Pastoral Psychology, Vol. 45, No.

3, 1997

Vincent Van Gogh, Son of the Manse:

A Portrait in Self-Psychology
C h a r l e s N. D a v i d s o n , Jr. 1

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.

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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__

'

Jan Van G gh m. Maria Stalvius

Members of the Walloon Church
Gold-wire drawer
I

Vincent Van Gogh, Sculptor (1729-1802)

One of the Cent Suisses
Practice of art & fortune came into the family
Left financial legacy to nephew Johannes

Johannes (1763-1840) m. Johanna van der vm

Gold-wtre drawer & Bible teacher
Clerk of Cloister Church, The Hague

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).

Vincent Van Gogh

239

Vincent Van Gogh, Pastor (1789-1874) m. E. H. Vrydag (d. 1857)

Grandfather of the famous artist, he studied theology at the Uuiversity of Leiden, graduating at age
22 in 1811, winning all the prizes and testimonials. The rector of the school, Mr. de Booy, declared
that "the difigent and studious youth, Vincent Van Gogh, fully deserves to be set up as an example
to his fellow students for his good behavior as well as for his pers~t~t zeal." His a/bum am/cohort
preserves the memory of fi'iends in many Latin and Greek verses. A little silk embroidered wreath
of violets and forget-me-nots, signed E. H. Vrydag 1810, is wrought by the hand of the girl who
became his wife as soon as he got the living of Benschop. They ~
long and happily together,
first at the parsonage of Benschop, then at Ochten, and from 1822 at Breda, where his wife died
in 1857, and where he remained until his death, a deeply respected and honored man. Twelve children
were born to them, of which one died in ~
there was a warm and cordial family feeling
between them, and however far the children might ~ apart in the world, they remained deeply
attached and took part in each other's weal and woe. Two of the daughters married high placed
oWlcers, the Generals Pompe and's Graeuwen; three remained single. The six sons all occupied
honorable positions in the world. Johannes went to sea and reached the highest rank in the navy,
that of Vice-Admiral; at the time that he was commandant of the Navy Yard at Amsterdam in
1877, his nephew Vincent lived at h~ house for a time. T~ee sons became art dealers; the eldest
Henr~ Vincent, "Uncle Hein" as he was called in letters, had his business at first at Rotterdam
and afterwards at Brussels. Comelius Marinns became the head of the firm C. M. Van Gogh, so
well known in Amsterdam. (His nephews called him by his initials C. M.). The third, who had the
greatest influence on the lives of his nephews Vincent and Theo, was Vincent ("Uncle Cent"), whose
health in his youth had been too weak to enable him to go to college, to the deep regret of his
father, who based the greatest expectations on him. He opened a little shop at The Hague, where
he sold colors and draw/~ng materials, and which he enlarged in a few years to an art gallery of
European renown. He settled in Pads and Mr. Tersteeg became the head of the firm in The Hague
in his place. It was here that Vincent and Thco got their first training in business; Goupil was "the
house" that played such a large part in their lives, where Theo ~xa,~ined and made a sucx:essf~
career, where Vincent worked for six years, and to which his heart clung in spite of all, because in
his youth it had been to him "the best, the grandest, the most beautiful in the world."

[
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)

Elizabeth Willemein Cornelius

(Lies)
(Wil)
(Cor)

1855- 1857-1891
died 6 mos.
after Vincent

published letters
and memoir of
Vincent

1859-

1862-

1866-1900
suicide

always rived with mother,

stillborn

only sister to whom Vincent

'
wrote
Theo's mother~ Anna Cornelia: "Well Theo you are quite a man now
at fifteen."
Theo's wife, Johanna: "He [Theo], more than any of the other children,
repays their [parents'] love with never falling tenderness and devotion,
and grows up to be 'the crowning glory of their old age' as they were so
fond of calling him."
Vincent, the artist, to his brother Theo: "A wife you cannot give me, a
child you cannot give me--money yes, but what is the use of it when I
miss all the rest."

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

Born in Groot Zundert, Holland

Leaves school at 15; works at Uncle Vincent's Goupil & Co., art dealers, The
Hague; starts writing to his brother Theo
Moves to London at Goupil's, living with the Loyers in Hackford Road, Brixton
Has falling out with Loyer;, transfers to Paris
Is dismissed from Goupii's, returns to England, teaches and preaches at Ramsgate
& Isleworth; returns to Etten, Holland
Works at bookshop in Dordrecht, undertakes studies at Theological Seminary in
Amsterdam
Abandons studies in Amsterdam; fails studies in Brussels for becoming an evangelist
-,

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

Vincent Van Gogh

1888

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.

--to "My Dear Theo" (Axles, early September 1888)

Unbeknownst to him, during the span of those two fateful days--from

the cracking instant on the 27th of July, 1890, when he discharged his psychic pain by firing a leaden bullet into his stomach, until the moment of
his long-sought release from anguish on the 29th, when his tired lungs
heaved a final sigh of relief--Vincent Van Gogh's advancing hour of private vindication and public acclaim lay closer at hand than all his previous
strivings for fulfillment appeared to warrant.
As though he were somehow regaining his composure in the course
of a protracted act of dying, Vincent lay reposed upon his bed, his feverish
lips puffing away on his favorite pipe while his gaunt face turned ashen
and his weary voice dropped to a whisper. Then, as with the stroke of a
brush applying the last daub of mortal gray to his earthen self-portrait, his
creative energies fell silent against the canvas of time.

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.

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Davidson

Heinz Kohut, the father of Self-Psychology, building upon Freud but

significantly departing from Freud, described the dynamics that reside at
the core of the self. In his essay "On Courage," he wrote,
There are conscious, preconscions, and unconscious selves; there are selves in the
ego, the id, and the superego; and we may discover in some [persons]... incompatible selves, side by side, in the same psychic agency.
Among these selves, however, there exists one which is most centrally located
in the psyche, one which is experienced by the individual as the basic one, and
which is most resistant to change. I like to call this the nuclear self. It is composed
of derivatives of the grandiose self (i.e., of the central self-assertive goals, purposes
and ambitions) and of derivatives of the idealized parent imago (i.e., of the central
idealized values). The nuclear self is thus that unconscious, preconseious and conseious sector in id, ego and superego which contains not only the individual's most
enduring values and ideals but also his most deeply anchored goals, purposes and
ambitions. The nuclear self, however, is not immutable. The task of modifying and
even of transforming it is repeatedly imposed on us throughout life under the influence of new internal and external factors. (Kohut, 1985, p. 100

It is from within this conceptual framework, and in the interest of a

more complete though not exhaustive understanding of Van Gogh, that we
pose a familiar and age-old yet still appropriate question: What does the
artist's art say of the artist? In Van Gogh's case, his art consists not only
of his drawings and paintings, but of his extraordinary letters to Theo,
which, standing alone, are literary and artistic masterpieces.

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.

Vincent Van Gogh

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-

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Davidson

chosis. His psychological disequilibrium appeared at the core to consist of

an insidious and unrelenting up-and-down struggle with inner chaos. It is
therefore not surprising to find a wide variance of emotion in his art,
though he seldom if ever lifted his brush in the midst of psychotic episodes.
His fits of rage coupled with recurring depression could well have been
diagnosed as a generalized and at times severe dysphoria with early onset,
embellished with the crippling effects of syphilis. Or perhaps the disease was
porphyria, a metabolic disorder complicated by alcoholism (Bernard, 1992,
p. 48). Some would say with justification that his was a borderline personality,
for he appears to meet the diagnostic criteria set forth in DSM-IV for the
borderline personality disorder. But the right word, whatever the syndrome,
was "possessed." It was a double possession. Vincent was possessed of mental
disease in combination with an astonishing artistic endowment.
A very short time after his demise due to unconquerable psychic distress, Van Gogh was revered as one of the most gifted painters ever. The
laurels of praise that evaded him in life were heaped upon him in death.
In 1987, a century later, his celebrated painting "Irises," which had been
completed during one of the most anguished periods of his life after his
voluntary commitment to a mental asylum, sold at auction for the price of
53.9 million dollars, the most ever paid for a work of art. This prompts a
maddening question. What was the real price he paid to produce such extraordinary art?
In a 1976 essay on "Creativeness, Charisma, and Group Psychology,"
Heinz Kohut posited,
Although I believe that the transference of creativity is a phenomenon akin to the
idealizing transference, I do not claim that creative people are of necessity suffering
from structural defects that drive them to seek archaic merger experiences. I suspect, however, that the psychic organization of some creative people is characterized
by a fluidity of the basic narcissistic configurations . . . . i.e., that periods of narcissistic equilibrium (stable self-esteem and securely idealized internal values: steady,
persevering work characterized by attention to details) are followed by (precreative)
periods of emptiness and restlessness (decathexis of values and low self-esteem;
addictive or perverse yearnings: no work), and that these, in turn, are followed by
creative periods (the unattached narcissistic cathexes which had been withdrawn
from the ideal and from the self are now employed in the service of the creative
activity: original thought; intense, passionate work). Translating these metapsychological formuiaUons into behavioral terms, one might say that a phase of frantic
creativity (onginal thought) is followed by a phase of quiet work (the original ideas
of the preceding phase are checked, ordered, and put rote a communicative form,
e.g., written down), and that this phase of quiet work is in turn interrupted by a
fallow period of precreative narcissistic tension, which ushers in a phase of renewed
creativity... (Kohut, 1985, p. 1890.

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

Vincent Yah Gosh

247

that signaled an ultimate psychological and emotional self-sacrifice. "Well,"

he said, "my own work, I am risking my life for it and my reason has halffoundered owing to it--that's all r i g h t . . , but what's the use?" (RoskiU,
1963, p. 340).
Kohut would conclude that such self-defeating resignation accompanied the radical decathexis of the self from itself, an act of ultimate despair
wherein Van Gogh's artistic work no longer provided a locus of displacemerit and attachment for his archaic mirroring, idealizing, and twinship (alter-ego) transferences. No doubt, the lack of personal recognition for his
work, combined with the social ostracism and despair he experienced from
mental breakdown, resulted in the loss of sustaining self-objects. At the
last, not even the presence of his brother could hold him together in the
face of internal disintegration.
Did the upside of Vincent's genius in any way engender the downside
of his emotional and mental undoing? Was his best self married inextricably
to his worst self?. Was his nuclear self, the root of his genius, simply not
cohesive enough to be sufficiently impregnable to the onslaughts of life's
vicissitudes? Thus it would appear.
V
It makes sense, in concurrence with Kohut, to conclude that "a healthy
self is never viewed as separate and apart from its sustaining self-objects."
In that respect the observation of Keith Wheldon is apropos.
It has already been suggested that Van Gogh was constantly structuring his identity
in direct response to his changing relationship with his family . . . . The woman's
role in the family was of central importance to his organic view of s o c i e t y . . , he
stressed the role of worn'an as m o t h e r . . . [and] the family and the woman in her
various roles underpinned an organic continuum which resisted an increasingly anarchic and fragmented society. (1989, p. 23)

This is significant, if for no other reason than it underscores the belief

within Self-Psychology circles that the quality of archaic pre-Oedipal relationships lies at the core of subsequent psychological health or illness (Kohut,
1985, p. 102ff; Elson, 1987, pp. 31-36). We do well therefore to attend to
the nature of those relationships in Van Gogh's developing life, linked as
they were to his art, for clues as to his deteriorating psychological condition.
The ease may be made that Vincent's mental disequilibrium, manifested in cyclic fits of rage and depression, which included self-destructive
masochistic disturbances, not only made him an impossible person to live
with, but resulted in repeated fragmentation and decomposition, a re-enactment of cumulative narcissistic injuries sustained to his developing ego from
earliest childhood. While this cannot be demonstrated conclusively, we can
make adequately informed inferences about the effects of his familial envi-

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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

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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)
~

W h a t does this say of Vincent's self-object transference with his own

mother? Was he overly enmeshed in her affection, or feeling severely deprived of it, or both? Perhaps this suggests, in Kohut's words, that "Anybody who is anxious and in need is in some ways ready to be a child, to
submit to some stronger power in order to be relieved" (1987, p. 218).
Vincent's anxiety was chronic and deep. Relief was repeatedly sought by
means of further enmeshment.

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-

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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)

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Davidson

Had Theodorns instilled in Vincent a sense of inferiority by conveying

an overreaching narcissistic self-idealization of himself as a parent, or by
wanting Vincent to achieve something that he as a father had not achieved?
Consider the heights of Icarus to which Theodorus' own father, the elder
Vincent, had ascended as a brilliant theologian. Was Theodorns' admonition to his son Vincent a projection of his own failure to attain the heights
set for himself as a preacher? We do not know, but Theodorus' homiletical
dearth was noted by Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger in her memoir.
Perhaps from Vincent's perspective Theodorns had become a discouragement to the realization of his son's nascent ambition and in that sense
an unwitting impediment to an adequate idealization transference. Whatever the case, for some time Vincent's introjected self contained a basic
fault relative to the attainment of vocational pursuits. Only after the altercation with his father did Vincent begin to turn to drawing, though he had
yet to discover the profound artistic talent that was to become his permanent driving ambition.
Understandably, Vincent's religious zeal during his twenties, coupled
with the childlike grandiosities that were indicative of his quest for a solid
nuclear self, seemed to be projected upon the eyes of a loving and self-affirming God who would not reject him. The burgeoning idealization of Vincent's supraordinate self, fixed upon a God who called him to a ministry
of preaching the gospel and serving among the poor, may have constituted,
in part, a reaction formation through which he defended against the perception of his Dutch Reformed pastor-father's psychic rejection of him as
an emotionally neurotic son. Vincent's identification with the poor and the
dispossessed of the earth may have had more psychological import than
either he or his parents knew at the time he took leave for the coal fields
of the Bodnage, where he gave away all his possessions to poor miners'
families9
Did he take his reduced place in the social order to rebel against parental
anthodty and expectation? Was his decision a reflection of his perceived standing within the family constellation? Regardless of any psychological explanation, it is clear from much of his art that he felt an enormous affinity with
the peasantry. His capacity for empathy was colossal.
9 those women who are condemned and damned by the clergymen, it is not just
of late that I have a heart for them . . . . (Roskill, 1963, p. 1 4 1 ) . . . when I see
on the heath such a poor woman with a child on her arm, or at her breast, my
eyes get m o i s t . . , it pierces fight through me when I see such a poor little figure
feverish and miserable, and it makes my heart melt within me. (p. 207)

As for his separation and individuation, Vincent's relationship to his

parents remained laden with conflict, reflecting the very ambivalence he
perceived they had toward him, especially on the part of his father. When

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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

went unresolved. Psychologically enmeshed in attachment to his introjected

mother, he concurrently held envious and aggressive feelings toward his
introjeeted father. Not even God was experienced as a great and solid
enough Other, able to help Vincent resolve his crisis of faith and trust,
and to give him sufficient inner peace and calm to prevent his worst self
from overwhelming his best self.
I can very well do without God both in my life and in my painting, but I cannot,
ill as I am, do without something which is greater than I, which is my life--the
power to create (Roskill, 1963, p. 286). I am an a r t i s t . . , always seeking without
absolutely finding. (p. 148)

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,

Wmeant Van Gogh

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

Father Theodorus said:

"It grieves us so when we see that he literally knows no joy of life, but always
walks with bent head, whilst we did all in our power to bring him to an honorable
position! It seems as if he deliberately chooses the most difficult path" (Roskill,
1963, p. 47).

Mother Anna Cornelia said:

"I am always so afraid that wherever Vincent may be or whatever he may do, he

will spoil everything by his eccentricity,his queer ideas and views on life"(RoskiU,
1963, p. 47).

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Davidson

Brother Thee said:

~It seems as if he were two persons in one, one marvellously gifted, tender and
refined, the other egoistic and hard-hearted. They present themselves in turns, so
that one hears him talk first in one way, then in the other, and always with arguments on both sides. It is a pity he is his own enemy, for he makes life hard not
only for others, but also for hlmgeh~ (RoskiH, 1963, p. 68).

Sister-in-law Johanna said:

"Vincent's aim--to humble himself, to forget himself, to sacrifice himself, 'mourir
a soi-meme,' (to sacrifice every personal desire), that was the ideal he tried to reach
as long as he sought his refuge in refigion, and he never did a thing by halves. But
to follow the paths trodden by others, to submit to the will of other people, that
was not in his character, he wanted to work out his own salvation" (Roskili, 1963,
p. 470.
"Now in the days of deepest discouragement and darkness at last the light begins
to dawn. Not in books shall he find satisfaction, not in literature find his work, as
his letters sometimes suggested; he turns back to his old love, 'I said to myself, I'll
take up my pencil again, I will take up drawing, and from that moment everything
has changed for me.' It sounds like a cry of deliverance, and once more, 'do not
fear for me, if I can continue my work I will succeed.' At last he has found his
work and herewith the mental equilibrium is restored; he no longer doubts of himself and however difficult or heavy his life may become the inward serenity, the
conviction of his own calling never more deserts him" (Roskili, 1963, p. 510.
"Deep in his heart there was such a great longing for sympathy, for kindness and
friendship, and though his difficult character generally prevented him from finding
this and left him isolated in life, yet he always kept on longing for somebody with
whom he could live and work" (Roskill, 1963, p. 52).

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."

--to "My dear Brother" (his last letter, July 1890)

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.