On The Mental Illness Phenomenon In French Surrealism Movement

Surrealism started after the First World War，the word Surrealismwas brought up by the famous surrealism writer Apollinaire in his letter，and Breton used it to named the movement Surrealism. The surrealistsconsidered that the true realism should be united with sense andirrationalism，dreamland and reality，and also the past，the present and thefuture. In their creative work, they searched for the irrational experiencethat appeared unconsciously and detached above the ethics, moral andexperience, and they dedicated to figure out how to work unconsciousand irrational. The surrealists kept themselves in irration when theyworked. And they even used those painstakingly, like their automaticwriting, collage and so on. This kind of method of creation made theSurrealism works seemed dreamlike, absurd and disordered. These arecoincidently corresponded with the act of the mental disease. In fact,there are amount of those people or work appeared like a psychosis. Mental illness is complex, but its effect on the writers and their wokscan not be ignored. At first, this paper made a statement that the mentalillness assignable existed in the movement of Surrealism with abundantfact, and make sure the psycho problem had relationship with theSurrealism. As the fact that the unconscious movement Surrealists madeto follow Freud，and the writers own psycho problems, together with theirrelationship with the persons who had mental illness and they admiredthose people, Mental illness did have an important place in the Surrealism.This paper based on the Psychiatry, and predicate writers’ mental illnessby their biographies and letters. For example Artaud had been in mentalhospital for twice and Appollinaire had serious problem in his moodcontrol. When came to analysis writers’ behavior and works, this papermade a reference to unconscious and dreamland theory of Freud，thearchetype of Jung and Lacan’s mirror stage. In order to accuratelyunscramble the characteristic of those psycho writers made in their work,this paper also made a reference to the Semiotics, Pathography andpsychodrama and to make sure having better understanding of the proportion of the psychosis in the Surrealism. In addition, this paperincluded the drugs and substances abuse fact. Because the Surrealistssometimes worked with the help of alcohol or telepathize in order to getto the unconscious and irrational situation. Cocteau was a very famouspothead and the close connection of Sakho are all good samples. All thesefacts can make influence in Surrealists’ creation, thought these may notbe huge but also can not be ignored.At last this paper confirm the characteristic that Surrealists used intheir artistic expression and summarized the fact of psychosis in theircreation， for example the automatic writing followed the unconscioustheory of Freud， and some absurd fantastic creation were just as theexperience of mental illness， the method of collage seemed like thesplitting of thought in mental illness and also coincided with the aphasiamentioned by Jakobson in Semiotic. Thought the exactly proportion ofpsychosis fact in the movement of Surrealism can not be measured, theirexist and influence were still there.