Money Wisdom #187

"But while psychoanalysis tries to reach the unconscious by extending the conscious, art represents an irruption from the unconscious into the conscious. Art has to assert itself against the hostility of the reality principle and of reason, which is enslaved to the reality-principle. Hence its aim, in Freud's words, is the veiled presentation of a deeper truth; hence it wears a mask, a disguise which confuses and fascinates our reason. The mask which seduces us is derived from the play of the primary process."

Norman O Brown Life against Death - The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History (1959) p.62