1

Pablo Picasso fragmented a Kleinian view Mark Eccles, June 2011. Dr Alejandro Martini. Instituto Hlenico.

"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso is one of the 20th centuries artists that come, as a psychoanalyst might say with a lot of baggage. There are the endless stories of his genius and power as an artist and as a human being. I would like to set aside most of the general narratives that surround the artist and to focus instead directly on a couple of the paintings; viewing them in the light of a psychoanalytic approach. I will base my methodology on the work of Melanie Klein, yet I shall not be confined to her studies, for as Picasso himself might have said - one needs to steal in and out of life for ones inspiration. So, there may be time for the inclusion of some Freudian ideas, as well as some brief interruptions from Winnicott and Mahler. One thing the theories of all of these psychoanalytic characters have in common is their conclusion that we are all the accumulation of our infant experience. Childhood is the key, so with childhood we should begin. That being said - we are all born into this world with something. Freud has said we come into this world with a set of drives, these drives push us at once towards life on the one hand (Eros) and towards death and destruction on the other (Thanatos)1. This two toned or bipolar idea is taken up in the work of Melanie Klein, who divides the experience into the good breast and the bad breast. Klein separates the development of the human psychological make up, or growth of the individual psychological personality into two phases The paranoid schizoid phase or position, followed by the depressive phase or position.
1

Freud has made clear that as humans we are hopelessly enslaved to two central instinctual drives, one towards life, the instinct of life or Eros, which is complemented by another drive towards death, known as Thanatos. See: Varios. (1973): Freud and Psychoanalysis. Salvat Editores, Barcelona pp.106.

Klein agrees with Freuds early stage theory (Oedipus complex)2 but posits that the whole process is happening far earlier than Freud had ever anticipated. For Klein, the child experiences the two already mentioned positions within the first year of life, both of which can be absorbed into the wider spectrum that is the oral stage of life. In her Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein, Hanna Segal has noted that In the paranoid schizoid position the infant is unaware of the distinctions that exist between objects, specifically persons; the relationship is developed partially - as fragments of the infants world are absorbed into his or her personality. Here the child feels paranoid anxiety as a result of these splitting processes.3 The depressive stage begins as and when the child recognizes his mother as a whole object; she is seen as the integrated whole, she is capable of love and affection yet she is at once seen as the reason for frustration and anxiety. The so-called depressive stage comes in response to the infants earlier defences, which had (as part of its internal defence mechanism) created a destructive fantasy related to the mother figure. The infant attacks the mother figure, or projects its own feelings of security and comfort, depending on whether it interprets a good or bad situation - which is represented by the breast. Thus there is the good breast and the bad breast. Upon realization that the two are in fact one and the same, the child enters into a guilty depressive stage of development. It is important to note that Klein calls the infant stance positional due to the fact that there is never really a passing stage that the infant never really grows beyond the paranoid schizoid stage into the depressive stage; they persist into adult life and remain until death. Critically then, the depressive stage never succeeds to take over the psychological situation; moreover the subject merely continues to oscillate between the two depending on their levels of personal control and perceived anxiety.4

2In

psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boys desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father. 3Hanna Segal. Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein. Basic Books, New York, 1964. Cpt2, PP11-26. 4Melanie Klein. Tomo 3, Envidia y Gratitud. Paidos, 1994, Barcelona. PP70-97.

Klein says that we develop a system of neurotic reactions during this process. Paranoid and depressive anxieties remain but as the ego develops it learns to integrate and to develop a relatively secure relationship with the realities presented. What happens is a gradual move towards neurotic behaviour away from psychotic behaviour the child continues to develop, depressive anxieties are modified and become less severe, and so anxiety lessens as reparation, sublimation and creativity emerge to replace the psychotic and neurotic mechanisms of defence.5 What exactly happens in the process then? Klein says that every child is born with sufficient ego in order to experience anxiety and thus to create rapidly defence mechanisms in the face of this perceived threat. Here the infant creates a deformed fantasy based on object-relations. The child interprets the breasts as the first object and defines them into the two categories of good and bad breast. Within the child bursts the inborn polarity already pointed to by Freud, the drives towards death and destruction vie with the drives towards life. This polarity is reflected in the infants reality, as represented by the warmth and security of the womb as opposed to birth; in the warmth, love and feeding received from the mother as opposed to the deprivation of that love and satisfaction of every need as and when it occurs. The child feels the death instinct and it is terrified and must deflect that away from the ego. (Later we shall recall Picassos own constant obsessive fear and denial of death). What happens is the child projects the death instinct away from itself, also, it converts it into aggression. The ego divides, projecting part of itself outwardly into the nearest object (the breast), thus the breast is felt to contain a great part of the death instinct and is read by the infant as a threat that must be destroyed. The threat to the ego is met in equal part by the aggression the infant feels towards the persecutory object. Thus the divided parts of the infants own fantasized personalities are in constant conflict, this way the infants ego is made to feel more secure as the threat has been negated.6

6Ibid, Cpt2, PP 11-26

Hanna Segal. Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein. Basic Books, New York, 1964.Cpt5, PP 54-69.

At the same time there is the development of the ideal object. Here the infant harnesses the libido and projects outward towards the creation of yet another fantasy, which satisfies the infants constant striving for life, the good breast is created. Remember at this point the child is unable to see the reality of the breasts, that they are in fact part of the grander object that is the mother. The infant learns to introject the good it feels (satisfaction of needs and calming of the annihilation anxiety) whilst projecting the bad (denial of needs, frustrations and present annihilation anxiety). Gratification keeps the child safe from the terrifying anxiety caused by the death instincts, whilst deprivation causes the child to experience the highest forms of anxiety as the threat of annihilation completely takes over. Here the infant experiences the persecutory objects (hands or breasts) as capable of breaching the inner defences and entirely subsuming the reality of the child. The situation is always moving and threats may suddenly fall away as quickly as they appear. The infant learns how to separate the idealized objects from the persecutory objects in a process known as splitting7. In this way the child may protect the idealized object from the perceived harm represented by the negative object. Finally, arising from the original death instinct projection we find projective identification. This is a defence mechanism that sees parts of the self split off and projected onto external objects, which in turn becomes possessed by those same projected parts. This mechanism fulfils various requirements: it may be directed toward the ideal object to avoid separation (thus the child will always have control of that good breast as it will be internalized as part of the infants own personality) or it may be directed towards the bad object in order to gain greater control over the perceived source of danger.

7Splittingislinkedtotheincreasingidealizationoftheidealobject.Itisadefensemechanismthatseeksto

keeptheidealobjectatasafedistancefromtheperceivedthreatorsourceofanxiety.See:Hanna Segal. Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein. Basic Books, New York, 1964. Cpt2, PP11-26.

5
Fig 1

The Artist's Mother (Maria Picasso Lopez) (1896) Pastel on paper 49.8x39cm Picasso Museum, Barcelona.

If we look at the pastel executed by Picasso of his mother (Fig 1) we can see how he has in many ways idealized her appearance. She is depicted here as youthful and voluptuous, more than capable of providing the kind of loving care and warmth that the infant Picasso was so much in need of. Her gaze is downward (towards the invisible infant Picasso), passing over her ample breasts, her skin is soft, and she appears caring and loving.
Fig 2

The Artist's Mother (Maria Picasso Lopez) (1896) Watercolor on paper 19.5x12cm Picasso Museum, Barcelona.

If we compare another image of his mother produced that same year when Picasso was still just 15 years old we can see how there is confusion in what Picasso is able to conjure from his inner feelings towards his mother. In the watercolor image (Fig 2) she is far more solemn, she is grey, cold and withdrawn, her gaze is silenced as her eyes are closed, a sure sign of a mother not so forthcoming in the providing of the necessary care (good breast). Indeed her breast is shown depleted, hidden away behind the folds of her conservative dress; the youthful tenderness of her flesh has given way to a flimsy skin, closer to death. Indeed she appears to be sleeping, rigid in her manner - the world unworthy of attention - her love and affection withheld. It is entirely possible that the subject may have at once the idea of the good and bad breast within himself as has been expressed in the images of his mother produced by Picasso. By all accounts Picassos mother loved the infant Pablo so much that she rarely let him out of her sight, as Wilson has noted: Born on October 25, 1881 in Malaga, Spain, young Picasso spent his child-hood surrounded by ve women; his over-protective mother, grandmother, two unmarried, subservient aunts and a nurse. All ve women adored him, spoiled him and catered to his every need. His mother Maria, who loved Picasso above all else (Miller, 1990) ruled over her introverted, depressed husband and by most accounts, totally absorbed her son (Kavanaugh, 1995). Fifty years later, Picassos mother would describe her son as an angel, and a devil for beauty. You couldnt take your eyes off him.8 This attention saturation may well have been enough to disturb Pablos natural psychological growth towards a balanced and realistic relationship with the world (and the objects within it). Naturally the result of such matriarchal dominance and insistent support may not always be in the childs best interest; it may have led little Pablo to the idea that the world had no boundaries, that little Pablo could indeed do what he wanted when he wanted.

Marie Wilson. From Obsession to Betrayal: The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso, Art Therapy Program, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey, USA, 2004.

For Klein, the normal development or healthy development of each individual necessitates the internalization of the idea that there is more good in the world than there is bad. But what if the infant was led to believe that he was fit only for good? What happens when the child then comes to face what may be a frustrating or anxious moment? If the early life processes of splitting and projection have not been fully experienced then perhaps the child (and subsequently the adult) will be prone to attacks of neurotic behaviors, the inability to tolerate pain, the illusion of death as something horrific and intolerable perhaps.9 No surprise then that the child Picasso was unable to tolerate school and was noted for his bad behavior and lack of discipline.10 It is generally agreed that Picasso was probably dyslexic; but his inability to learn or to tolerate the frustration implicit in the learning process point towards an incomplete paranoid schizoid process. Picasso was quite capable of throwing huge tantrums in class when he didnt get things his way. Furthermore, Picasso would become very disorganized and frail whenever he was forced to be away from the bosom of the family home where he was doted on by his mother and aunts. Desperate to assuage the young Picasso, his father eventually agreed to allow him to leave and to attend a private school where he was allowed to abstain from the tedium of regular school and to concentrate solely upon his one love drawing.11 It is then not beyond the realms of possibility that Picasso was psychologically retarded in the sense that he had been overly protected as an infant and was now prone to feelings of sudden extreme anxiety as a result of his increased withdrawal from that protective circle. Increasingly, there is the need to exercise the feelings of death related to the underlying Thanatos drives.

Picasso was famously terrified of death; he refused to countenance the idea of death in his life, refused to talk of sickness, refused to attend funerals (even his own fathers). See: Picasso: Magic, Sex and Death. Produced by ZCZ Films for Channel 4. Presented by John Richardson. 10Marie Wilson. From Obsession to Betrayal: The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso, Art Therapy Program, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey, USA, 2004. 11 Ibid

Frustration and anxiety start to form the motives for Picassos art to come; here he could project his good breast and bad breast, his splitting of reality could be creatively exercised. Picasso grew up with five women and it would be five women again that possessed his every move for six months in the spring of 1907. In order to paint more honestly he isolates himself. He now locks himself away in a basement in Montmartre, he is naked, sweating and in touch with his most primal self. Les Demoiselles dAvignon was completed in 1907 and is considered by many critics to be the most important painting of the 20th century. In it, Picasso has exercised his deepest inner turmoil. Does he in fact here come into contact with the anxiety he felt during his infant years? Does he here project the fears and love that he felt in equal measure at any one time for his family members? Before we begin to look at a reproduction of the painting it is interesting to read what critic John Burger has said of the piece:

Yet it did provoke the beginning of the great period of exception in Picassos life. Nobody can know exactly how the change began inside Picasso. We can only note the results. Les Demoiselles dAvignon, unlike any previous painting by Picasso, offers no evidence of skill. On the contrary, it is clumsy, overworked, unfinished. It is as though his fury in painting it was so great that is destroyed his gifts12

12Berger, John (1965). The Success and Failure of Picasso. Penguin Books, Ltd.. p. 73.


Fig 3

Les demoiselles dAvignon, 1907,

MOMA New York

Oil on Canvass, 243,9 x 233,7cm The destruction picked up by Berger in his review is the same destruction we encounter at the heart of the paranoid schizoid process. It is too much an aspersion to consider that the five women here represent those five women in the household in which the infant Picasso grew up. Yet it is highly likely that those same women inspire this image, that deep down in the back of Picassos subconscious, the feelings he once felt were able to surface again here at a time when he perhaps least expected it to happen - when he was thinking about prostitutes; he was in fact thinking about the destructiveness of an earlier time, here he can project all of it until he has exercised it from his being.

10

Looking at this fragment from the painting it is highly idealized.13 Here the painter has projected all of his good feeling for health and for the idea of the satisfaction of desires (in this case sexual). This is the good breast, untainted; the bowl of fresh fruit below only adds to the notion of implicit sating of wants. This figure is free of anxiety and offers herself wholly to the viewer (and to Picasso). There is no threat or danger, the skin is healthy and clean, free of disease, and the death drive is absent from the gaze.

woman1

13

In the idealized object, the libido is projected outward towards an object that is deemed to be worthy of goodness. This is how the ego decides where it will place its trust in the quest for survival. The ego must survive, so in order to do so it needs ideal objects, the subject establishes libidinal relationships. This object will provide gratifying experiences of love. See: Hanna Segal. Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein. Basic Books, New York, 1964. Cpt2, PP11-26.

11

The second figure has already begun to absorb some of the painters anxiety, she is tilted and a slight discoloration of the skin has occurred. Her face has an anxious slant as she grasps at the sheet. She is still to be considered a good object, yet her standing leg has buckled and she may fall forward at any minute. It is as though she is aware of the passing moment; she is beginning to become tainted by the bad.

woman2

She now holds up the curtain. She is tainted, she looks away from us; she is ill and moves towards death (syphilis?) Picasso has deposited more of his anxiety and feels uncomfortable with his object, there is a growing need to protect himself from the perceived threat. The figures leg is deformed; her body is no longer available as an object of pleasure. She looms threateningly towards the central (healthy and good) figures.

woman3

12 The figure now absorbs all of the painters neurotic anxiety. Here is a grotesque image where Picasso rents his violence; the face is deformed almost to the point of a mask like existence. The humanity is drained and the woman has become beastlike.

This is the terrifying reality of infant anxiety;

woman4

she is the harbinger of death, the token of destruction. Into her Picasso pours his own

destructive energy, he seeks to rid himself of it, to protect his ego, to protect that idea of freshness and health as represented by the woman 1 figure.

Finally the most fragmented of all the images shows death itself. This is what Picasso fears the most. It is grim and is what the infant thinks will happen if he is left to the devices of image 4. This is new territory. The infant never arrives at this stage unless it is totally neglected and dies. What we find then is that Picasso puts at the centre of his painting the
woman5

healthier good object, whilst pushing away to the periphery all that he sees as bad. Here Picasso is

examining his fear, whilst protecting himself and his ego, he cannot allow these anxieties to overwhelm him. This process of ego protection is also touched upon in the work of Freud, Mahler and Winnicott. Mahler, taking her lead from Freud, recognizes the absolute essential nature of the mother-infant connection; the infant is dependent upon the mother to such an extent that the bond is never broken and remains throughout life.

13

This is what Mahler has called the normal phase of human symbiosis.14 This is described as a state of fusion; the child experiences the mother as actually part of himself, and establishes a common boundary with himself and the mother figure. This stage continues through the first 6 months of the babys life, "as though he and his mother were an omnipotent system-a dual unity with one common boundary."15 As with Kleins good and bad breast, in this case, any unpleasant sensations are projected outside of the protective zone represented by this infant fantasy, the symbiotic perfect state. This is an infant state where there is little or no differentiation between the inside and the outside. The mother functions by adapting herself purely to the needs of the infant, thus the child develops a sense of what is known as magical omnipotence.16 Here the child develops a feeling of all is well and the idea that they may simply magic away harmful or unpleasant feelings. Talking to Andre Malraux of the moment he conceived of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Picasso makes his position clear. His clarification of motive makes it clear, to me at least, that we are on the right track when we employ our Kleinian schema to interpret his masterpiece Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. The key words here for me are: 1-all alone; 2-exorcism; 3-disgusting. All alone in that awful museum with masks, dolls made by the redskins, dusty manikins. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon must have come to me that very day, but not at all because of the forms; because it was my first exorcism painting -- yes absolutely!...When I went to the old Trocadero, it was disgusting. The Flea Market. The smell. I was all alone. I wanted to get away. But I didn't leave. I stayed. I stayed. I understood that it was very important: something was happening to me, right?17

14

M. S. Mahler, On Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation (New York: International Universities Press, 1968). 15Ibid 16The created fantasy that helps a child to come to terms with painful or intolerable realities. It is the construction of a false psychological reality. 17 Read: Arianna Huffington Picasso: Creator and Destroyer: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1988/06/picasso-creator-and-destroyer/5715/17/

14

Spitz has made the link between the loving joys felt by the infant at the symbiotic stage and the aesthetic pleasures experienced in art and art production, aesthetic emotion and the sense of beauty can be linked to this symbiotic state.18 So all that Picasso senses as threatening, or belonging to that bad breast or outside of the symbiotic realm, he deposits in his art, all that is not part of his mother connection can here be sublimated. Pablo Picasso was born Pablo Ruiz Picasso and decided to drop his paternal name and adopt the name of his mother. This was an unusual move for a young man born into the macho world of bullfighting, such as it was in Malaga at the time. Pablo had a love hate relationship with his father who he regarded in many ways as his first and best teacher on the one hand, yet a tremendous failure and source of frustration on the other. Pablos father had wanted his son to become a traditional painter, to paint the kind of realistic academic images that we see in Pablos early works - that way he could be relatively rich and relatively famous within the field. However, Pablo saw how his father was weak; he viewed the life of an academic painter as just one path towards repeating his fathers mistakes and decided to rebel. His mother was the boss of the house she had a tyrannical control of household events. Picasso must have experienced this a something he did not want for himself.19 In his father, the young Picasso found the perfect depository for his own fears regarding failure; in his father he sees the need to go, to search and to reveal what was for Picasso the reality of his experience, his inner turmoil. It is this fear of failure that we can link to the death drives within Picasso, something abhorrent and intolerable to his being due to the fact that he lacked the inner mechanisms that meant he could successfully channel away from himself the anxiety. For Pablo Picasso the threat of failure is immense and drives him towards his greatest achievements.

18Ellen

19Marie Wilson. From Obsession to Betrayal: The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso,

Handler Spitz. The past of Illusion: A Contribution of Child Psychoanalysis to the Understanding of Aesthetic Experience. Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1982), pp.59-69 Art Therapy Program, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey, USA, 2004.

15

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was painted in a frenzy of artistic pride on the one hand (the threat of his reputation being demolished by Matisse is largely held to be the reason for his pushing himself so far in the production of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) and his desire to unearth those deeper psychological conundrums that plagued his subconscious mind. To paint, one has to kill ones father20 said the young painter as he continued to move his art forward in ever more conscious ways, destroying his fathers idea of what art should be and what he wanted for his son. Pablo Picasso regards much of his work as the process of destruction. As he himself has said: A picture used to be a sum of additions. In my case a picture is a sum of destructions. I do a picture then I destroy it. In the end, though, nothing is lost; the red I took away from one place turns up somewhere else Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather transforms it, condenses it, makes it more substantial.21 As Klein notes, the bad breast is hated by the infant to such an extent that it must be destroyed. In the fantasies developed by the infant as part of its ego defense mechanism the infant bites and consumes the breast, (in thought) it devours the breast as it is viewed as the source of all frustration and hate. The infant seeks to annihilate the bad breast. The artist can destroy and recreate at will, as though he has full control of that facility we have already named magic omniscience. The sentiment (fantasy) of the infant may be described thus I have destroyed my mother, she has disappeared, maybe she will never return, she is suffering, she is dead. No, this cannot be, because I have the power to revive her.22

20 21

See: Biography - Pablo Picasso: A Primitive Soul [VHS] (2000) Pablo Picasso. (1881-1973) Conversation with Picasso. Reproduced in: Art in Theory 1900-2000 Edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, 2003. See Modernism as Critique, P.507-510 22Melanie Klein. Tomo 3, Envidia y Gratitud. Paidos, 1994, Barcelona. PP70-97.

16

So with the child, so the artist too, who can use his inherent magic powers to negate all negativity that threatens his ego, he can create and recreate as he destroys. Just as the infant in the symbiotic stage, as noted by Winnicott: The mother, at the beginning, by almost 100 per cent adaptation affords the infant the opportunity for the illusion that her breast is part of the infant. It is, as it were, under magical control.... In another language, the breast is created by the infant over and over again out of the infant's capacity to love or (one might say) out of need.23 The duality of the good and bad breast remained a constant part of Picassos art throughout his career. He never really gets away from the early paranoid-schizoid dilemmas set up in his infancy. In this image Picasso tries to merge the two elements, but it is awkward. He still lacks the ability to see the whole picture at once and can only give us a fragmented idea of what he is thinking about or trying to communicate from his deep subconscious.
Fig 4

The figure is split in two as Picasso tussles with the notion of possibility - of duality; that the good and the bad may be present within the very same object, in this case the naked female figure. It is a confused response to the inner desire to expel that part which is experienced as bad, yet remain in touch with that part which is good, the latter is internalized, the projections idealized.

Femme Nue, 1941. Oil on Canvass, 92 X 65cm, Paris.

23

D. W. Winnicott. Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 34 (1953): 94, 95.

17

Pablo Picasso always had a tumultuous relationship with women. There is no doubt that we have plenty of evidence in existence that point toward his behaviors regarding sexual excess, romantic intrigue and relationship dysfunction. Again, these behaviors suggest that Pablo Picasso did not have a normal development during the schizoid-paranoid and subsequent depressive periods of his psychological development as an infant. His childhood was unconventional in that his father was a ghost like figure, withdrawn and defeated, compared to the dominant mother figure who was accompanied in the household by her two sisters, mother and housekeeper. It is possible that Picasso would do all he could in adult life to avoid the death like defeat of his father. That he would refuse to be dominated by women.24 If Pablo wasnt able to get what he required from his mother, he had four other doting women ready on hand to respond to his every whim. Pablo, never learnt what frustration was, and when he did finally come into contact with it, he saw it as death itself and sort at all costs to get it far away from himself, from his ego. Neurotic responses to perceived threats may include feelings of loneliness and despair, which Picasso was able to keep at bay - firstly using his charm and creative power; then using his fame, money and power. Picasso uses women in his life like a drug. They first appear as wonderful and into them he pours all of his projected love and admiration. This phase is never permanent as frustrations enter in and Picasso slowly sets about the destructive phase of his relationships. The same pattern is repeated over and over again with a succession of women. Always there is the idealized projection of the good breast, followed by disappointment and rejection, followed by the projection of violence and aggression towards the object.25

24Marie

Wilson. From Obsession to Betrayal: The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso, Art Therapy Program, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey, USA, 2004. 25Ibid


Fig 5

18

This portrait of the artists soon to be wife (Fig 5) shows how far Picasso was willing to go when he felt the good breast was at hand. In order to create the life he thought he wanted Picasso was able to tone down his creative style in favour of a more somber classical style. He pictures his love Olga; she is idealized, sensual, and respectable. Olga was able to offer Picasso a new way of life; he abandons the chaotic world of the Paris Bohemia circles and plunges headlong into Olgas bourgeois world.
Portrait of Olga in the Armchair. 1917. Oil on canvas.
Fig 6

If we compare this deformed image of a woman (Fig 6) to that of the Olga portrait it is hard to conceive that they were executed by the same artist. Picasso has unleashed all of his pent up aggression and deposits it clearly in this figure of a woman; here Picasso has violently distorted the female form. Her breasts are unequal in size suggesting the Kleinian duality of the good/bad breast. There is no beauty here, no love or affection, just pain, misery and frustration as the figure gnashes her teeth in the air.
Nude in an Armchair. 1929. Oil on canvas.

19

In conclusion then, Picassos early life suggests he had his natural processes interrupted by an overly loving mother, who, for better or worse, depending on your point of view, left her son retarded in terms of his emotional stability. He never learns how to cope with frustration of desire and will carry this defect with him to the grave. Growing up in a house with five women, Picasso learns to go from one women to another, he learns how to play one woman off against another, learning how to get what he wants - and he continues this pattern into his adult life. His disastrous love life has been well documented. Can we explain his behavior by placing his life in the light provided by Melanie Kleins theory of childhood psychological development? I think we can. In Picasso there is the classic model of the child with no boundaries, the child encouraged to believe in his magic power, a child unable to think of death and decay, his life is to run from it, to push it away. Picasso finds that he can, that through painting he can delay almost to the end, ever having to face his anxieties, ever having to face his own annihilation. Bibliography.
Carsten-Peter Warncke and Ingo F. Walther. Picasso. Numen 2004. Varios. Freud and Psychoanalysis. Salvat Editores, Barcelona. (1973) Hanna Segal. Introduction to the work of Melanie Klein. Basic Books, New York, 1964. Melenie Klein. Tomo 3, Envidia y Gratitud. Paidos, 1994, Barcelona. John Berger, The Success and Failure of Picasso. Penguin Books, (1965). Marie Wilson. From Obsession to Betrayal: The Life and Art of Pablo Picasso, Art Therapy Program, Caldwell College, Caldwell, New Jersey, USA, 2004. M. S. Mahler, On Human Symbiosis and the Vicissitudes of Individuation (New York: International Universities Press, 1968). Ellen Handler Spitz. The past of Illusion: A Contribution of Child Psychoanalysis to the Understanding of Aesthetic Experience. Source: Journal of Aesthetic Education, Vol. 16, No. 4 (Winter, 1982). Pablo Picasso. (1881-1973) Conversation with Picasso. Reproduced in: Art in Theory 19002000 Edited by Charles Harrison and Paul Wood, Blackwell, 2003. D. W. Winnicott. Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 34 (1953). Arianna Huffington Picasso: Creator and Destroyer: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1988/06/picasso-creator-and-destroyer/5715/17/ Video Picasso: Magic, Sex and Death. Produced by ZCZ Films for Channel 4. Presented by John Richardson. Biography - Pablo Picasso: A Primitive Soul [VHS] (2000). Produced by A&E Home Video. Pablo Picasso - BBC Modern Masters. Presented by Alastair Sooke.