LOUISE BOURGEOIS: CASE STUDY 1

Louise Bourgeois: Case Study Exploring Freudian and Adlerian Theory

Kathleen Shaw

February 17, 2020

Personality Theory PSY 350

Union Institute & University

Introduction

In the following case- study the life and works of famed artist Louise Bourgeois will be

used to show case from both a Freudian and Adlerian Personality theory perspective. Along with

a brief history of her life the themes of her artwork will be reviewed. Next, a personality analysis

using Freuds theory will be discussed. Followed by a look through an Adlerian Lens into the

artists personality. The reason both theories were chosen, descriptions and key concepts of each

will be noted. Also, what is the application of each of these theories into the life of the subject,

meaning how is her work and life viewed by them. A clear understanding of what her work

exhibits that can be explained by Freud or Adler along with a comparison and discussion of how

well these theories hold up, their strengths and weaknesses will be presented.
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Louise Bourgeois: Case Study Exploring Freudian and Adlerian Theory

Louise Bourgeois was born on Christmas day 1911 in Paris named after her father Louis

just prior to the first World War. In 1914 her father left to fight in the war not to return until 1918.

During this time Louise, her mother and older sister lived-in war-torn France which probably led

to internal anxiety and later depression a theme throughout her life. At the end of the war her

father returned, and they moved to a suburb of Paris where the family business of tapestry

restoration prospered. Louise worked in the business from the time she was young drawing,

washing, and helping to repair the tapestry. 1922 was a significant year as her mother contracted

the Spanish Flu from which she would never completely recover, and an English tutor named

Sadie Gordon Richmond came to live with the family. Added to her work responsibilities was the

care of her ailing mother. Louis her father was a prolific philanderer and soon began a 10- year

affair with the young English tutor Sadie. This relationship became the basis of Louise’s deep-

seated feelings of abandonment and anger towards her father while she watched her mother

passively deal with his infidelity. Later these themes became prevalent in her work. In 1932 she

graduated with a BA in philosophy and her mother died as a result of her illness. Louise tried to

study mathematics, but her grief was overwhelming, and she sought art as an outlet for her pain.

She studied at several institutions and galleries and in 1938 met and married Robert Goldwater

an art historian. Shortly after they moved to New York City where they raised 3 sons. In 1951 her

father died, and Louise became deeply depressed. Soon after she started psychoanalysis with Dr.

Harry Lowenfield which she would continue for the next 30 years until his death. After 10 years

of seclusion she returned to the Art world and had her first show in 1964. Her husband died in

1973 yet she continued to grow in her work as an artist. Not until her later works was, she truly

recognized as the barrier breaking artist she was. Bourgeois is known for her raw self-revealing,
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graphically shocking sculptures and 3 dimensional pieces. In her own words she said, “Art is a

guarantee of sanity” and “It is really the anger that makes me work.” Her use of animals, body

parts, size and proximity, and sexually explicit works have made her so controversial. She was

known for advocating the abolishment of censorship in the art world. She worked and taught up

into her nineties. A life full of interesting psychological analysis.

Sigmund Freud’s Personality Theory

When looking at the life and works of famed artist Louise Bourgeois through the optics

of Freuds theory we see visual and internal pieces which fit together like a puzzle. Freud

believed the roots of mental illness could be found in childhood events and traumas. Louise’s

childhood was during the height of the first world war and she and her family were in the middle

of it living in Paris. Her father left the family for 4 years to fight and this abandonment as

perceived by a young child was only the beginning of her deep- rooted fear and anger. Upon his

return several other events would transpire that forever shaped Louise’s psyche and which she

spent years trying to process and heal. Louis her father was domineering, critical, and often

humiliated the young Louise. In a video called “the tangerine” she speaks about a family

tradition where each member of the family was expected to entertain the others by some act at

the dinner table. As she speaks, she is cutting the peel of the tangerine and the finished product is

revealed to be a person complete with a penis. She recalls how he was saying the figure was her

as he cut the peel but then showed everyone the penis and said I guess it’s not. She was mortified

and a love /hate relationship was cultivated.

Freud believed the trauma or anxiety from childhood was often repressed into the

unconscious part of the mind. He developed the topographical model which consists of the ID

( Instincts), Ego (Reality), And Super Ego (Morality) of which he believed the ID was the
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controller of all motivation. And that in therapy one needs to analyze each of these parts which

he considered fragmented and separate. His Oedipus Complex is an inner conflict which must be

resolved through stages in order to achieve healthy personality development. Throughout her

career as an artist Louise created many symbolically and literal phallic works which a Freudian

might interpret as an unresolved phallic stage fixation. This could be Louise’s’ “penis envy” and

anger at her father for his infidelity , but a better explanation may be her anger at not having the

power and ability to control her father. It should be noted that Freud was constantly changing and

tweaking his theories and views until his death. His last version concludes that if a young girl

after realizing that her genitalia is smaller than a males’ does not recognize the penis as being the

primary sex organ but views her own genitalia as primary, she becomes the Phallic woman

defined by her anger, aggression, and masculinity. Freud might view her dominance and

powerful artwork as this conflict in action.

The Ego develops from the Id during early childhood and according to Freud it’s goal is

to balance reality and Super Ego. If we examine Louise and her work, we see her as respectable

mother, wife, daughter yet she pushed the confines of acceptable art often which is why she was

considered controversial. Libido is the energy created by the ID which operates at an

unconscious level this energy can be expressed in different ways depending on where we are in

development.

The other major relationship that formed much of her personality and internal conflict

was Louise’s relationship with her mother. She loved and was very close with her , being her

main caretaker for many years. Louise is renowned for her many works from drawings to

mammoth sculptures of spiders. In her writings she spoke of the association of the spider being

helpful, clever, protective as she viewed her mother. She also said spiders are repairers as her
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family repaired tapestries. Louise used her art to play out and process the anger and pain from

her youth. As she so eloquently said” Art is a guarantee of sanity”.

Finally, Freud believed the basic dilemma of all human existence was that each element

of our psychic apparatus make demands upon us that are incompatible with the other two parts

making inner conflict inevitable. Often the way we resolve conflict is through defense

mechanisms. The most obvious defense mechanism we see play out in Louise’s life is

sublimation. Her art became an acceptable, constructive way for her to express her anger and

aggression. This is why it provokes many different emotions such as fear, anger, danger, even

perversion. Louise used free association and scribbled drawings which came to light and along

with several of her more graphically sexual pieces are displayed in the Freud museum. She was

in psychoanalysis for 30 years and her therapist felt that her inability to accept her aggression

was at the core of her problems.

Alfred Adler’s Personality Theory

Alfred Adler was the first of Freud’s disciples to strongly disagree and diverge into his

own theory of personality. As Adler said,” To be a human being means to possess a feeling of

inferiority which constantly presses towards it’s own conquest. The greater the feeling of

inferiority that has been experienced , the more powerful is the urge for conquest and the more

violent the emotional agitation.” This not only explains Adler’s theory of personality but can be

seen in detail throughout Louise’s life. Her father ingrained feelings of inferiority through his

callous, domineering, oppressive behavior towards her. His disrespect of the family and her

mother by having a long sexual relationship with her tutor only intensified these feelings and

welcomed anger and add to that a childhood filled with the horrors of war.
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Birth order was thought to be significant in Adler’s theory. He describes the middle child

as being always on the go and in a hurry as if in a race. Louise describes her ability to draw as

indispensable to her family. Her crafting of this talent directly reflected her goals of being needed

and valued within the family.

Adler also disagreed that the ego’s job was to realistically balance out the ID’s demands

but thought it to be a self-sufficient part of the psyche responsible for creativity and the

fulfillment of ideas. We see creativity and the fruition of it prolific in Louise’s life. Adler

believed that inner conflict stemmed from power struggles within our early relationships

specifically our parents and that personality needs to be analyzed as a whole entity which is goal

oriented.

The theory of personality Adler developed was based on an empathy and social activity

level. Louise can be seen as his 4th and most healthy personality type called The Socially Useful

Type. Although she did experience years of depression and reclusion, she never stopped making

art and in the last several decades of her life she taught, wrote and inspired not only artists but

people from all walks of life. Her roles throughout her life included wife, mother, mentor,

businesswoman, teacher, artist, this is an individual who is empathetic and adapting positively to

the social environment. Dreams were aides to action in Adler’s view they were a subconscious

way of problem solving that which could not be resolved during the day.

The identification of perceived inferiority regarding potency, power, and aggression can

be understood through Adler’s Masculine Protest theory for either sex. We understand Louise’s

feelings of being powerless and impotent as her father’s behavior enforced these feeling through

his prolific philandering and demeaning nature. Her prolific creation of art for decades may be

her process of dealing with his prolific sexual infidelity. Also, the power and raw intensity of her
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work as a whole can be seen as her resolution to this masculine protest. Adler believed society

unjustly viewed women and their roles to be less important than men and thought their anger and

jealousy over this lack of freedom, education, and the right to pursue a career natural and

justified. Leading us to a more relevant understanding of “penis envy” from a more social and

cultural basis. The enormous size, materials, body parts, and sexually explicit nature of her art is

the process by which Louise compensated for and expressed her inferiority in a healthy context.

Conclusion

When choosing my theorists, the main focus was on Louise Bourgeois’ art and subject

matter, size, and even how she displayed it . This was central to the ideas, concepts, and analysis

of both Freudian and Adlerian theories of personality. As each came from the same country and

era yet ultimately had very differing views of personality and it’s development. Freud’s theory

that adult personality is determined by childhood experiences and it’s development happens

through 5 psychosexual stages. The satisfaction of sexual drives is the motivating factor in

human behavior which is instinctual. This leaves little room for personal choice or conscious

decisions especially since our drive lives in the unconscious. Freud focused on a narrow frame of

time in childhood. It is said that Freudian theory can explain behavior but not predict it. His idea

that the human psyche is fragmented, and personality must be analyzed in parts is like finding a

puzzle piece and trying to figure out what the puzzle looks like from one small fragment. His

view of humanity was darkly pessimistic, and that behavior was determined by your past, yet

Freud was the founder of talk therapy from which all other forms have sprung. The goal of
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psychoanalysis is to bring into consciousness repressed emotions and experiences from the

unconscious.

In contrast Adler believed that people are basically good and capable of love and empathy

for others. His brand of Individual psychology adhered to the philosophy that we all begin life

with a sense of inferiority and that is heightened by early trauma and experiences. Our behavior

is motivated by this intense need to feel superior. This inferiority complex explains and predicts

Louise’s behavior over her life span more adequately than Freuds theory. Also, his solution to the

Oedipus Complex being the Masculine protest seems to explain her self- revealing, barrier

breaking work. One of the striking themes in her “Cells” is the way she has limited how it can be

viewed as if she may be hiding something or getting the viewer to see it from a limited

perspective. Adlerian therapy focuses on the here and now and believed the conscious and

unconscious mind worked together. He held an optimistic view that individuals had the

capability to change and grow as Louise did through- out her life. As she became more confident

in herself her works became bigger, she created many pieces, and she taught and advocated for

the end of art censorship. In order to gain a complete understanding of an individual like Louise

we must view all the pieces as a whole this is how we see the big picture, her humanity.
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References

Turner, C., & Bourgeois, A. L. (2012). Art, therapy and Freud. The Guardian [online].

Searle, A. (2010). Louise Bourgeois: a web of emotions. The Guardian, 1.

Bourgeois, L. (2008). The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine. Director Marion Cajori and Amei Wallach.
Zeitgeist Video.

Sollod, R. N., & Monte, C. F. (2008). Beneath the mask: An introduction to theories of personality. John Wiley &
Sons.

Maxwell, D. F. (2018). Introduction to the Special Issue on Art and Psychoanalysis. The Psychoanalytic
Review, 105(6), 579-585.

Gustafson, A. (2011). Women and the archetype of the phallus; engagement with the sculpture of Louise Bourgeois.
Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Monge, P., & Langa, H. (2016), Part I. Biography.