Life and Art

The plight of the artist was one of great interest within the field of applied psychoanalysis from its earliest days. In the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, considerable time was devoted to the discussion of this issue, Freud having relied so much upon literature and art for evidence to support his ideas about the unconscious. Ultimately, he became skeptical as to how thoroughly the creative process could ever be understood and reached the conclusion that 'Before the artist, the analyst must lay down his arms.' In this volume an inquiry into the nature of the creative process is attempted by paying close attention to the lives of various artists, poets, novelists and playwrights, and selected works of each in order to demonstrate an essential relationship between the two, and that it is most difficult to delineate the nuances of the creative act by treating them as separate entities. Emphasis is placed upon the effect of early trauma, such as object loss and various forms of deprivation, as a powerful unconscious motivating factor and upon the dream and transitional object as facilitators of the creative effort. The subjects of this study are allowed to speak for themselves through their works, autobiographical commentary and personal declarations wherever possible. These quotations and excerpts are meant to serve in a manner similar to that of a basic science to its clinical counterpart by furnishing a broader foundation for the derivation of further hypotheses.