The Age of Insight the Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art Mind and Brain

Eric Kandel is a titan of modern neuroscience. He won the Nobel Prize in 2000 not only for discovering a new set up of scientific facts (although he has discovered plenty of those), only for pioneering a new scientific approach. As he recounts in his memoir In Search of Retention, Kandel demonstrated that reductionist techniques could be applied to the brain, so that even something as mysterious as memory might exist studied in ocean slugs, as a function of kinase enzymes and synaptic proteins. (The memories in question involved the "habituation" of the slugs to a poke; they basically got bored of being prodded.) Considering natural option is a deeply conservative process - development doesn't mess with success - it turns out that humans rely on almost all of the same neural ingredients as those inveterbrates. Memory has a near universal chemistry.

But Kandel is non just one of the most important scientists of our time - he's also an omnivorous public intellectual, deeply knowledgeable well-nigh everything from German art to the history of psychoanalysis. In his marvelous new book, The Age of Insight, Kandel puts this learning on display. He dives into the cultural ferment of 19th century Vienna, seeking to sympathise why the city was such a fount of new ideas, but he also explores the neuroscience of aesthetics, attempting to explain why some works of fine art, such every bit Klimt's "Adele Bloch-Bauer I," continue to haunt the states. In many respects, the book imitates those famous Viennese salons, in which artists, scientists and doctors exchanged ideas and gave birth to a new way of thinking about the listen. (The metropolis was a case-report in consilience.) If y'all're interested in the intersection of art and science, the book is a must-read.

LEHRER: The Age of Insight is, in function, a remarkable history of fin-de-siècle Vienna, which strikes me every bit an astonishingly rich artistic menstruum. What exercise yous call back led to such a flourishing of scientific discipline and culture in Vienna at the plow of the century?

KANDEL: Beginning in nigh 1850, Vienna was changed dramatically. Responding to the liberal force per unit area, Emperor Franz Josef began to evolve the Empire forth more democratic lines. Ane of the consequences of this democratization was a freeing up of travel, which allowed people to move readily throughout the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Many came to Vienna. In addition, Franz Josef transformed Vienna into i of the most beautiful cities in the world. As a Christmas present to the citizens of Vienna, in 1857, Franz Josef ordered the demolition of the old walls surrounding the city, and replaced these walls with the Ringstrasse – a k boulevard that would encircle the city. The Ringstrasse now became lined with a wonderful set of public buildings such as the Opera House, the Theater, and the Museum of Fine Arts and Natural History. Equally a event, the urban center attracted many people of unlike ethnic and religious origins from all over the Empire, who were fatigued to Vienna, for its beauty, its music, and its accent on intellectual and cultural accomplishment. A number of these people went on to pioneer a distinctive form of Modernism that characterized Vienna and distinguished it from Modernism in French republic, Italia and Frg.

Modernism in Vienna brought together science and civilisation in a new fashion to create an Historic period of Insight that emphasized a more complex view of the human being heed than had ever existed before. Whereas the Enlightenment thinking of the 18th Century emphasized that homo beings were distinct from all the other animals because they were created by God every bit rational creatures, the Viennese Modernists, influenced past Darwin, realized that humans evolved from simpler ancestors. Moreover, they were -- as the physicians, Freud and Schnitzler, and the artists, Klimt, Kokoschka and Schiele would point out – non rational creatures, but people that were chiefly driven by unconscious mental drives.

In improver to these five, there were other pioneers in the Modernist movement. There was the Vienna Circle of philosophers, who tried to formulate all knowledge into a single standard language of science. There was an important Vienna Schoolhouse of Economics. And – of course – there was the great tradition of Viennese music that began with Hayden and was now continued by Schoenberg.

Particularly of import, in Vienna 1900, was a concatenation of medical scientists stretching from Carl von Rokitansky to Freud, which established a new dynamic view of the human psyche that revolutionized thinking well-nigh the homo mind. Freud'due south theorizing, Schnitzler'south insightful writings, and the paintings of Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka, shared a mutual focus into the nature of human instinctual life. During the menstruation of 1890 to 1980, the insights of these 5 men into the irrationality of everyday life helped Vienna plant a culture we notwithstanding live in today. In a sense, in that location are very few cultures that take matched Vienna, 1900. Perchance the most comparable example is Florence during the Renaissance.

LEHRER: One of the heroes in The Age of Insight is Carl von Rokitansky, the founder of the Second Vienna School of Medicine. You fence that he inspired, at least in part, the work of modernist artists such as Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. How did he exert this influence?

KANDEL: Rokitansky is the founder of what is at present considered the 2nd Vienna Schoolhouse of Medicine, which began around 1846. He was the head pathologist of the Vienna General Infirmary, chosen the Allgemeines Krankenhaus, and then became Dean of the Medical School at the University of Vienna. Rokitansky contributed importantly – I would say, seminally – to the development of modern scientific medicine. He realized that when one examines the patient, i essentially relies on two pieces of information: the patient'south history, and an examination of the patient – listening to the heart and the chest with a stethoscope. But in the 1840s, one did not have whatsoever deep insight into what the sounds of the middle meant, for example. No i knew what we at present know to be the difference between the sound of a normal valve opening and closing, and the sound of a diseased valve opening and closing. And so what Rokitansky realized was that one needed to correlate what one sees of the patient at the bedside, with the examination of the patient'southward trunk at dissection. Fortunately, Vienna was an absolutely platonic identify to do this.

The Vienna Full general Infirmary had 2 rules that were unique in Europe. One is – every patient who died was autopsied, and two – all the autopsies were done by 1 person: Rokitansky, the head of Pathology. In other hospitals in Europe, the autopsy was washed by whichever physician was is in charge of the patient. Then Rokitansky had a huge amount of clinical material to work with. He collaborated with an outstanding clinician, Josef Skoda, who took very careful notes both of what the patient told him, and of what he establish on physical examination, and he correlated that with Rokitansky's dissection. This immune Skoda and Rokistansky to define what various heart sounds meant in normal physiology and in diseases of the valve. It likewise led Rokitansky to enunciate a major principle that had a huge influence – non only on medicine – but also on the cultural customs at large, considering Rokitansky was not simply a pathologist and Dean of the School of Medicine; he was elected to Parliament, became a spokesman of science, and had an enormous influence on pop culture. He said, "The truth is oftentimes subconscious below the surface. One has to go deep below the skin to find it." This Rokitanskian principle had an enormous bear on on Freud and on Schnitzler, who were students at the Vienna School of Medicine. In fact, Freud was a student in the terminal several years of Rokitansky'southward Deanship. Rokitansky attended the get-go two scientific talks that Freud gave, and Freud attended Rokitansky's funeral. He clearly had a meaning impact on Freud's thinking.

How did Rokitansky influence the artists – Klimt, Schiele, and Kokoschka? Klimt had a potent supporter in the art writer Berta Zuckerkandl. She ran the most important salon in Vienna: the Zuckerkandl salon, and all the intellectuals in the city attended this. As Berta Zuckerkandl, herself, described information technology: "Vienna comes alive on my diva."

Berta's hubby, Emil Zuckerkandl, was a right-hand associate of Rokitansky. Klimt befriended Emil at Berta's salon and Klimt became interested in biology equally an stop in itself. He began to read Darwin, and he began to written report the slides that Zuckerkandl was working on. He went to Zuckerkandl's lectures; he attended some of his dissections, and he asked Zuckerkandl to requite lectures to other artists and so that they would become familiar with the biology of the body. As a outcome, one can begin to run into the incorporation of biological ideas in Klimt'due south work. So, if y'all look at Adele Bloch-Bauer – the picture on the embrace of The Age of Insight – you will see that Adele's dress is covered with oval-shaped symbols that symbolize ova. These oval shapes environment her body; in the background, are rectangular shapes which, in Klimt's work, symbolize sperm showing that not but is she an bonny and seductive woman, but also reproductively capable. In the famous painting, The Osculation, the man's garment is covered with these rectangular stripes, the woman's with ovals. Moreover, not only in the decorative element of his work, but also in the mode Klimt represented his women – as evident in his drawings – you see that he wanted to become below the surface. He did non follow the rituals of Western art, or Freud'southward naïve and incorrect teachings well-nigh female sexuality. Rather, he wanted to use his ain insights, which were extensive, to requite a modern view of women's sexuality: that they are capable of pleasuring themselves – they do not demand the attention of a man, and their sexual activity lives are just equally rich as that of men. Moreover, although Freud was always enlightened of assailment, he didn't call back it was equally of import to eros until toward the terminate of the offset earth war, when he saw killing all around him. By contrast, Klimt had already incorporated, in the painting Judith and Holofernes, his insight that assailment is every bit important as eroticism, and that women are also capable of aggression equally well as erotic impulses, and the 2 tin exist fused. In this remarkable painting, where Judith, having slain Holofernes, fondles his head in a clearly erotic fashion.

Kokoschka picked up a theme that Freud enunciated: that the exam of the unconscious mental processes of others begins with an examination of oneself. Kokoschka, who was a scrap of a self-promoter, argued that he had discovered unconscious mental processes independent of Freud, and in his paintings, he reveals a major interest in going deep below the surface to explore his own emotional life and that of his subjects. And, equally with Freud, he had a fascination with childhood and adolescent sexuality that he claimed was independent of Freud. Klimt never did whatsoever self-portraits. Kokoschka did a number of very honest and soul-searching cocky-portraits. For example, during his relationship with Alma Mahler, he depicted himself as a helpless fauna, completely in her easily. He also was the first painter to depict female adolescent sexuality – nude adolescence – and the sexual striving of children in the famous painting of the Stein children.

Schiele – the third of the trio of Modernist painters – was the main of modernistic existential anxiety. He was the Kafka of painting. Much of the paintings that he did were of himself, and many self-portraits were in the nude. Using himself as a model, he depicts all aspects of psychological strivings, non only in facial expression, just fifty-fifty more in hand, arm, and body postures. So, one can trace the influence of Rokitansky throughout all of Viennese Modernism.

LEHRER: Your book is filled with fascinating explorations into the nascent science of neuroaesthetics. If I were a working artist, I'd desire to know all about this new field. Only I'm curious: do you think scientists tin can learn from artists? If so, what sort of collaborations would you similar to see?

KANDEL: Why would we want to encourage a dialogue between art and science, and, in a larger sense, between science and civilisation, at large? Brain scientific discipline and fine art represent two distinct perspectives of mind. Through science, we know that all of our mental life arises from the activity of our brain. Thus, past observing that activity, we can begin to understand the processes that underlie our responses to works of art: how is information, nerveless past the eye, turned into vision? How are thoughts turned into memories? What is the biological ground of behavior? Art, on the other manus, provides insight into the more than fleeting, experiential qualities of listen – what a certain experience feels like. A brain scan may reveal the neural signs of feet, but a Kokoschka painting, or a Schiele self-portrait, reveals what an anxiety state really feels similar. Both perspectives are necessary if we are to fully grasp the nature of the mind, notwithstanding they are rarely brought together.

What would the benefits of such an exchange be today, and who would gain from it? The gain for brain science is clear. One of the ultimate challenges of biology is to empathize how the brain becomes consciously aware of perception, experience and emotion. But it is every bit conceivable that the exchange would be useful for the beholders of art, for people who savor art, for historians, and for the artists, themselves. Insights into the processes of visual perception and emotional response may well stimulate new expressions of creative creativity. Much as Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance artists used the revelations of human anatomy to help them describe the body more accurately and compellingly, and the Impressionist artists learned about colour mixing from the study of color by physicists, so, too, many contemporary artists may create new forms of representation in response to the revelations about how the brain works. Understanding the biology behind artistic insights, inspiration and the beholder's response to art could exist invaluable to artists seeking to enhance their artistic power. In the long run, encephalon science may also provide clues to the nature of creativity, itself.

You, Jonah, yourself, accept pointed out in your start book that artists are psychologists. They accept insight into the human being mind that oftentimes precedes the insight that scientists accept, because scientists need to design experiments, and then bear them out in order to practise it. They cannot do it by intuition, alone, every bit tin can writers and painters. So, I would not necessarily say that scientists and artists need to interact with i another, just it would exist helpful for them to talk to one another to, perhaps, requite ascension to specific ideas that may or may not be carried out together. For example, we, at Columbia, under the strong support of President Bollinger, are thinking of starting a Ph.D. plan in Science and Art, in which psychology and neuroscience students will learn more well-nigh the biological response to art, and encourage some students of art to get involved in this, too. In fact, David Freedberg, who is an fine art historian interested in these problems, is going to participate in this.

LEHRER: One of the tensions that emerges from early 20th century Vienna is the attempt (by Freud and others) to undermine the assumptions of the Enlightenment - we are rational creatures - using the tools of the Enlightenment. In many respects, this bones theme has continued in recent years, as neuroscientists and psychologists proceed to reveal the powers of the unconscious in shaping our behavior and beliefs. (Nosotros are non near every bit rational every bit Descartes believed.) What do y'all think Freud would brand of modernistic neuroscience?

KANDEL: I think Freud would love modernistic neuroscience. Freud developed his tripartite structure of the mind, clinical observation, theory of psychoanalysis, in the promise that, someday, this would exist translated into brain sciences, he was aware that what he was developing a cognitive psychology – psychoanalysis – and that this was bound to exist modified, and, in part, falsified, past biology. He knew that psychoanalysis was not an empirical, experimental science. So, in that location is no question, he would very much take liked to develop a biology of psychoanalysis if he could practice and so. He tried, in his 1895 essay on Psychology for Neurologists, simply he saw this was a complete failure. Biological science was just too far away from providing the kind of a background he needed. But the situation is clearly different now.

In fact, if y'all look around, it is amazing how much of our view of the mind follows outlines of Freud's thinking. We now know that conscious mentation is the tip of the iceberg, very much every bit Freud argued. We are now clearly aware of the importance of instinctual strivings. We accept localized them to the hypothalamus, and to the amygdala. Nosotros know that sexual strivings are nowadays in childhood. We realize that when we convert unconscious to conscious mental processes, a sort of broadcasting function goes on. We are enlightened of superego functions at a biological level, moral values that are built into our brains.

I retrieve while Freud would be quite satisfied with neuroscience he would not be satisfied with the current structure of psychoanalysis. This is because the generations of psychoanalysts that came afterward did not try to make psychoanalysis more empirical; they continued the tradition that he had begun. It wasn't until recently that follow-up studies take been carried out to determine under what circumstances psychoanalysis is effective, how it compares to other forms of short-term psychotherapy, and ultimately, they are at present kickoff to do imaging experiments to see whether or not biological markers – for example, in Surface area 25 in depression – are relieved by psychoanalysis. Then I think the failure of psychoanalysis to progress is due in part to the decline in the scientific ambition of psychoanalysts.

LEHRER: How has this new science of art inverse the style yous remember about art? Practice you now think differently about the beauty of Schiele, Klimt and the Viennese modernists?

KANDEL: Yeah. I at present have a much better idea of why the Modernists' portraiture affects us and so profoundly, because I realize that they have tapped into the enormous face processing capability of the encephalon. I now understand why their exaggerations are then effective. They regulate the cells in face patches in the inferior-temporal lobe of the brain. Nosotros encounter how arbitrary employ of color tin accept a powerful affect on our emotions.

We now have an outline of the Beholder's Share. Nosotros run into how some people – for example, autistic people – have a difficult fourth dimension responding empathically to paintings of faces. I sympathise amend, the nature of ambiguity in art – how each of usa sees a slightly unlike version of a great work of fine art, and that this interpretation is subject to the creative capability of the brain. I was not aware, before, what a creativity car the brain is, and how each of us sees a different view of art considering we have different brain responses to information technology, and how, even for simple perception, there is not but lesser-up processing, adamant by Gestaltian rules of grouping things together, but in that location is a lot of summit-down processing, which is based on comparing what we see at present to what has been stored in retentivity.

So, I call back understanding the biology of the Beholder's Share has significantly enriched my understanding of art. It has done so without in whatsoever style diminishing my aesthetic response. In fact in general, knowledge only enhances enjoyment, and I think it has enhanced my enjoyment of art. It is a little bit like saying, "To what caste does reading good literary criticism of Shakespeare, say by Harold Flower and A.C. Bradley, enhance your enjoyment of Hamlet or King Lear?" I experience very much the aforementioned mode.

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Source: https://www.wired.com/2012/04/the-age-of-insight/

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