ABSTRACT
Freud's theories about the creative impulse were based on two fundamental discoveries: unconscious phantasies, and symbolism. Repression, wish-fulfilment, and sublimation are the key psychic processes described by psychoanalysis through which we can understand the artist and his creations. Throughout his life Freud made clear his admiration for literature, art, and artists. On the one hand, he maintained that the aesthetic appreciation of art, as much as the explanation of artistic genius, are out of reach of psychoanalysis; yet he also held that psychoanalysis extends its understanding to philosophy, religion, anthropology, linguistics, and art. The artistically creative person will always be searching for something different, something that might take him beyond his previous creation. Beyond the firelight of analysis, faced with an empty page, the psychoanalyst is as privileged and as doomed as any other writer or artist. The ability to deal with the depressive position, however, is the pre-condition of both genital and artistic maturity.
