ABSTRACT
D. W. Winnicott and his effort to distinguish works of art from "the creative impulse", the latter of which he believed both humans and animals have access to when "feeling that life is real or meaningful". The creative impulse involves regression to an early formless state, then the work of creativity means casting it in new light with the difference of representation and interpretation. It strikes the reader as odd to begin this discussion of creativity with an example of a copy, for the copy conjures up associations that feel decidedly un-creative: compliance to external demands or all-out stealing of someone else's creativity. The early psychoanalytic efforts focused on the works of artists to explain why, unconsciously, "this man was great" or "that woman achieved much", Winnicott cast his net more widely: "The creativity that concerns here is universal. The final aspect of Margaret Little's recovery and it brings the relation between the copy and creativity.
