Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Vangogh
Vangogh
3, 1997
Born into a dynasty of Dutch art dealers as well as the family of a Dutch
Calvinist pastor, Vincent Van Gogh's turbulent and conflicted personality is
the focus of a psychological interpretation beginning and ending with selections
taken from the literary letters of the artist himself The psychodynamic SelfPsychology of Heinz Kohut provides the theoretical framework for considering
the tragic and redelming aspects of this nineteenth century artistic genius and
master Pre-Expressionist who painted the world as he experienced it. The
reader may wish to accompany the story with a favorite collection of Van
Gogh's drawings and paintings as a way of obtaining a deeper appreciation
for the person known among art critics and school children alike as not only
unforgettably strange and utterly fascinating, but wonderfully profound.
1Charles N. Davidson, Jr., Presbyterian minister and writer, dedicates this essay to the memory
of Charles N. Davidsun, M.D., 1912-1995, beloved father, faithful husband and abiding friend,
a physician's physician. For an illustrated presentation about Van Gogh, given by the author
in person for the benefit of counseling centers and other audiences, contact him at 33770
Quaker Valley Road, Farmington Hills, MI 48331.
237
9 1997 Human Sciences Press, Inc.
238
Davidson
Van Go~rh2
From the small town Gogh on the German frontier
Established in Holland (1500's)
Coat-of-arms, a bar with three roses
I
Jacob Van Gogh
Utrecht, Holland
In the Owl behind the Town Hall
I
Jan Van Gogh
Wine and Bookseller and Captain of the Civil Guard
In the Bible under the flax market
I
Many Van Goghs occupied High Offices of State in Holland (1600's)
Johannes
Magistrate at Zutphen, appointed High Treasurer of the Union in 1628
Michael Van Gogh
Consul General in Brazil, Treasurer of Zeeland
Belongs ,to Embassy that welcomes Charles II of England on his
ascent to the throne in 1660
Cornelius Van Gogh
Remonstrant Clergyman at Boskoop
I
Matthias Van Gogh
Physician at Gouda, then Clergyman at Moordrecht
The social standing of the family is somewhat lowered (early 1700's)
David Van Gogh
The Hague, a gold-wire drawer__
'
2The information in the family tree is taken for the most part directly from Johanna Van
Gogh-Bonger's memoir of Vincent Van Gogh; and the key chronological dates of his life
from Bruce Bernard's Pan Gogh (p. 62).
239
[
Theodorns Van Gogh, Pastor (1822-1885) m. Anna Cornelia Carbentus (1819-1906)
One of six brothers and six sisters, Theodorus studied theology at Utrecht and became pastor
at Groot-Sundert in Brabant on the Belgian frontier, where he was confirmed by his father. A
man of prepossessing appearance ("the handsome dominie" he was called by some), he was of
a loving nature and fine spiritual qualities, but he was not a gifted preacher, and for twenty years
he lived forgotten in the small village of Zundert before he was called to other places, and even
then only to small villages like Etten, Helvoirt and Nuenen. In his small circle he was warmly
loved and respected, and idolized by his children. In May of 1851 he married Anna Cornelia
Carbenms at The Hague, where her father, Willem Carbentus, was a flourishing bookbinder,
having hound the first Constitution of Holland and thereby earned the title of "bookbinder to
the King." Willem's youngest daughter, Cornelia, was already married to Vincent Van Gogh,
the art dealer;, his eldest daughter was the wife of the well-known clergyman Stricker at Amsterdam. The marriage of Theotlorus Van Gogh and Anna Carbentus was a very happy one. He
found in his wife a helpmate, who shared with all her heart in his work; notwithstanding her
own large family that gave her so much work, she visited his parishoners with him, and her
cheerful and lively spirit was never quenched by the monotony of the quiet village life. She was
a remarkable, lovable woman, who in her old age (she reached her 87th year), when she had
lost her husband and three grown-up sons, still retained her energy and spirit and bore her
sorrow with rare courage. One of her qualities, next to her deep love of nature, was the great
facility with which she could express her thoughts on paper, her busy hands, that were always
working for others, grasped so eagerly not only needle and knitting needle, but also the pen. "I
just send you a little word" was one of her favorite expressions, and how many of these "little
words" came always just in time to bring comfort and strength to those to whom they were
addressed.
24O
Davidson
I
Vincent
1852
Anna Theo m.
Joharma Bonger
(Jo)
1855- 1857-1891
died 6 mos.
after Vincent
published letters
and memoir of
Vincent
1859-
1862-
1866-1900
suicide
stillborn
Vincent Van Gogh, The Artist (March 30, 1853-July 29, 1890)
1853
1869
1873
1874
1876
1877
1878
18781880
1880
1881
1882
1883
1885
1886
1887
Becomes lay preacher in the Borinage coalmining district of Belgium; gives away
all his possessions to poor miners' families; becomes disenchanted with religious
life and becomes interested in drawing
Moves to Brussels; decides to become an artist; Theo begins sending a monthly
allowance
Returns to Etten to live and work at home with parents; falls in love with his cousin,
Kee Vos (ne6 Stricker); has serious argument with his father at Christmas and
leaves for The Hague
Forms relationship with a former prostitute, Christine Hoornik (Sien); begins painting moils
Leaves Sien and moves to Drenthe in northern Holland, painting and drawing the
harsh life of the peasants, returning three months later to parents' home at Nuenen
His father Theodorus dies suddenly on March 26; Vincent paints the Potato Eaters;
moves to Antwerp in November, never to return to Holland
Student at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Antwerp, but leaves abruptly, having
failed his exams; moves to Paris in March to live with brother Theo; enters Cormon's studio to study, but stays only a few months; associates with Emile Bernard,
Paul Signac, and Paul Ganguin; relationship with Theo becomes estranged; paints
over 28 self-portraits while in Paris
Paints Lemons, Pears, Apples, Grapes, and an Orange
1889
1890
1891
1892
241
Leaves Paris and goes to Aries, February 20; fives in Hotel-Restaurant Carrell; rents
the Yellow House in May, to become a center for artists; Gauguin arrives in October, paints with Vincent, they quarrel; on December 23, Vincent amputates his
earlobe, giving it to a local prostitute; the next day he is admitted to Arles Hospital,
near death; Theo arrives Christmas Day
Returns to his studio, January 7, painting Self-portrait with Bandaged Ea~, admitted
to hospital on February 7, then released 10 days later;, in March some of citizens
of Axles sign petition to have him sent home or committed to hospital; Theo marries
Johanna Bonger on April 17; in May Vincent derides to enter asylum at St. R~my;,
paints Irises while at the asylum
Son named Vincent born to Theo and Johanna on January 31; first positive review
of Vincent's work, by the art critic Albert Aurier;, in March he suffers his worst
crisis ever and is readmitted to St. R~my; he leaves St. R~my on May 16, moving
to Auvers-sur-Oise; Dr. Gachet, a friend of Camille Pissarro, look~ after Vincent;
on July 27, Vincent attempts suicide, dying from the gunshot wound to his stomach
on July 29, at age 37
Theo dies January 21
The first large retrospective of Van Gogh's work is organized by the Dutch Symbolist artists, Jan Toorap and Roland Hoist; the cover for the catalogue of the
exhibition contains a painting of a setting sun and a drooping sunflower, beneath
which is inscribed the name "Vincent"
Oh! Theo, Theo boy, if I might only succeed in this, if that heavy depression because
everything I undertook failed, that torrent of rcproaches which I have heard and felt,
if it might be takeh from me, and if there might be given to me both the opportunity
and the strength needed to come to full development and to persevere in that course
for which my father and I would thank the Lord so fervently.
--Vincent Van Gogh in a letter to "Dear Theo," his brother
(Dordrecht, Holland, April 16, 1877)
When I think of the past,--when I think of the future of almost invincible difficulties,
of much and difficult work, which I do not like, which I, or rather my evil self, would
like to shirk; when I think the eyes of so many arc fixed on me,--who will know where
the fault is, if I do not succeed, who will not make me trivial reproaches, but as they
are well tried and trained in everything that is right and virtuous and fine gold, they
will say, as it were by the exprcssion of their faces: we have helped you and have been
a light unto you,--we have done foryou what we could, have you tried honestly? what
is now our reward and the fruit of our labor? See! when I think of all this, and of so
many other things like it, too numerous to name them al~ of all the difficulties and
cares that do not grow less when we advance in life, of sorrow, of disappointmen~ of
the fear of failure, of disgrace,--then I also have the ionging--I wish I were far away
from everything!
--to "Dear Theo" (Amsterdam, May 30, 1877)
One cannot always tell what it is that keeps us shut in, confines us, seems to bury us,
but still one feels certain barriers, certain gates, certain walls. Is all this imagination,
fantasy? I do not think so. And then one aska: 'My God, is it for long, is it for ever,
is it for eternity?' Do you know what frees one from this captivity? it is very deep
serious affection9 Being friends, being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by
supreme power, by some magic force . . . . There where sympathy is renewed, life is
restored.
--to "My Dear Theo" (Cuesmes, Belgium, July 1880)
9 I take things seriously and will not let myself be forced to produce work that does
not show my own character"
--to "Dear Theo" (The Hague, early March 1882)
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Davidson
I want to say something comforting as music is comforting. I want to paint men and
women with that something o f the eternal which the halo used to symbolize; and which
we seek to confer by the actual radiance and vibration o f our colorings . . . . To express
hope by some star, the eagerness o f a soul by a sunset radiance.
II
More than once this artiste extraordinaire had suspended his human
spirit at the edge of an awesome and foreboding horizon. With eloquent
gloom and distressed emotion in one after another of his expressionist
drawings and paintings, Vincent Van Gogh had shouted "Take this, take
that!" to his tormented inner world. As one interpreter perceptively asserted, in some of Van Gogh's paintings "the artist/viewer becomes the
vanishing point" (Wheldon, 1989, p. 29).
A darkened sea of cloud lingers at the farthest boundary of the
"Wheatfield with Crows."
A blue-black sky wells up behind the "Church at Auvers" like a cataclysm of smoke rising from the netherworld.
A pitch coal-dust night, thick and blind and impenetrable--a mask of
foreboding (someone had died)--framed the "Open Bible, Extinguished
Candle, and Novel."
The open Bible belonged to Vincent's recently deceased clergyman
father, Theodorus Van Gogh. The extinguished candle may well have symbolized the light of the father, or the enlightenment of a bourgeois Dutch
"vincent V a n G o g h ~
243
Calvinist faith once inherited from the father, suddenly snuffed out. And
the book of the novel, Emile Zola's loie de l~vre, its pages worn at the
corners by Vincent's ravenous reading, teetered at the table's edge beneath
the Holy Scripture and the dissipated candle.
Vincent's own "joy of life" had failed him. To what extent had the
mortal stab of self-doubt he inflicted upon his stomach--his heart?-- issued
from disfigured images of himself resident within his soul? What was their
basis? Had a recurring sense of hopelessness stemmed from an early assault
to his inner dignity? Had there been threats to his vulnerability, compounded by emotional deprivation and inadequate nurturing from which a
false self-idealization emerged? Had primitive internalizations of a punitive
nature so overwhelmed him that they necessitated the compensation of supra-abundant creativity? What were the sources of Vincent's psychic injury?
As counterpoint to his distress, Van Gogh's spontaneously joyful paintings
protest the lapse of a crippled spirit into perpetual despair. Lavish scenes
of nature in astonishing glory, in bright and raging color, like his "Irises"
in radical bloom, like his "Red Vineyard" afire with sunlight, ignite the
flame of gladness in a wounded heart. "The White Orchard," "Fruit Trees
in Blossom," "Gar~ten of the Poets," "Wheatfield with Poppies and a Lark,"
and "Riverbank in Springtime" speak of eternal powers of perpetual renewal.
Vincent created his art not as objective representation but as felt reality. Just so, there seems to have been a persistent dichotomy of luminosity
and grimness in his work. He linked the paradox of joy and misery he
observed in nature and in others to that same joy and misery he observed
in himself, as though he were inseparably one with his subjects.
Consider the harshness and anguish in the face of the "Woman with
Child on Her Knee" or the despair of naked grief in "Sorrow." Contrast
them with the comforting countenance of "Joseph Roulin" the generous
postman, "such a good soul, and so wise and so feeling and so trustful."
Are these reflected images, disparate images, deep within Vincent himself?.
What is the self-image of the man with that famously mutilated ear,
the lobe of which he sliced off in a fit of self-deprecating rage to transmit
to a prostitute? Had he been able to do so, he might have asked: Why am
I such a fragrnefited soul? What objects are missing within myself that I
must desperately seek them outside myself?.
By means of projective identification, Van Gogh's art appears at times
to be nothing less than sheer psychological attunement to persons, places
and things which function as archaic psychological self-objects within the
deep and determined structures of his nuclear self.
244
Davidson
III
At the completion.of Vincent's two-day death vigil, the artist, though
not the art, lay lifeless. The stroke of his pen and the turn of his brush
rested eternally at the still-point. His hopes and dreams for minimal compensation, his deep longing for personal recognition, his passion for acceptance and belonging, and his overwhelming desire to love and be loved
became the story beneath the story of his artistry.
Bruce Bernard wrote that Vincent's "drawing of a man pulling a harrow, with its dramatic recession to infinity, embodies [his] vision of life as
a road to fulfillment. His figure is a robust and confident one, and he may
have been feeling so himself, if only for a moment or two, on his 'pilgrim's
progress'" (1992, p. 16).
Now, however, in the watchful presence of a life-long companion, with
his comforter and consoler, his dear brother Theo at his side, Vincent
passed into the region of "Starry Night," feeling largely unfulfilled. His spartan "Chair with Pipe" stood empty, rendered in dry yellows, in browns, in
blues, --in effect a final self-portrait.
7,45
Of the 670 letters Vincent composed and mailed to Theo in the course
of their lifelong friendship, the last one was found on his body. R was written as a prelude to the final act of mental desperation that drove him to
become a "finished" artist, a life aborted at age thirty-seven.
Six months later, Theo, four years the younger, died of grief and exhaustion, exhibiting similar emotional anguish and mental instability. Ten
years thereafter, in 1900, the youngest of all the Van Gogh brothers, "Cor"
as he was known, also committed suicide.
Not realizing the full import of his words, Theo wrote to his mother
shortly after Vincent's death, "One cannot write how grieved one is nor
find any comfort. It is a grief that will last and which I certainly shall never
forget as long as I live; the only thing one might say is, that he himself
has the rest he was longing for . . . life was such a burden to him; but
now, as often happens, everybody is full of praise for his talents . . . . Oh!
mother he was so my own, own brother" (Roskill, 1963, p. 85).
IV
The Dutchman, Vincent Willem Van Gogh, was the first-born of six
in 1853. There had been a seventh child, conceived originally as the first,
and born March 30th, exactly a year before Vincent's arrival. His name
too was Vincent, but he had died at the womb. Perhaps this was the inception of the future artist's latent self-doubt, of an unconscious survivor's
guilt. The fateful birth order plus the burden of bearing the legacy of the
family name Vincent may have exacted an inner psychological muddle: Was
Vincent first, was he second, third, or fourth in the generational succession
of Vincents? Moreover, his father Theodorus and his grandfather Vincent
were both pastors, yet his uncle Vincent and his great-great-great uncle
Vincent were artisans, the former a prodigious collector of art, the latter
a sculptor. A Vincent Van Gogh was destined to art or theology, or both.
So who then was the most recent of Vincents, distinguished from all the
rest?
He turned out to be an utter failure as both academician and cleric.
Yet once his artistic powers were unleashed, his truest self, his aesthetic
self, emerged as a genius surpassing all who bore the name Vincent, or
for that matter the name Van Gogh.
By the time he died he had produced 800 oils and 700 drawings, most
of them during his last three or four years of life. Yet he sold only one of
them for cash. Pennilessness would have been a more tolerable state of
affairs for him if, in addition to his financial deficit, his deficit of personality
had not taken the form of cycles of manic depression and worsening psy-
246
Davidson
In the dosing sentence of his last letter to his brother Thee, who
more than anyone else had stood by him through thick and thin as a
life-long friend, encourager, and alter-ego, Vincent expressed thoughts
247
248
Davidson
ronment upon his psychological state, given the available data. Moreover,
though we cannot observe his behavior first hand, nor subject his organic
mental processes to laboratory examination in order to demonstrate the relation of biological cause to behavioral effect, there may be reason to conelude there was some sort of organic basis to his disease.
This fact, however, does not obviate the profound likelihood of significant narcissistic injury to his character and personality. Even ff he had
sustained minimal psychological impairment in the most optimal of family
systems, a pre-existing organic mental disorder would have served only to
exacerbate the effect of any interpersonal psychic wounds. In fact, his detachment and erratic rage may have only increased the tendency of those
around him to inflict unconscious harm upon his fragile ego. "As a child
he was of difficult temper, often troublesome and self-willed, and his bringing up was not fitted to counter-balance these faults..." (Roskill, 1963, p.
37). Indeed, " . . . Vincent is not satisfied with all that kindness and wants
a deeper understanding of his innermost self than his parents can give,
however much they try" (p. 59).
There is ample and preponderant evidence from Vincent's life to support the conclusion that he migrated from one relationship to another, with
experiences of powerful narcissistic rejection when those relationships
failed. Consistent with this was a developing unconscious wish for self-annihilation, demonstrated most dramatically by the impulsive acts of mutilating his ear and placing a gun to his ribs. Heinz Kohut has indicated that
such outbursts of narcissistic rage are often "preceded, not by guilt feelings,
but by feelings of unbearable emptiness and deadness or by intense shame,
i.e., by the signs of profound disturbance in the realm of the libidinal
cathexis of the self' (1985, pp. 139-140). "The need f o r . . , undoing a hurt
by whatever means, and a deeply anchored, unrelenting compulsion in the
pursuit of [this aim] . . . gives no rest to those who have suffered a narcissistic i n j u r y . . . " (p. 143).
Van Gogh may have been fixated for his entire adulthood at Erik Erikson's developmental stage of "autonomy versus shame." Unremitting shame
and concomitant feelings of inadequacy, dread, remorse, and abandonment
would thereby have become the driving psychodynamic forces that contributed to his eventual undoing. His psychological constitution could not withstand the nagging inner voice which cried out desperately, "Woe am I."
VI
Vincent's sister-in-law, Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, was married to
Theo and wrote a sensitive memoir of her brother-in-law, in which, having
249
noted his difficult temper, she went on to say the following about the redhaired, blue-green eyed, heavily freckled boy Vincent.
Once grandmother Van Gogh, who had come from Breda to visit her children at
Zundert, witnessed one of the naughty fits of little Vincent; she who had been
taught by experience with her own twelve babies, took the little culprit by the arm
and with a sound box on the ears put him out of the room. The tender-hearted
mother was so indignant at this that she did not speak to her mother-in-law for a
whole day, and only the sweet-tempered character of the young father succeeded
in bringing about a reconciliation. In the evening he had a little carriage brought
around, and drove the two women to the heath where under the influence of a
beautiful sunset they forgave each other (Roskill, 1963, p. 37).
Here, in what may have been a slightly over-idealized portrait of Vincent's mother and father, we view antecedents of Vincent's adult tantrums.
This poses a question as to whether such histrionics were an acting out of
a ruptured empathic bond between the boy and one or more members of
his family. From the incident, the conclusion could be drawn that the parents may have failed to provide adequate emotional protection for Vincent
in the face of at least one damaging onslaught on the part of the paternal
grandmother, though this would have hardly been enough to cause lasting
harm. The account also suggests the possibility that as a matter of course
the parents failed early on to set boundaries for Vincent with consistent
and appropriate discipline. His eccentricities and unruliness may have been
so greatly over-indulged as to leave him unprotected from himself in a sea
of inner turmoil, unable to govern and modify his own emotional states.
It is furthermore conceivable, though not to be drawn as a conclusion from
this sole occurrence, that the kind of discipline which Vincent's father experienced as normative in his own boyhood home and upbringing, then
subtly exercised with his children, especially the males, may have been punitive and shaming to the point of being nareissistically wounding to a sensitive soul like Vincent. On the other hand, the imposition of strict
limitations upon his behavior may have had little value in constraining him
and molding the inner self-direction of a budding borderline personality.
With respect to Vincent's socialization, his sister-in-law Johanna noted
that "his parents found that the intercourse with the peasant boys [in the
town] made him too rough, so a governess was sought for the children of
the vicarage..." (Roskill, 1963, p. 37). This would suggest a significant measure of surrogate parenting for the children, the quality of which is not apparent. A surrogate could have contributed to the loss of opportunity for
early empathic parental bonding and further diminished Vincent's already
inconstant self-esteem. On the other hand, the governess may have compensated for parental deficiencies. In the process she may have inadvertently bolstered or curtailed natural parental prerogatives by either
enhancing or lessening the mirroring and idealizing transferences of the
Davidson
children. Yet dearly the family complex was an emotionally troubled one,
when we consider that Cornelius too, as the youngest, committed suicide
at age thirty-four.
Leaping to a later point in time when Vincent was twenty-seven years
old, we learn that he "cannot stand to stay [with his parents] in E t t e n any
longer, [for] he has become irritable and nervous, his relations to his parents become strained, and after a violent altercation with his father, in December [of 1881] he leaves suddenly for the Hague" (Roskill, 1963, p. 55).
The two years he spends there are, for his work, a very important period of which
his letters give a perfect description. His low spirits rise at first, by the change of
surroundings and the intercourse with Mauve [an artist], but the feeling of having
been slighted and wronged does not leave him and he feels himself utterly abandoned. When he meets in January a poor neglected woman approaching her confinement, he takes her under his protection, partly from pity hut also to fill the
great void in his life (p. 55).
This picture is consistent with another of Vincent's earlier attempts at
regressive psychological merger with his mother at the time of a broken
love affair with his first cousin Kee Vos, his mother's widowed niece. Vincent had high hopes of marrying her but was firmly rejected. K e e Vos an.
swered Vincent's persistent overtures w~th the brusque declaraUon: "No,
at no time, never" (Roskill, 1963, p. 128-30). Licking his wounds, he later
confessed to Theo,
w
I should like to be with a woman, I cannot live without love, without a woman . . . .
And whether I do right or wrong, I cannot act otherwise, that damned wall [of logic]
is too cold for me, I need a woman, I cannot, I may not, I WIllnot live without love.
I am but a man, and a man with passions, I must go to a woman, otherwise I freeze
or turn to stone, or in short am stunned . . . . One cannot with impunity live too
long without a woman. (9. 138)
~
VII
His relationship with his father had deteriorated over time, the result
being that a naturally idealizable parental self-object had taken a decided
"fall" within Vincent's mind, leaving him inwardly conflicted over the incompletely idealized pole of his personality on the one hand, and the over-
251
stimulated grandiose pole seeking succor on the other. One can only imagine the inner shame and humiliation that besieged him after the altercation
with his father and his abrupt departure for the Hague.
Theodorus wrote to his second and favorite son, Thee, concerning
the incident.
9 Vincent is again in a wrong mood. He seems to be in a melancholy state of
mind, but how can he be otherwise? Whenever he looks back into the past and
recalls to his memory how he has broken with all former relations, it must be very
painful for him. If he had only the courage to think of the poss~ility that the cause
of much which has resulted from his eccentridty lies in himself. I don't think he
ever feels any self-reproach, only soreness against others, especially against the gentlemen at the Hague. (Roskill, 1963, p. 58)
Not only do the father's words convey a sense of exasperation but also
a perfectly understandable limit to his capacity for empathy for his son,
given the incessant narcissistic and borderline features of Vincent's demanding personality. Here is a father, respected in the community, for
whom the son's behavior is a likely embarrassment, and who is in large
measure accurate in saying that Vincent had little feeling for self-transcendent reproach. This would be consistent with characteristics of a chronically
disturbed borderline personality requiring excessive adulation and admiration but simultaneously thwarting it with ungoverned impulsivity and reactivity of mood and emotion.
As for other male relationships eliciting Vincent's antagonism and
hostility during the painter's adult career, they bore strong projective aspects of Vincent's relationship to his father, a displacement and repetition of the psychological dysfunctions solidified in his family of origin.
Moreover, one cannot rule out the possibility that the tone of his father's
letter to Thee reveals a more pervasive judgmental and condescending
spirit on the part of Theodorus than would be consistent with his winsomeness as reported by others. We may have a picture of a somewhat
embittered and critical father, exhibiting an unaccepting and reprimanding attitude toward a recalcitrant son. The question is, how did Vincent
experience his father?
Six years prior to the Christmas incident which propelled him to leave
home, Vincent had written to his brother Thee about their father.
Father wrote to me once, 'Do not forget the story of Icarus, who wanted to fly to
the sun and arrived at a certain height, then lost his wings and dropped into the
sea.' You will often feel that neither you [Theo] nor I are what we hope to become
some day and that we are still far beneath father and other people; that we are
wanting to become simple and true in one day. But let us persevere, above all let
us have patience; those who believe hasten not; still there is a difference between
our longing to become real Christians and that of Icarus to fly to the sun. (Roskill,
1963, p. 93)
252
Davidson
253
Vincent wrote to Thee while living in England, during that strained and
stressful period of post-adolescence, he spoke of a particularly moving experience that had occurred while gazing from his window one night.
I l o o k e d . . , on the roofs of the houses that can be seen from there and on the
tops of the elm trees, dark against the night sky. Over those roofs, one single star,
but a beautiful, large, friendly one. And I thought of you all and of my own past
years and of our home, and in me arose the words and the feeling: "Keep me fTom
being a son who makes ashamed, give me Thy blessing, not because I deserve it
but for my mother's sake. Thou art love, cover all things. Without Thy continued
blessings we succeed in nothing" (Roskill, 1963, p. 97).
Along with the letter he enclosed a "little drawing of the view from the
window of the [English] school, through which the boys wave good-bye to
their parents after a visit when they are going back to the station."
A distant observer is struck by the metaphor of "one single star,
but a beautiful, large, friendly one." Such a star was to rise a thousand
times across the heavens of Vincent's paintings. Ouite possibly it was a
mythic metaphor of the "beautiful, large, friendly" God whose grace
alone could relieve the debilitating shame that at one time or another
fell as curse upon, Vincent's inner self. What he coveted more than anything else was not curse, but blessing. "God--God is Almighty--He has
made the sea, He has made the earth, and the sky, and the stars, and
the sun, and the moon; He can do everything--everything--no, He is not
almighty, there is one thing He cannot do. What is that thing the Almighty cannot do? God Almighty cannot cast out a sinner . . . . " (Roskill,
1963, p. 144)
VIII
Three years before Vincent's death, long after his religious faith had
suffered permanent erosion from a process of self-alienation quite the same
as his many disaffections in romantic love had left him in a state of reclusive
despair, and long after he had flunked out of seminary and been rejected
by his superiors when trying to become a lay preacher, that old "torrent
of reproaches" exercised power over him like a herd of demons. He cried
out in a plea for deliverance and wrote to Thee, "if there might be given
to me both the opportunity and the strength needed to come to full development and to persevere in that course for which my father and I would
thank the Lord so fervently" (Roskill, 1963, p. 103).
Vincent appeared never to let go of his childlike need to please his
father, and, at the same time, the self-defeating compulsion to disempower
his father by disempowering himself. In that respect the Oedipus complex
2~
Davidson
Where the admiration of his parents, his lovers, and his fellow artists
failed to provide him with a solid hold upon himself, he compensated for
the deficit through the abiding twinship cathexsis he maintained with his
brother, beginning at age four. That dependency, combined with his art, is
no doubt what gave him a sense of cohesiveness for as long as it did. Theo
furnished Vincent emotional and financial support for the bulk of his entire
adulthood. This stood in contrast to fleeting friendships with male artists
and liaisons with female prostitutes, notably Sien the woman of "Sorrow"
with whom he lived as faithfully as he could for several years. When he
met her, she was "a pregnant woman, deserted by the man whose child
she bore."
Vincent descended into frequent spiritual despair. Yet miraculously
he was able to draw and paint, seeking all the while to capture on canvas
what he most wanted to dwell within his soul. Only through his art did he
transcend himself. It reflected an "understanding of Thomas Carlyle's theory that the whole of Nature is composed of symbols which allude to the
presence of Divinity" (-Wheldon, 1989, p. 20).
Divinity seemed finally to elude him, and rage appeared to fill the void
left by the erosion of faith, causing further deterioration in his mental health.
Indeed Vincent did not manage to parent himself very well. He continued to
look outside among the trees, the cornfields, and the open skies for consolation
and comfort, for the restoration of his depleted self.
Had his internally nurturing self functioned sufficiently to soothe and
calm his frightened and wounded soul, he may have been fortified enough
to repair his self-contempt, despite any lingering effects of his father's disapproval. This never occurred. Several years before he took his life, Vincent
threw a glass at his male artist-friend-housemate Gaugnin, and then attacked Gaugnin with a knife. The next night Vincent cut off the lobe of
his own ear and carried it to a local brothel. One can only remember sadly,
and ironically, how as a boy his grandmother boxed his ears and sent him
out of the room. He may have been saying subconsciously to the prostitute,
255
"Please hear me! Please accept met" Perhaps he was reacting excessively
to her rejection.
The maternal and paternal self-objects lodged within the core of
his being were apparently too weak, or too overbearing, for Vincent
to be able to employ them successfully in his own best interest. He
did, however, manage for brief periods toward the end of his life to
find a modicum of equanimity between frightening episodes of psychosis.
When I came out of the hospital with kind old Rodin, I thought that there had
been nothing wrong with me, it was only afterwards that I felt I had been ill. Well,
well, there are moments when I am wrung by enthusiasm or madness or prophecy,
like a Greek oracle on its tripod . . . . But when that delirium of mine shakes up
everything I dearly loved, I do not accept it as reality and I am not going to he a
false prophet. (Roskill, 1963, p. 3100
Rodin, though he is not quite old enough to be like a father to me, has all the
same a silent gravity and tenderness for me such as an old soldier might have for
a young one. All the time--but without a word--a something which seems to say,
we do not know what will happen to us to-morrow, but whatever it may be, think
of me. And it does one good when it comes from a man who is neither embittered,
nor sad, nor perfect, nor happy, nor always irreproachably right. But such a good
soul and so wise and so fiill of feeling and so trustful. (p. 316)
With this oblique reference to the man who had been his fleshly and
"irreproachably fight" progenitor, do we hear the voice of a prodigal son
longing desperately to find his way home into the embrace of a loving and
accepting father?
No matter how people experienced Vincent, and no matter how he
experienced himself, there remained for him at the end of his life, as at
the center of his art, something of a wishful prayer, "something which
seems to say, we do not-know what will happen to us to-morrow, but whatever it may be, think of me."
IX
will spoil everything by his eccentricity,his queer ideas and views on life"(RoskiU,
1963, p. 47).
256
Davidson
X
" . . . the splendor of the sunse~ the gray clouds with their linings of silver and gold
and purple.., through the landscape is a road that leads to a high mountain far, far
away. On top of that mountain is a city where the setting sun casts a glory."
--Vincent Van Gogh, from his First Sermon after meditating on the painting (1870)
by George Henry Boughton entitled "God Speed!"
"Being friend~ being brothers, love, that is what opens the prison by supreme power,
by some magic force."
--to "My Dear Thee" (Cuesmes, Belgium, July 1880)
"One sees the same thing in Jesus too, who was first an ordinary carpenter and then
raised himself to something els~ whatever it may have been, a personality so full of
pity, love, goodness, seriousness that one is still attracted by iL"
"One will succeed in bringing one's conscience to a state of development such
that it becomes the voice of a better and higher self,, of which the ordinary self is the
servanL"
--to "Dear Thee" (The Hague, End of July 1883)
~m~ntV~Gogh
~7
~. . .the truth is, we can on~ make our pictures s p e a k . . , in the actual production
of some canvases, which even in the cataclysm retain their quietude."
REFERENCES
Bernard, B. (1992). Van Gogh. London: Dorling Kindersley.
Elson, M. (Ed.) (1987). The Kohut Seminars. New York: W. W. Norton.
Kohut, H. (1985). Self-Psychology and the Humanities. New York: W. W. Norton.
Roskill, M. (Ed.). (1963). The Letters of Vincent Van Gogh. New York: Atheneum.
Wheldon, K. (1989). Van Gogh. New York: Gallery Books.