ABSTRACT

The application of psychoanalysis to literature and art has been a fascinating (if controversial) interest since the time of Freud. While Freud had a rich background and deep personal interest in these subjects, his was more than a romance with aesthetics. He believed the works of creative artists expressed universal psychological themes that could provide valuable confirmation and elucidation of psychoanalytic concepts. The ego fluidity of the artist, his access to his own unconscious and the language of primary process, and his capacity to communicate personal experience in universal symbols make him one of “the few to whom it is vouchsafed . . . with hardly any effort to salvage from the whirlpool of their emotions the deepest truth to which we others have to force our way, ceaselessly groping among torturing uncertainties” (quoted in Kris, 1952, p. 23). While psychoanalysts cannot explain the secret of creativity, Freud concluded, creative artists have much to contribute to our understanding of the deeper layers of the human psyche.