An overview of the Theory of a Therapeutic Art in the Writings of Adrian Stokes.
By Indra Dan.
August 2012.
The aim of this essay is to outline the main propositions and assumptions in the logic system that
Stokes delineates to substantiate his claim that “art is a therapy”. I would hope to show that Stokes
develops his theories in aesthetics as stages through which the human individual might pass in the
growth towards a full personality integration. His developmental approach being based upon his
own appreciation and application of the ideas of Melanie Klein.
The outline will follow Stokes’ argument from a discussion concerning the natural attractions of sea
and stone, into an exploration of the ideas of otherness and the need for an appreciation of a “selfsubsistence” of objects. A brief outline of some of the more relevant ideas from the child
development theories of Melanie Klein will be presented as a background within which Stokes builds
his proposal for a psychic wholeness and “the ego’s integration”. The narrative will then examine
Stokes’ belief concerning the value of art as a therapy of reparation and restoration to a wholeness
that he observes to be lacking within a contemporary society.
The implied logic of Stokes’ contentions is contained within the rationale of his assumptions relating
to various stages of his theory of the aesthetic development of an integrated personality. The
intention of the discussion is to present the assumed logic of Stokes’ theory through a delineation of
the relevant stages of his assumption in an attempt to bring out the advantages and weaknesses of
his position.
The main assumptions within the logic of the proposition that “art is a therapy” might be arranged
into three areas of contention which may be found within the body of Stokes’ work. Firstly, within
the area of a natural beauty, Stokes might be shown to assume that natural beauty has a calming
influence upon the emotional nature of the individual. Following from this assumption Stokes
contends that the aesthetic value of a natural object is enhanced in as much that an artist is able to
reveal its inner structure through adept handling of the medium. Stokes also contends that the artist
will reduce aesthetic value if the nature of the material is disregarded in the indiscriminate
imposition of a pre-formulated design. In the area of nature Stokes contends that the objects have a
“separateness” existing in reality apart from subjective perceptions and that such subjective
perceptions are maintained through a mechanism of object-relations.
Secondly, it will be shown that, within an area of psychoanalytic theories, Stokes assumes a
relationship between psychological development in the child and an aesthetic appreciation in an
adult. Leading on from this relationship an assumption is made that “ego-integration” is a goal of
adult development. Again, it is assumed that aesthetic appreciation depends upon the process of
integration and that this process is encouraged through a contemplation of wholeness.
Thirdly, within an area of presented works of art, Stokes makes assumptions concerning the idea
that a symbol of ego-integration might be found to be manifest as a work of art, that such a symbol
is lacking in the objects of a modern technological society and that this lack is a symptom of and
contributes to the psychological ills to be found within modern society.
Stokes introduces the reader to the direction of his thoughts through the presentation of the
familiar. Nature, as landscape, is employed as a device “to mirror mood”. The sea becomes a symbol
of unknown, unconscious depths revealed only at the surface edges as its ebb and flow trace and
erase pools upon a rocky shoreline. On the first page of ‘Smooth and Rough’ Stokes writes that,
“Pools restore images of quiescent inner states whereby the sea which fills and renounces only to
return, assumes the character of a protean mind”. An analogy of sea with the unconscious content
of mind plunges the work immediately into the heart of his strategy. Nature is given as the familiar
environmental background from which the images of conscious perception are formed and into
which a reflective individuality might often be enveloped or re-submerged.
The beauty of environment might be seen to effect the stilling of up-welling emotional turmoil and is
described by Stokes as, “a well lit, spacious depository for all tempestuous process”. The aesthetic
charms of a coastal landscape are implied to be the enchantments of a mystical pre-individualised
devotion whose binding spell has a therapeutic if somewhat stupefying effect. The loss or release of
self in the drug of a natural beauty being suggestive both of a remedy and a poison.
Utilising a similar analogy, Stokes takes up the symbolism of a protean mind in terms of a sea,
crystallised and solidified into the structure of the sculptor’s rough stone. He suggests that the hewn
stone, “is the symbol of the outwardness, the horded store of meaning that comes to the surface”.
The outer or conscious is signified by the objective presence of stone. Since,” limestone is petrified
organism” the inner or unconscious is signified by the fossilised organisms which represent events
impressed upon the personal history of the stone at the very early stages of its formation.
Limestone, then, holds the traces of the outer shell of life pressed as the collector’s flower between
the leaves of an unrelenting environment. A multitude turned to stone to be forever preserved in
their objectified passions. It is Stokes’ contention that the art of the artist is more meaningful
expressed in a work which does not ignore the presence of this inner content. It is his belief that the
‘good’ artist will proceed with his work in such a way that these inner contents might be revealed
and respected as an integral part of the structure of the finished object. Referring to the limestone
quarry at Rimini, Stokes writes that it is, “an ideal quarry whose original organic substances were
renewed by the hand of the carver”. The life of these original forms being renewed by the artist
through the masterly application of his craft. This stone is then the trace of petrified corpses whose
beauty and significance might be revealed through the transforming “hand of the carver”.
A respect for the intrinsic structure of the stone is a basic requirement for Stokes’ aesthetic
philosophy. The respect for the intrinsic structure is a respect for a distancing, a separation of
subject from object. The sense of difference, of an objective otherness perceived as the external
environment provides Stokes with a gravitational focus for the diverse strands of his enquiry.
Continuing upon the first page of Smooth and Rough, the protean sea gives way immediately to the
determination of separation. “We infer on a cliff our separateness, recognising tufts visited by bees
who bring the pertinacity of a closed world like figuration on a bare expanse of cloth”. The image of
an all enveloping unity is displaced by that of an objective separateness having psycho-physical
overtones. The pertinacity of the bees derives from its function as a pollinator and from its name as
‘hymenoptera’ recalling the hymen and thus performing, at the same time, both the functions of the
cloth and the figuration.
In a later chapter Stokes affirms his belief in the aesthetic value of otherness stating that he values,
“the meaning conveyed by the accentuated otherness, by the self-subsistence, as it were, of forms”,
in contrast to the imposed projections of the artists designs. As an illustration of his position, Stokes
contrasts the modelling common to Florentine artists with the carving technique of a hands-on
sculptor such as Agostino. He complains that, “several recent academic sculptors are reported not to
have handled a chisel in their lives” and that, “three feet models of war memorials have been posted
to Italy to be executed there by subservient masons with the mechanical aid of pointing”. That such
art works, executed by proxy, display a total disregard for the intrinsic structure of the material is
enough to enable Stokes to propose a negative valuation of their aesthetic merit. The “self
subsistence” of the art object being deficient, in his view, because the work is merely an extended
project of the ideas of the model maker, overriding any consideration of the material nature of the
stone itself. Again, the separateness of objective external reality from subjective projections of an
observer is emphasised in his opinion that, “truth may one day be found to possess the resolute
features of the masks and covers of illusion”.
The designated character of the external objects consciously translated into works of art provide in
these terms, “transcendental dimensions for the inner world, in a concrete form”. The
transcendental then, assumes the nature of a material condition within which and through which
the inner world expressed. Kant’s definition of the “transcendental way… concerning the necessary
conditions for the possibility of experiencing things” is utilised by Stokes with an emphasis upon the
necessity of objects in the light of his observation that, “art devotes itself entirely to sense data”.
Kant argues that, “pleasure denotes nothing in the object” and is only appreciated due to the
manner in which the subject is, “affected by the representation”. This argument is turned to
advantage by Stokes who suggests that the manner in which the subject is affected is intimately
dependent upon the degree to which representation reveals the otherness of its object. Pleasure, or
an aesthetic appreciation, may be seen to depend upon the degree of integration of the inner world
as an outer image, “through the assimilation of sense data”.
The appreciation of beauty, although acknowledged as a subjective cognition, might be linked to the
prevailing state of an inner psychic unity of the diverse passions that constitute the subjective drives
of the individual. He attributes to beauty a function of the recognition of a “binding theme” and an,
“identity compacted from elements”, proposing to describe beauty as “a sense of wholeness”. His
position might be seen to be an application of Kant, again with an emphasis upon the identification
of a self-subsistent object. Kant suggests that the experiencing of pleasure implied in a conscious
appreciation of the beautiful involves, “a determining ground of the subjects activity in respect of
the quickening of its cognitive powers. That is, the subject derives pleasure in identifying objects. For
stokes, the more completely an object is identified and differentiated as subsisting distinct from the
emotive overtones of subjective self-projection the more the pleasure is experienced and the more
nearly the subject demonstrates an integrated wholeness of personality.
In applying these ideas to the criticism of works of art it is necessary for Stokes to show that
individuals do not generally demonstrate a fully integrated wholeness of personality and that it is
the implicit goal of a human individual to do so. Stokes contends that, “the prerogative of the truly
adult being .… entails recognition of great diversity in the psyche under the aegis of trust in the good
object” with the accent being placed upon the “truly adult”. Towards this aim, Stokes introduces the
ideas put forward in terms of a psychological development of personality within the field of
psychoanalysis. He focuses in particular on the child development theories of Melanie Klein. He
readily acknowledges that Klein’s theories may not be thought to lend credence to the unsupported
statements of his deliberations upon the nature of art whilst being confident that his use of these
ideas will be justified in the course of his arguments.
Utilising Klein’s formulations, Kant’s division of taste into the agreeable, the beautiful and the good
are compounded by Stokes into a developmental determination of an aesthetic appreciation
deriving the aesthetic from the agreeable, or gratifying, and the good. With reference to works of
art, he suggests that form “reconstitutes the independent self-sufficient outside object … as well as
the enveloping good breast”. That is, good art integrates its formal structures toward the material
re-presentation of wholeness as a self-sufficient object which will include within itself the aspects of
gratification and goodness.
In terms of psychological development, Klein has shown that one of the first objects to be
recognised by the human infant is “the mother’s breast, a part object”. It is Klein’s belief that the
perception of environment is developed during infancy from the position of an indistinguishable
jumble of data towards a definition of discrete whole objects through intermediate stages of partobject recognition. At the intermediate stage a part-object, “will not have been regarded as selfsubsistent” but will be understood only as a part of the internalised body of the infant itself. The
good breast functions as a gratification of the infant’s desire for food and is incorporated as a selfsatisfaction. The infant is said to become engulfed within the pleasures of the good breast. Where
desire is frustrated, that is, the breast is not immediately available to gratify the desire, then the
breast is incorporated as an object of self rage, as a “bad object”. Klein contends that such a bad
object becomes the subjective precursor of the infant ego and gives rise to feelings of guilt. The
association of rage with the lack of gratification feeding the fear that the good breast will be
withheld and fuelling a sense of guilt for the attack upon the good breast which may thus be
withheld.
As progress is made in determining whole objects the infant’s relation to objects undergoes a
fundamental change. Instead of being aware only of part-objects idealised as good or persecutory,
the infant now sees “a whole object both good and bad”. The whole object is loved and internalised
to form “the core of an integrated ego. This new perspective brings with it a different anxiety
situation where “the predominant fear is that of the loss of the loved object”, through the
expression of uncontrollable infantile “greedy and sadistic impulses that attach and destroy the
loved object in phantasy. The feelings of guilt developed by such an attack upon the external object
and consequently upon the core ego gives rise to “the wish to restore and recreate the lost loved
object outside and within the ego”.
At the early part-object stage, “impulses and parts of the infant’s self were projected into the
object” resulting in a false picture of reality, where there will have been “a lack of differentiation
between the self and the external object”. At the later “depressive phase” a clear sense of inner
reality develops and “in its wake a sense of outer reality as well”. However, there must be a limit to
the individual’s tolerance of anxiety which it would appear, finds protection within a “system of
manic defences”. This entails a denial of psychic reality, the need for omnipotent control of the total
environment, and a part regression to the “splitting, idealization, denial, projective identification,
etc.” defences of a paranoid position. In order to achieve full ego integration the individual will need
to gradually overcome the guilt and paranoia engendered within these states “under the aegis of
trust in the good object”. It is generally assumed that the development of a finally integrated ego is
not normally achieved even by the grown adult and it is this point which Stokes develops to justify
the hierarchy of aesthetic appreciation that he utilises as a measuring rod in the application of his
critical arts. Stokes’ technique relies upon a determination as to whether the artist has employed
and expressed ego-integration and a whole object approach or one of the earlier phases of
development and part-object application.
The “integration of the inner world as an outer image” is then seen to be the mark of the best in art.
The wholeness of the form of the work is admired for its self-sufficiency and for its ability to
reconstitute “an image of ego-integration… projected and perceived as an object”. An image of egointegration or ego-figure is proposed by Stokes as a necessary “body-ego projection of its own
wholeness” that allows the individual access to a view of self-integration and a figure of self “that
condenses not only sensations and perceptions but principal ‘good’ introjections and objectrelationships”. Such a figure is said to be cognised in the perception of “objects, regarded as
independent” which by their “exact limit, bring with them the sense of our composite selves”. The
difficulty Stokes has with this approach is to be able to identify a whole object approach within a
work of art. It would seem that we have to rely on his judgement on this subject.
The formulation of this approach relies upon the theory of perception that is based upon the
identification of simple geometric forms as a starting point for object recognition. Object relations
theories have been questioned by ideas of Ehrenzweig and others, who has shown that recognition
of objects may be maintained by caricature and the relationship between points of expressive
features. He states that, “normal vision of reality is not based upon the interplay of patterns” and
that “vision acquires its plastic qualities from its unconscious structure”. Ehrenzweig explains that
young animals and human infants do not focus upon geometry of objects but rather “scan the total
object for clues that are immediately connected with real objects”.
Although these observations would seem to refute a basic element of Stokes’ theory, these may not
be particularly detrimental to his argument since, they imply an aspect of development from an
earlier child perception to an adult state which is consistent with Stokes’ ideas. The idea of a
symbolic expression of ego-integration in terms of the deep structure of the work is more important
to Stokes’ argument than an insistence upon geometric object identification. Indeed, the fact that
vision may be based upon “unconscious substructure” can only add weight to a theory of the egofigure as symbol in the formal structure of a work of art.
Stokes upholds the manifestation of the ego-figure as the objective focus for aesthetic appreciation.
In contrast to this whole object relationship, in ‘Critical Writings’ he offers a “characteristic visionary
experience” of reality through a criticism of the writings of Aldous Huxley. Stokes writes of Huxley’s
mysticism that, “he attributes to these experiences (which were not in his case inner visions but
glosses upon exterior perception) some awareness of cosmic reality”. Huxley suggests that mystical
experiences of light do not conform to any “normal faculties of mind and body” and might be
thought to point to “a merging or loss of self in the impersonal Divine Ground”. Concerning an event
experienced whilst under the influence of mescalin, Huxley states that he “saw the books but… what
impressed itself upon my mind was the fact that all of them glowed with living light”. Stokes quotes
Huxley describing a vision of Weir Mitchell’s in which “he saw a host of ‘star points’ and what looked
like ‘fragments of glass’”. The visionary experience is equated by Stokes to the less developed partobject position and to the dissolution of the self in the enveloping good breast. Referring to the
tendency towards the abstract in art, he observes that there are a number of paintings “whose mere
muddled radiance suggests the Huxley visionary experience of is-ness”. Going on to describe the
abstract paintings of Delauney he quotes Herbert Read’s comment that they are “fragmented
rainbows”. Thus in Stokes’ view, an over reliance upon a universalised colouring in art is regressive
rather than aesthetically pleasing.
That Stokes describes Huxley’s vision as “glosses upon external perception” becomes significant in
the light of modern experiments in the field of quantum physics. John Gribbin, in his popular book
‘Schrodinger’s Kittens’ describes an experiment by the renowned physicist Richard Feynman. It is
easily demonstrable that a beam of light will reflect off a mirror at the same angle to the surface
going out as it arrives going in. Feynman has shown that although this is in fact correct, “the light
from an object actually travels to every part of the mirror” on its way to the eye of an observer. The
reflecting surface always acting as a “diffraction grating” from which “different colours of light
reflect at slightly different angles… to produce a rainbow effect”. A fuller version of Feynman’s
theory suggests that a number of photons that constitute the beam of light will travel through every
conceivable point in the universe on their way from the object to the eye. Huxley’s rationalisation of
his visionary experiences are thus supported by Feynman’s theory.
The force of Stokes’ aesthetic argument may not be lessened by these observations. The
development of perception of objects would require that an angle of incident light is equal to the
angle of reflected light. The alternative paths upon which the light photons actually travel will, in
accord with theory, cancel each other out in the act of perception, leaving only the obvious and
expected reflected angle. Visionary experience of a cosmic reality might then equate to the
proposed regressive state of Stokes’ argument and the aesthetic reserved for the perception of a
limited self-subsistent object.
The modern world, in Stokes’ opinion, represents and reinforces a regression to a manic defence
from the anxiety of a depressive position. He recognises, as a recent development, a rift between
the artist and the craftsman and the separation of “technological advances from aesthetic value”.
This separation of the man-made from the aesthetic is said to have resulted in a modern society
offering predominantly anti-aesthetic objects to the senses of its citizens. The abundance of modern
man-made objects produce “slight, yet very frequent, traumatic experiences” which the individual
ego has to defend itself against. The lack of aesthetic value in technology is said to result in a
traumatic experience of the technological object. Aesthetic objects are said to offer the symbol of an
integrated ego-figure through which the individual might re-appropriate an internal ego-integration.
Anti-aesthetic technology then, will offer only a part-object relationship which may be damaging to
the ego and be seen to threaten it with disintegration and splitting.
Stokes suggests that it is not the lack of aesthetic value in man-made objects that is the cause of
trauma, that “ugliness, ‘badness’ as such, is not most feared, but emptiness”. He argues that it is a
“lack of identity” fostered by such ugliness and the fear of “disintegration, the undoing of the egofigure” which the modern object seem to threaten that is the cause of anxiety. “Confusing and
hostile projective identifications with anti-aesthetic man-made things” are said to disrupt the
individual’s aesthetic appreciation resulting in a society which lacks the aesthetic experiences and
objective role-models to develop an inner wholeness. The lack of suitable aesthetic experiences
develop a cultural regression to an “emphasis upon the inner life” because modern society fears to
accept “its technological excesses as symbols of the psyche in a deep sense” retreating rather, to the
relative safety of subjective defences.
Stokes contends that “art is based upon the need to correct all man-made things especially” and that
works of art might be the antidote to the self-destructive manic defences of an aesthetically starved
technological age. Art is said to be “an attempt at reparation of the aesthetic within an environment
of chaos”. The restoration of an “independent good object” effecting a reparation of the depressive
position in an environment of ego threatening part-objects. The translation of an external
environment into works of art allows the translated event or object to be introjected “providing for
art the opportunity to elaborate an invitation to partake of a better close relationship”. As
experience of a traumatic event is translated into art “it becomes bearable” and an invitation is
proffered which hold the promise of a reparation to wholeness.
Huxley has suggested that a humanist movement might “to avoid spiritual impoverishment of
individuals… humanize the metropolis by creating… communities, in which individuals can meet and
co-operate as complete persons, not as a mere embodiment of specialized functions”. That is, the
part-object relationship prevalent in a technological society in terms of function specialisation might
be restored to whole object relations through the mechanism of community. The recombining of the
role of artist and artisan, of technological advances and aesthetic value, is implied within an
understanding of community thus proposed by Huxley.
Stokes suggests that art is a therapy and that as the individual acquires a greater appreciation of art
“a degree of integration for the ego and its objects” will be effected. The therapeutic value is
proposed by Stokes to be the intended purpose and fundamental usefulness of all art. He states that
such an “attempted therapy” which is in his view “the crux of art”, is restricted in its effectiveness by
the lack of aesthetic understanding of the average viewer. An appreciation for the need for “full
object-relationship on which rests finally aesthetic composition or wholeness” by both the artist and
the art lover is a fundamental requirement in order that a work of art might act as a remedy against
self-disintegration.
The contention that art is a man-made remedy for a man-made malady, or perhaps for the human
condition, reflects the social desire for leadership and for a role-model. It is contended that man
requires an external exemplary pattern as a self-referent ritual for organisation since, “complicated
mechanisms are only kept as an entity through the impact of external conditions” and the image of
ego-integration “ comes to us from the external world in the terms of a whole and independent
corporeal-seeming structure”. That is, an image of the fully integrated ego-figure necessary to the
constitution of psychic wholeness within the individual might only be found in the external
environment in terms of a self-subsisting, man-made, whole object such as a work of art.
A number of the more tenuous assumptions of this position might be observed from this position.
Firstly, an assumption is made that it is possible for a work of art to be a self-subsisting whole object.
Secondly, it is assumed that if such a work of art is possible, it will function as a representation of the
ego-figure or in some way relate to the form of such a figure. Thirdly, it is assumed that aesthetic
appreciation might be developed through education. A difficulty in substantiating this position might
then also be that, since an appropriately developed sense of aesthetic judgement has not been
employed “by the majority of viewers, even by many who profess attachment”, Stokes is left with
the task of identifying at least one person, apart from himself, whose taste has been developed to a
level of discrimination at which a sound aesthetic judgement might be employed.
Stokes reinforces his argument for the therapeutic value of art in quoting Braque’s theory that the
“otherness of the outside world can only be represented by the separateness and wholeness of the
work of art”. He further contends that art is a manifest material means in which the structure of the
ego-figure as symbol may be realised “in the very terms of object otherness”. The application of art
as therapy is thus determined by the degree to which the structure of the ego-figure symbolism is
realised within the “object otherness” of the work of art. Stokes maintains that the integration of the
deep structure of a work necessitates the “preservation of the picture plane”, since “we are intact
only in so far as our objects are intact”.
The observed fact that light from an object is reflected to the eye from every point on the surface of
a mirror might be inferred from the idea of an “abstracted interest in structure” relating to the
concept of an ego-figure. Stokes speaks of “kinaesthetic sensations” whose sum “serve as hidden
spokesmen for the movement, the interplay, of internal objects and of the layers of the psyche”.
These sensations are said to be the formal structures and processes of a work of art. Derrida
describes the “pharmakon” or remedy of Plato as “endlessly vanish(ing) through concealed
doorways that shine like mirrors and open onto a labyrinth”. He goes on to state that “it is also this
store of deep background that we call the pharmacy”. The deep background of Derrida’s remedy
might be associated with the hidden spokesmen and microstructure of kinaesthetic sensation in the
work of art as proposed by Stokes. Plato’s pharmakon as outlined by Derrida, might be related to the
therapeutic nature of an “imago of ego-integration” manifest as the applied medium in the totality
of the formal structure and content of a work of art. Indeed, Derrida points out that “for the Greeks,
pharmakon also means paint”.
The picture plane may be suggested as the arena in which the inter-relationship of part-object and
whole object at many different levels, are embodied as the finished work. The picture plane is “a
canvas, the rectangular surface and the whiteness to fructify” which is “vastly enriched by the
coalescence with other meaning” in the form of the applied paint medium, to manifest an “identity
compacted from elements”. The picture plane is the membrane, the unbroken canvas or Derrida’s
hymen “on which so many bodily metaphors are written”. It is the “closed world like figuration on a
bare expanse of cloth”. Derrida maintains that it is the hymen “that desire dreams of piercing…love
and murder” and that if these desires were to be actually fulfilled “there could be no hymen”. That
is, the picture plane, however carved and distorted by its internal form, must be maintained intact if
it is to have aesthetic merit and thus a therapeutic value. It is, Stokes suggests, a degree of
identification with the elements of the picture plane that is “essential to the subsequent
contemplation of the work of art as an image of the ego’s integration”. The remedy is then to be
found in the integration of the elements within an unbroken picture plane and the art lover’s psychic
structure. For Stokes, natural beauty is at best an enveloping good breast in which a reparation to
wholeness is not likely to be found. Plato, in the Phaedrus, states that he is “a lover of learning, and
trees and open country won’t teach me anything, whereas men in the town do. Yet you seem to
have discovered a drug for getting me out”. That is, his quest for beauty is a quest for selfknowledge. The pharmakon might then be seen as a picture plane, the imprint of the unity of the
whole object, the deep formal structure implied within the quality of the beautiful. Aesthetic
appreciation is thus a self-appreciation, a self-knowing in the perception of the self-sufficient other.
Stokes implies that the dissolution of self in a “universal is-ness” is the dissolution of the real in the
mirror of the illusion of the selves. Integration to wholeness being brought about through the
pharmakon of self-knowing which is a refined appreciation of the beautiful in art.
Stokes contends then, that art is therapy which might be developed through the education of the
individual towards a fuller appreciation of aesthetic values and an integration of the inner man in
terms of a discernment of wholeness. The remedy, although “not new” might be shown to be
applied as a process of psychic development towards a truly adult being and that “since the advent
of psycho-analysis it may begin, very, very slowly, to be effective”.
The idea of a therapeutic nature of art as developed by Stokes is seen to make extensive use of the
theories of human psychic development as proposed by Melanie Klein. The logic of Stokes’ argument
focussing upon a distinction between a part-object perception entertaining a false conception of
reality, and the identification of a separateness of self-sufficient whole objects with the attendant
development of a mirroring subjective ego-integration. It might be suggested, however, that his
theory does not depend upon the substantiation of the detail of Klein’s contentions but rather upon
the more general observations of the fact of a human psychological and perceptual development. A
work of art is deemed to have aesthetic value in that it exhibits a wholeness which compacts the
diverse elements of its structures and thus “swell the wholeness of the whole”.
The somewhat romantic approach found in some of Stokes’ works is shown to contain a deep
psychological significance which is treated in greater depth in his more obviously theoretical studies.
Indeed, an unconscious content is seen to be symbolised in an all enveloping sea and the
separateness of an integrated ego perception is inferred upon a natural landscape, analogies for a
relationship to the integrated and fully intact picture plane of a work of art. Nature may contain the
wholeness necessary for ego-integration but it is not clear how a painting can contain an ego-figure
that exemplifies wholeness.
Stokes offers a number of insights and observations on the relationship between the psyche, human
nature and the natural environment. However, his insistence on defining the nature of the aesthetic
and of art in terms of an elusive ego-figure tends to limit the usefulness of his insights in the field of
the philosophy of art. Art and the aesthetic appreciation of art are not limited to Stokes’
straightjacket of the psychoanalytic theories of Melanie Klein.
Stokes advances what he regarded as a powerful argument for the acceptance of his theory of the
therapeutic nature of art subject to his belief in the connection between Klein’s theories and works
of art being accepted. The assumptions inherent within Stokes’ theory of “art as a therapy” are
shown to exhibit a coherent and formulated logic argument. However, the validity of his
assumptions rests upon a theoretical basis of his own devising. The substantiation of the fact of an
ego-figure and the verification of the more tenuous idea of a symbol of such a figure within the
structure of a work of art are in particular open to question. For Stokes they are essential to a theory
of art as therapy and the justification for a belief in their veracity is derived from the force of his
arguments.
The operation of art as a therapy might be advocated by Stokes’ arguments but the degree to which
art may be said to be therapeutic has not been adequately determined by these arguments. His
insistence on the necessity for the human condition to develop a state of psychic wholeness is not
founded upon any actual evidence of human development and would seem to be no more than a
utopian dream. Proposing a theory that art might be the only means by which a society or individual
can achieve a developed state of psychic wholeness is perhaps admirable but has little to
recommend it.
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