The mind and its depths

The mind as it is manifested in philosophy and art, in the moral life and psychoanalysis, has always been at the core of Richard Wollheim's celebrated work. This book brings together Wollheim's broad and abiding concerns to illuminate human thought at its furthest reaches of introspection and expression. Interweaving philosophy, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics, these essays reveal the critical connections between ideas and disciplines too often regarded as separate and distinct. At the same time, by focusing on actual experience, whether in art or ritual, sexuality or criminal behavior, they retrieve the ways and workings of the mind from the ponderous abstraction in which much contemporary thought is trapped. A central theme of The Mind and Its Depths is the importance of psychoanalysis to philosophical discussion. From Freud's writings Wollheim extracts the thesis of the "corporealization of thought," which he uses in a highly original way to reframe the mind/body question. His discussions of issues of moral, social, and political philosophy also emphasize the psychological dimensions of such problems. These, along with his essays on artistic expression and pictorial style, demonstrate the advantages of psychological sophistication in thinking about philosophical issues in general - and about the nature and impact of art in particular.