vs77a

This paper was published in the International Encyclopedia of Psychiatry, Psychology, Psychoanalysis and Neurology. Vol. III. Ed. B. Wolman. New York: Aesculapius Press. It is related to other studies of mine on Diego Rivera, VS67b; Thomas Chatterton and Arthur Rimbaud, VS67c; and "The joke in the Moses of Michelangelo: Freud, Michelangelo and Pope Julius II, VS85. The paper is dated – in a way it is a reminder from twenty years ago of the optimism existing then in regard to understanding the origins of creativity and the kinds of people and their backgrounds who eventually become known as "creative." The subject is much more complicated than we realized in 1977 – the brain itself is understood to be much more complicated, studies of the developing embryo and fetus, of memory storage, affectivity, the slow mapping of neural activities, and the growth of conscious mental activity are burgeoning. In a way, it is as if advances in the understanding of the whole of what we mean by "creativity" is awaiting consolidation of these and other studies. I did add, in 1997, a reference to Freud’s informal explanation of creativity in A Phylogenetic Phantasy. Overview of the transference Neuroses, Edited and with an essay by Ilse Grubrich-Simitis, VS89c.

Creativity is defined as the ability to produce something new – a system of ideas or a material thing. Creativity may also include an addition to or perfection of an existing paradigm. For example, the productions of artists working in a particular genre, or the contributions of researchers developing a body of scientific truths. Creativity also represents the capacities of great geniuses who first destroy existing paradigms and then replace them with the results of their innovative thinking.

It is possible to consider dimensions of creativity as making up points along a continuum. At one end of the continuum are the revolutionary creators whose radical innovations may happen only once in a lifetime; at the other end are the evolutionary creators who contribute more conservatively. Such evolutionary contributions may, of course, be more important to the world than some revolutionary system. However, revolutionary and evolutionary processes are different, probably requiring different psychological operations. The genius must have both the capacity for inspiration – implying the recognition of a problem and solving it – and the capacity for breaking down the existing structures and reconstituting them. In addition, he must exercise the capacity for elaboration, either his own or in those of his followers. The evolutionary creator requires mainly the capacity for elaboration, but he also needs the ability t carry on some of the processes of inspiration, although in a more limited way. 

METHODS OF STUDY

Freud was very careful in acknowledging the limitations of the psychoanalytic understanding of creativity. For example, in accepting the Goethe Prize, he remarked (1930):

"Even the best and fullest of them (biographies of great men) could not answer the two questions which alone seem worth knowing about. It would not throw any light on the miraculous gift that makes an artist, and it could not help us to comprehend any better the values and effect of his works" (p. 211).

Freud’s disclaimers have not always been heeded, although some progress has been made in discovering what constitutes creativity. Psychoanalysts have approached the problem in several ways: but use of insights gained in clinical practice; by psychobiographical studies; by applying psychoanalytic interpretations to the data from other disciplines; and by attention creative works and responses to these works.

There are severe limitations to the psychoanalytic study of creativity. A person recognized as a genius may not undertake psychoanalysis in the first place, and if such a person became an analysand, professional discretion might preclude publication of clinical data on his case. Some of Greenacre’s patients (1957, 1958) and some of Giovacchini’s scientist-patients (1960) possibly could be regarded as radical innovators. However, most of the patients psychoanalysts see and regard as unusually creative would be considered evolutionary creators, and confidentiality holds with them too.

The pitfalls of psychobiography are well known. The biographical details of most interest to the psychoanalyst, e.g., early childhood experiences, are missing in older biographies and even from primary sources. Diaries and letters provide no real substitute for free associations and reactions to interpretations. A more serious source of distortion is the psychobiographer’s transference to his subject. Finally, the subject ordinarily has no relationship with biographer; the richest source of analytic data, namely the transference-countertransference and its analysis, is missing. In short, psychobiographers are only able to make inferences from partial data (Erikson, 1958, Greenacre, 1955; Eissler, 1963). We do have some confirmations of Freud’s statement (1930):

"Psychoanalysis can supply some information which cannot be arrived at by other means, and can thus demonstrate new connecting threads in the ‘weaver’s masterpiece’ spread between the instinctual endowments, the experiences and the works of an artist (p. 212)."

However no truly satisfying explanation of the "riddle of the marvelous gift" has come from psychobiograhical studies, in spite of all efforts, e.g., Eissler’s heroic attempts.

Other than biography, two other major disciplines are generating data applicable to psychoanalysis. In psychology, the analysis of personality traits and cognitive styles may bear fruit (Coltrera, 1965; Rothenberg and Hausman, 1973); neurophysiology may suggest new approaches to thinking and processes of association related to creativity (Globus, 1974; Bogen and Bogen, 1969). These approaches, however, are still in their earliest stages.¹

There are numerous psychoanalytic studies of creativity and an appreciation of the products of creativity. Plays, novels, poems, musical compositions, fine art, even scientific and philosophical systems have been studied. Although the results have sometimes been interesting, the studies have produced little in the way of new insights.

SUMMARY OF RECENT CONTRIBUTIONS

Psychoanalysts generally agree that the principle of the complementary series holds in all personality development. Any given psychic organization is a product of constitutional and experiential factors varying together. However constitutional factors cannot be assessed by the psychoanalytic method alone; in the case of creativity it is usually assumed that creators are born with certain gifts, although the exact nature of these gifts is cannot at this point be determined. For example, to what degree are constitutional factors involved in the tendencies for creative individuals to have a marked perceptual sensitivity and unusual ability to link ideas and images? M. Klein (1929), Lee (1940) and others have emphasized the intense destructive aggression in creative individuals. Are there, then, constitutional differences in the relative strengths of these instinctual drives?

Psychobiographical studies make it clear that creators have had unique opportunities for gratifications during infancy, childhood, and adolescence. The history of great men is replete with examples. Often it seems as if large segments of the environment focus upon and organize themselves about the gifted child to shower him with stimulation, and encourage special sorts of preoedipal and oedipal resolutions. Perhaps, in part, this accounts for the tendency for the gifted child’s psychosexual stages to be less clearly defined for the personality to resemble the perverse rather than the normal (Greenacre, 1957; 1958).

It does not seem possible to identify specific traumatic events in the lives of evolutionary creators, although the propensities for traumatization may be greater in them than in ordinary people. In the case of revolutionary creators, however, there are an astonishing number of accounts of unusual frustrations, alternating or coexisting with the unusual stimulation and opportunities for gratification provided by the environment. Most often these frustrations and deprivations had to do with early object loss.

Bach, Baudelaire, Byron, Chatterton, Darwin, Descartes, Hume, Lavoisier, Leibniz, Newton, Nietzsche, Rimbaud, Spinoza, Voltaire, and Wagner suffered from loss through death of one or more parents in infancy or early childhood; Rivera lost an identical twin at 18 months. Balzac, Da Vinci, Hamilton, Hobbes, Kepler, Michelangelo, Pascal, Rossini, Servetius, and Swift suffered prolonged separations from parents during the first seven years through psychosis or desertion. Psychobiological exploration of known events in the early childhoods of Beethoven, Carroll, Franklin, Freud, Goethe, Kant, Luther, Orozco, Picasso, Pirandello, and Van Gogh evidence the importance of psychological separations early in childhood.

A study of 39 creative subjects discovers that 26 suffered actual separations from parents through death, psychosis, or desertion during early childhood; 11 of the 13 others seemed to have endured clear-cut traumatic psychological separations. (The exceptions in this group are Einstein and Marx; biographical data has been too scant to reach any conclusions about their early lives.) Even though separations, or the threats of separations, were nonspecific (occurring at different ages, involving differing objects), the suggestion is that these revolutionary creators suffered disruptions in early childhood which would ordinarily augur poorly for mental stability. Most of the individuals named did not suffer mental illness, although a few of them did.

Of the partial list above, Balzac, Baudelaire, Beethoven, Carroll, Chatterton, Darwin, Da Vinci, Goethe, Hume, Luther, Michelangelo, Newton, Nietzsche, Pirandello, Rimbaud, Rivera, Swift, Van Gogh, and Wagner had periods in their lives or areas in their personalities which would be considered seriously disturbed. Is there some sort of direct or reciprocal relationship between their productions and their illnesses, as Eissler (1963) believes? It may be possible to understand why the act of creation in a radical innovator is so essential to him – and the inability to act so catastrophic – by understanding certain regular features in the early development of these individuals, and certain features o their characters, particularly their patterns of dealing with aggression.

Eissler’s study of Goethe (1963) led him to conclude that, although genius is a form of madness, the problems of geniuses are essentially different from those of ordinary neurotics or psychotics. While Eissler regarded Goethe as a paranoid schizophrenic,² he was thought to be unlike other paranoid schizophrenics. On the other hand, Eissler believed that a satisfactory erotic object relationship is incompatible with creativity, and that Goethe failed to do great work during periods when did have a satisfying love relationship.

From a very different point of view, Kubie (1958) emphasized the preconscious system, and Wolman (1967) unusual access to unconscious processes. Creativity may mean the ability to use preconscious and unconscious processes more effectively than most people can. Such an ability implies that a creative individual is not bound by ordinary standards of reality, conformity, logical processes, or repetitive unconscious difficulties. If the creative act is associated with neurotic processes, it is apt to become stereotyped, as in the artist who repeats the same picture, or the novelist who repeats the same book. Moreover, Kubie argued that the concept of sublimation is not really needed to provide a psychoanalytic explanation of creativity. the concept of sublimation, so frequently invoked by Freud and others in reference to creativity, has become controversial, along with the concept of neutralization of instinctual energies.

Along with the pioneering work of Kris (1952), the most important psychoanalytic investigations of creativity have come from Greenacre (1955, 1957, 1958, 1969). She maintained that at least five conditions are necessary for an individual to be creative: (1) marked sensitivity to relevant areas of perception; (2) unusual ability to link ideas or images, possibly implying "a greater sense of the gestalt"; (3) unusual capacity for empathy implying a responsiveness to one’s own body states; (4) a childlike propensity to anthropomorphize inanimate objects and animals; and (5) "adequate sensorimotor equipment."

According to Greenacre, there is a confusion of psychosexual phases in markedly creative individuals. Development and maturation seem to proceed in a less precise way than in ordinary people, and in this respect creators may resemble perverse rather than neurotic characters. Greenacre mentioned that creative people have "more libidinal mobility" and more flexibility in regard to both objects and aims. She regarded creativity as a "gift of the gods" in a situation in which the creator carries on a "collective love affair" with his world, providing "love gifts" to it rather than simply seeking direct narcissistic gratifications.

Coltrera (1965) argued that ego psychology, which can encompass most of the observations already mentioned, emphasizes multiple function and an openness to the investigation of cognitive and other autonomous functions. He believes it can thus provide the framework for a future general theory of creativity.⁴

Creators are individuals who have been able to set up an unusual ego organization. They are able to coordinate both the primary and secondary process of thinking (Kris, 1952; Giovacchini, 1960). During periods of inspiration, the ego has access to content that is ordinarily unconscious. These times constitute an altered state of consciousness, and quite frequently, the creator assumes a passivity in regard t his mental operations in which it seems to him that his ideas come from outside himself (Kris, 1952). Kris termed this "regression in the service of the ego"; others have questioned whether such mental activities should be regarded as regressive or whether such a strongly teleological construction should be placed on them.

Although there is no general agreement the following points, they deserve consideration. The ego operations of a creative individual show a strong tendency to action relating to a love relationship with an object. the object representations does not, however, refer to a real person but rather to parts of the real or imaginary world that become synthesized as an alternative to a real person, a "collective alternate" (Greenacre, 1957). This alternative love object is in many ways indistinguishable from the ego ideal of the creator (Rose, 1964). It might be added that the creative product is similarly fused. During intense periods of creativity there seems to be a loss of boundaries among self-representation, ego ideal, "collective alternate," and the artistic and scientific product.

The adaptive actions leading to products that alter the external world may confirm omnipotent fantasies in creators. On the other hand, failure of the action may lead to maladaptation, and in turn, to regression and pathological defensive means.

In the revolutionary creator – and perhaps to some extent in the evolutionary creator – all these tendencies point to a special sort of narcissistic organization, a result of early and severe traumatic events dealt with by the unusual means available to the gifted. In the revolutionary creator narcissistic manifestations include very strong aggressive derivatives relating to action and power, which are, in turn, tied in with a sort of love affair with what amounts to a narcissistic creation – namely the ego ideal – its content more or less coinciding with representations of the "collective alternate" and the creative product. The uniquely made and powerful ego ideal aspects of the superego in such people easily outweigh its prohibotory aspects; the radical innovator repeatedly challenges and defies rules. The understanding of the strengths of the ego which must exist if inspired thought is to be converted into creative products may come not only from further developments in ego psychology, but from research in cognition and neurophysiological understandings of thinking and decision making.

ENDNOTES

1. But twenty years later they have still not fulfilled their promise. This is not to say that they never will. The studies may have not had a chance due to the fact that the neurophysiology of the brain is obviously much more complex than expectations in 1977.

2. That diagnosis of Goethe would be considered highly unlikely 20 years later, although there seems to be no doubt that Goethe did indeed have periods of major disturbances that went beyond psychopathology that could be considered to operate in ordinary neurotic ways.

3. But it hasn’t – not by 1997.

4. In a letter to Ferenczi on July 12, 1915 Freud says at the outset that he was troubled by fantasies – scientific fantasies. "I maintain that one should not make theories – they must fall into one’s house as uninvited guests while one is occupied with the investigation of details" (p. 83). A few months earlier, on April 8th, Freud described scientific creativity as the "succession of daringly playful fantas