Iconography and Id: a review of the Psychoanalytic Reference and Historical Resonance in a work by Rachel Goodyear

Ms Goodyear's drawing presents a meticulous study of theories of aggression; a theme which has concerned psychoanalysis since Sigmund Freud (1835 - 1939) first identified the basic principles of Id psychology. This example of Goodyear’s oeuvre, its title (Medicate in the Mistaken Belief) referring obliquely to Freud's late nineteenth century recommendation (with lethal consequences) of cocaine to a beloved male friend, demonstrates a depth understanding of Freud's philosophical masterwork, Civilization and Its Discontents, from which the following citation is so aptly illustrated by Goodyear's art:

... Men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved... they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness. As a result, their neighbour is for them not only a potential helper or sexual object, but also someone who tempts them to satisfy their aggressiveness on him... to cause him pain, to torture and to kill him. Homo homini lupus ['Man is a wolf to man.' Derived from Plautus, Asinaria II, iv, 88.]

The triumphant gray creature, which has obviously slain the black creature, is an homage to the Italian Greyhound so favoured by the Medici, a fine example of Goodyear's use of the “rhetorical commonplace” in medieval iconography, a figure aptly suited to the universalization of Freud's term "Men." No feminist didacticism mars the pristine intellection of this starkly intelligent image, in which the sex of the creatures remains unspecified. The sacrificial animal, its neck broken, its gore-soaked hind-quarters frayed to feathery fragments of flesh and serum, is analogous to the classic psychological image (originated by Jastrow in Fact and Fable in Psychology) pondered by Wittgenstein in his Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology: it is confirmed neither as canine, such as boxer or mastiff, nor as predator, such as the haliaetus or buteo. This punctum of irresolution in Goodyear's symbology exemplifies her technical prowess on the level of idea; this is mature imagistic development, as confident and succinct as an algebraic formulation.

Jeanne Randolph, MD, F.R.C.P.(C)

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