The artists who became the surrealists gathered around poet Andre
Breton in Paris in the 1920's. The first Surrealist Manifesto was published in 1924,
declaring the artistic goals of the organization, especially as conceived by Breton. For
Breton, surrealism was a creative method that employed many of the ideas of Sigmund Freud, the Austrian doctor who developed psychoanalysis as a method of treating mental illness. The basic strategy for Breton was automatism, a process for tapping the unconscious by writing in a trancelike state and recording the involuntary images that emerged. …
