72

Photography and surrealism

73
1he automatic image
by glass something that cannot be seen,. It is also the
image ot a tgure haltvay through one place to another
(interiorexterior,, like the mirror in Alice in Wonderland
that signites the membrane betveen tvo vorlds. In the
image Breton is caught, trapped betveen places in the
position ot a splitting.
38
It vas precisely a splitting ot
the subject (a chiasmus, that surrealism demanded the
subject occupy, as a spectator to their ovn thoughts. An
act that simultaneously reasserts and thvarts the cogito
ot Descartes I think theretore I am.
39
1he surrealists
meditation on presence in the vorld tries to situate the
subject vhere it is not thinking, vithin the productivity
ot the unconscious and its thing-presentations.
But vith the automatic image produced in the mind,
a means ot concrete registration, ot representation had
to be tound, deployed tor its public signitcation. With
the subject supposed to be the spectator (ex-centric, to
their ovn thought production processes, the art vas to
capture an image as it passed through the mind and
tnd a torm (rhetoricmeans ot dramatization, tor its
signitcation.
lor the concept ot psychic automatism Breton knev
and drev on distinctions previously made in lrench
psychiatry by ean Charcot. Charcot had synthesized
nineteenth-century studies on endophasie, the concept
ot inner speech, a langage intrieur. Charcot classited
dinerent categories ot manitestation ot interior images
into verbo-auditif (heard voice,, verbo-moteur (motor
speech, body movements, hands etc., and verbo-visuel
(spoken images,. Breton, avare ot such categories, did
not take tor granted these detnitions and borroved trom
them tor the idea ot an automatic image in surrealism.
1hese categories ot inner speech vere already in vider
use, not only in discussions about psychology, but also
about the status ot these inner voices in literature.
60

ean Cazaux in his short study Surralisme et psychologie
(Surrealism and Psychology, (+,:, catalogues the interest
in interior speech in psychology and in relation to the
simultaneous, but separate interest vithin literary circles.
Cazaux notes the tendency ot modern literature to
drav on the psychological domain ot human activity
and argued that the vorks ot Marcel Proust, ames oyce
and surrealists all shov dinerent types ot interest in an
: It might have been vorth
quoting Iacan here tor a passage
tailor-made to open up Bretons
example tor analysis: the interest
the subject takes in his ovn split
is bound up vith that vhich
determines it namely, a privi-
leged object, vhich has emerged
trom some primal separation,
trom some selt-mutilation
induced by the very approach ot
the real, vhose name, in our
algebra, is the objet a. acques
Iacan, The Four Fundamentals of
Psychoanalysis (Iondon: Hogarth
Press, +,;,,, p. :. 1his supports
the thesis that uncanny images are
derived trom and rooted in the
return ot a primaloriginal
tantasy.
, Iacan tamously plays vith
this tormulation: What one ought
to say is: I am not vherever I am
the plaything ot my thought, I
think ot vhat I am vhere I do
not think to think (Ecrits, p. +oo,.
oo See ean Cazaux, Surral-
isme et psychologie (Paris: Iibrarie
ose Corti, +,:,, pp. +:o. lreud
also reters to Charcots use ot the
inner speech categories in his
essay Childhood and Screen
Memories (see lreuds The
Psychopathology of Everyday Life).