ABSTRACT
From a psychoanalytic approach to an artistic work, we are led to an examination of the creative process itself. Here we return to an area that is clearly of psychological interest and central to clinical concerns. Often clinicians finds themselves working with patients whose conflicts and inhibitions concern their creativity, and a successful psychoanalysis may lead to heightened creativity. In this light it is surprising that although Freud wrote extensively about artistic creativity, he tended to minimize the worth of the psychoanalytic contribution. "We must," he owned, "admit that the nature of the artistic function is . . . inaccessible to us along psychoanalytic lines" (1910b, p. 136), and he conceded that "before the problem of the creative artist analysis must, alas, lay down its arms" (1928, p. 177). But these disclaimers were also qualified. In his preface to Marie Bonaparte's The Life and Works of Edgar Allan Poe: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation, he stated that "investigations of this kind are not intended to explain an author's genius, but they show what motive forces aroused it and what material was offered by destiny" (1933b, p. 254). A consideration of the "motive forces" that arouse creativity is certainly a substantial contribution, not to be dismissed lightly. 1
