PULSE Book Talk: Gabriela Goldstein Art and Psychoanalysis

This book explores the concept of estrangement from a psychoanalytic perspective, intertwining art and aesthetics to offer a paradigm of the aesthetic experience.

Gabriela Goldstein suggests that an unexpected encounter with a work of art may lead to a state of poetic estrangement, promoting a possible reorganization of its subject’s psychic economy. The conceptual work is illuminated with vignettes exploring the experience of this state of estrangement, reflecting on the encounter between the subject and the other/Other, between analyst and patient and in the framework provided by the analytical situation. Finally, Goldstein considers how the metapsychology of aesthetic experience and its research contribute to clinical understanding of processes of deficient symbolization.

Art and Psychoanalysis will be key reading for psychoanalysts, artists, researchers, and teachers of art and psychoanalysis. It will also be of great interest to art therapists, students of art and the humanities, as well as other readers interested in an in-depth understanding of the aesthetic experience and creative processes.

Gabriela Goldstein is a psychoanalyst, architect, and artist. She has served as president of the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association and is recognized for her publications on the relationship between art and psychoanalysis, among other topics. As a painter, she has exhibited her work in galleries in Argentina and abroad.

She has held several solo and group exhibitions in Argentina and abroad. She graduated with a degree in psychology and trained as a psychoanalyst at the Argentine Psychoanalytic Association, of which she is an associate member, as well as at the International Psychoanalytic Association (IPSO), where she has served on committees such as Vice President for Latin America, in addition to presenting papers at national and international congresses and meetings. She is currently an adjunct professor of training seminars at the APA. She has won awards such as the MOM-Baranger Prize for best monograph in psychoanalysis, and the A Storni Prize (special mention) for conceptual contributions to psychoanalysis.