Where the wild things are: A psychoanalytic art therapy perspective

Abstract

There are at least three major areas of concern to aestheticians: (a) the nature of creative work, including the experience of the artist, (b) the interpretation of the works of art, and (c) the nature of the aesthetic encounter (Spitz, 1985). This paper will deal with the encounter as it relates to the book, Where The Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak (1963). This context deals with the work of art plus the audience and can therefore be related to object-relations theory. Working with the thoughts of Winnicott and Klein, as well as Freudian theory, this paper will offer some explanations of why Where The Wild Things Are is so successful with the children’s audience it addresses. I will try to highlight the issues that the book raises and to elucidate why these intense themes do not frighten the audience. On the first pages of the book, we see a boy wearing his “wolf suit, making mischief of one kind and another” (Sendak, 1963). Because the main character is in a costume, we are already prepared for make-believe; by word and picture, it is made clear that we are entering a land of fantasy. What specific areas are opened up? When his mother calls him a “wild thing,” Max responds with, “I’ll eat you up.” He is sent to bed without eating. The author has introduced major themes of orality, frustration, and aggression. “That very night . . . a forest grew.” Max’s room is transformed over many pages into the forest, the world, the ocean, and, finally, the place where the wild things are. We are transported to the fantasy land gradually and, as audience, we are privy to the graphic creation of this imagined world. Each page’s picture takes up slightly more room until, on Max’s arrival at his destination, there is a doublepage spread of the place where the wild things are. There are no words on either of these pages. It is at this point that we are, with Max, totally immersed in the realm of fantasy. The double page illustrations of the boy and the wild things encourage the feeling of being “transported fully ‘within’ the work of art . . . one feels fused with the aesthetic object . . . illusion becomes ‘real’ and one experiences a sense of power and magic” (Spitz, 1985, p.139). The success of the book with children is due, in part, to the gentle unfolding of the fantasy and the obvious pleasure that Max experiences in its creation. As the book addresses some basic fears of young children, the safety of the gradual transition convinces the child that Max and he will not be overwhelmed. The book takes place in an “intermediate area of experiencing, to which inner reality and external life both contribute” (Winnicott, 1958, p.230). It is this “potential space” between the individual and the environment that the book invites us to enter, the space where imaginative play forms the bridge between inner and outer worlds (Winnicott, 1966, p.371). As Max slowly creates his world of make believe, we enter it with him. Thus, even as the story elucidates the process of transitional phenomena, the