decoding Surrealism
posted by ArtLark
On the 5th of January 1900, the French surrealist painter Yves Tanguy was born in Paris. The journey that led him to his eventual profession as a painter can be described as one worthy of any decent surrealist. In 1918, Tanguy started working for the merchant navy; he was then drafted into the Army, but […]
Art into Science in Rorschach’s Psychiatry
posted by ArtLark
On the 8th of November 1884, Swiss Freudian psychiatrist Hermann Rorschach was born in Zürich. He was famous for devising the inkblot test which he believed helped reflect unconscious parts of the subject’s personality as projected onto the visual stimuli. Following his art teacher father Ulrich, from an early age, Hermann found himself strongly drawn to painting […]
Orson Welles: Media and Mass Hysteria
posted by ArtLark
On the 30th of October 1938, the U.S. radio network CBS broadcast an audio drama from the Mercury Theatre on the Air series adapted from English sci-fi writer H. G. Wells’ 1898 novel The War of the Worlds. This special Halloween edition was directed and narrated by a 23-year old Orson Welles, future Hollywood filmmaker. […]
Controversy in Allegory: Masson and Courbet
posted by ArtLark
On the 28th of October 1987, the French Surrealist artist André Masson died at the respectable age of 91 in Paris. Important exponent of automatism in the visual arts, Masson worked in a manner equivalent to the literary ‘stream of consciousness’, allowing his hand free rein from conscious thought and premeditated composition. He was said […]
Karen Horney: Beyond Feminine Psychology in
posted by ArtLark
On the 16th of September 1885, German, U.S. based Neo-Freudian psychoanalyst Karen Horney was born in Blankenese, near Hamburg, Germany. Her theories famously questioned some traditional Freudian views, especially on sexuality and the instinct orientation in psychoanalysis. She is credited with founding feminist psychology in response to Freud’s theory of penis envy, disagreeing with Freud about […]
Françoise Dolto: Unconscious Body Image in Child Psychoanalysis
posted by ArtLark
On the 25th of August 1988, French paediatrician and psychoanalyst Françoise Dolto died in Paris, France. She is mainly known for her pioneering work in the field of child psychoanalysis and her contribution to the development of the ‘unconscious body image’ theory. She was born to a well-to-do Parisian family of engineers. Right from the start, […]
Reality TV: The (Not So) Candid Camera
posted by ArtLark
On the 10th of August 1948, Candid Camera, an American hidden camera/practical joke reality series created and produced by Allen Funt was aired on television. It initially began on radio as The Candid Microphone and after a series of theatrical film shorts, the format was adopted to the screen where it ran successfully until May 2004. A 1969 article records how, “Since its inception […]
George Grosz: War→Madness→Dada
posted by ArtLark
On the 26th of July 1893, German artist George Grosz was born in Berlin. From an early age, Grosz had passionate ideological views. In January 1919, he was arrested during the Spartakus uprising in Berlin, a general strike accompanied by armed battles, which was being suppressed by the Weimar government, marking the end of the […]