ABSTRACT
Psychoanalysis must have something special to add to the mystery of creativity, and to the psychology of the artist in particular. Not only did Sigmund Freud make more than one stab in this direction, but others, both within psychoanalysis and art history, have taken up his lead. For some skeptics it is not immediately obvious what is meant by the term "psychoanalysis", although defining that concept may be easier than coming up with something satisfactory about either creativity or art. It is not just that surrealists in the 1920s had some contact with Freud and his thinking, but someone like Jackson Pollock actually underwent psychotherapeutic treatment. It still seems compelling that psychoanalysis ought to be able to tell us something about the origins and psychodynamics of creativity. Although it cannot have been Oremland's intention to impose a Procrustean Freudian bed on creativity, that is what his treatise amounts to.
