From the author: Whose life did Vincent Van Gogh live? I love the painting "The Starry Night" by Vincent Van Gogh. This is a masterpiece that I can look at for hours. ❤ But what prompted the artist to paint such paintings? What inspiration, and perhaps an internal search for oneself. Or internal pain? And this is what Benezek and Addad write about the artist in 1984: “The artist came into this world with an identity that did not belong entirely to him, because in the perception of his parents he replaced his deceased brother. Obviously, his life was darkened by the fate of the first Vincent. We It is known that when one child replaces another who died in infancy, certain problems arise. Parents tend to impose on the newborn child the idealized image of their first-born. The anxiety of parents who are afraid of losing their second child gives rise to a strong feeling of their vulnerability, which, probably aggravated by a feeling of fratricidal guilt." The artist had an older brother, also Vincent, who was born on March 30, 1852, but died on the same day. The artist Vincent was born exactly a year later, on March 30, 1853. And what is it? The unconscious desire of parents, and especially the mother, to make up for the loss - to “revive the dead baby”? After all, they not only named the future artist after the deceased, but also gave birth to him on the same day and month, only a year later. The Vincent we know is a replacement child. He was born into a world of pain, grief, irreparable loss, he was born into a family that literally worshiped the idealized image of the deceased. He filled the void that appeared as a result of the death of his first child. Vincent was given the name and place of the deceased and took away his place - the place of a living child and thus deprived him of the right to be himself. Being a substitute child means already having someone else's name. He has no right to be himself, because he must become the predecessor or the one whom he is forced to replace. How could Vincent II feel? Who did he feel like? Is it yourself? Or dead? He considered himself “at best the deputy of his dead brother, at worst his murderer” (W. Forrester) and felt his connection with him so strongly that he doubted his own existence, especially that he was an artist. Parents' idealization of a child who has died inflates the level of the living child's ideal self. This idealization arises as a result of unlived grief. Rivalry arises between the dead and the living, and hence the loss of self-identification, because his parents unconsciously force him to be like the ideal deceased. Van Gogh lives under the burden of unbearable idealizations about the deceased and constant comparisons with him. Therefore, Vincent always doubted himself as an artist. It seemed to him that only his predecessor could draw perfectly. The feeling of survivor's guilt (because if the first Vincent had not died, the second Vincent might not have been born) causes depression in the artist. The constant fear of taking a place in the world of the living - the fear of being a survivor, the fear of expressing oneself, causes doubts in one's creativity, in one's identification, in one's right to life and, as a result, insanity. Vincent wrote: “I fight with all my might, trying to overcome any difficulties, because I know that work is the best lightning rod for illness. For such illnesses there is only one cure - hard work.” Maurice Poro writes: “These words confirm that the substitute child, a candidate for “madness,” has a loophole - “genius,” a talent that can only be revealed through work.” In order to survive, the replacement child must symbolically/psychically kill the “dead man”, remove the label of a dead child that his parents awarded him. But not every person is capable of this without personal therapy, because... such a story will be hidden in the depths of the subconscious, and for.