The Primitive Edge of Creativity: Destruction and Reparation in Louise Bourgeois's Art

Viewed within the psychic geography of Thomas Ogden's modes of generating and organizing experience, in particular the autistic-contiguous mode, Louise Bourgeois's creative imagination can be seen as originating on what Ogden (1989) has called the primitive edge of experience. This mode, dominated by the sensory, is characterized by chaos, fragmentation, and a loss of boundaries. In dynamic movements between the depressive and the autistic-contiguous positions, between destructive and reparative impulses, Bourgeois transforms experiences of chaos, as well as destructive aggression, into aesthetic order and form, into works of art. She is able to delve into the most elemental and presymbolic modes of psychic experience and artistically harness raw feelings and sensations on what can be called the primitive edge of creativity.