The relationship between surrealist and schizophrenics

Surrealism is an expression of the subconscious that allows a person to act on imagination rather than reality. And Schizophrenia is an enduring mental disorder in which is involved in the deterioration between thought, emotion, and behavior, which leads to damaged perceptions, unsuitable movements and emotions, the separation of a person from the real world into the imaginary and delusional domain. It may lead to person destruction in a sense. I believe that Surrealists and Schizophrenics are the same people because of the many similarities Surrealism and Schizophrenia hold, but Surrealists have just had a better way of copping with their disorder, this is depicted thought that actions of the characters in the novel Nadja by Andrea Breton

Unconsciousness is the inability to know what you are doing, you are no longer aware of your actions and although we are completely alert of what is going on in our conscious mind, we have no clue what material we retain and store in our unconscious mind. Our unconsciousness is filled with all sorts of considerable and disturbing information, in which we suppress from our awareness because the thoughts are too ominous to fully accept. The unconscious doesn’t store insignificant information; but because of the power the unconscious can hold and the fear humans have for it we indirectly choose to keep it hidden.

Willard Bohn states in his article Surrealism to Surrealism: Apollinaire and Breton, “The primary function of Surrealism clearly to liberate the Freudian Unconscious, and tap its powerful force via automatic writing, automatic speech, and the analysis of dreams”(Bohn, 205). Bohn is trying to say that surrealism was another way of exposing Freud’s theory on the unconscious. I agree with w...

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...irs of eyes crossed together, with two hearts placed on the top and the bottom of the eyes. Wylie also states that Nadja’s art is similar to that of schizophrenics (Wylie, 101), which indicates that Nadja drawings although viewed as surrealist art, are actually symptoms of schizophrenia, its her disorder that drives her into drawing unusual images.

Andrea Breton in his novel Nadja, states, “It was during lunch in the country that this flower appeared to her and that I saw her-quite clumsily-to reproduce it”(Breton, 116). One affect of Schizophrenia is the formation of hallucinations, and in this statement Breton is telling us that Nadja had seen something that no one else was able visualize, and she tried to recreate it. Nadja experienced a hallucination in which she tried to recreate. This image, when completed came out to familiarize with schizophrenic drawings.