Psychoanalysis and the Roots of Creativity
Part 1
Sat 14 July 2007Freud often confessed that the genius of the creative artist was a mystery to him, yet it was a mystery deeply connected to his own practice. Both therapist and patient create something by putting experiences into words and reaching out, through imagination, to another person's world. The rule of free association itself demands that analyst and patient 'play with words'.
This event celebrated the centenary of Freud's first published analysis of a work of literature ('Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's Gradiva') bringing together psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and others to explore contemporary theories of creativity and the importance of creativity in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Three interrelated themes wove through the day: (1) that a creative act (or, rather, process) may be the result of relinquishing a sense of active agency and the attempt to 'be creative' (2) the roots of creativity are largely unconscious and work in concert with conscious planning to produce a work of art, and (3) Creativity is a 'social act' - 'other people' are involved in the creative process as collaborators, imagined audience or internal objects of one kind or another.
In the opening talk of the day philosopher and psychotherapist James Fisher uncovered the experiential roots of creativity in what he called the 'Imaging Position'. In the mysterious 'creative process' the analyst as well as the artist synthesises the raw material of sensory-emotional elements into a symbolic communicable form, making, in effect, the unconscious conscious. In the following session, Jungian analyst Christopher Hauke, who is also a film maker, spoke engagingly of the interplay between planned and unplanned events in movie-making (his own and other people's), and the importance of creativity stemming from collective unconscious processes.
In some ways the sense of a 'collective unconscious' hovered around the first talks in the afternoon. Margot Waddell's concept of 'internal landscape' opens new vistas on the poetic imagination and our understanding of the impact of poetry on individuals (think how many contributors to Desert Island Discs ask for a book of poetry to take with them on their imaginary island); while fellow psychoanalyst Rael Meyerowitz, himself a former professor of English, saw the universal process of 'mourning' as a key element in the construction of meaning in the poetry of Yeats and others. The last talk of the day was a visual tour de force by Joan Raphael-Leff who introduced the concept of 'generative identity' to explore the core impulse to create as a healthy infantile capability.
Finally a lively plenary discussion gave members of the audience a chance to criticise the format of the conference. The consensus was that the papers and format gave little room for creative input on their part, while I reminded everyone that it was in fact an academic conference and not a 'how to be creative' seminar. However the criticism will be borne in mind for next time, since we hope to organise a 'Part 2' in the near future, which will focus on practice and performance and will involve artists and writers as speakers.
We would like to thank Hazel Dewart and Westminster University Department of Psychology for their generous support of the conference, which was held in the impressive art nouveau surroundings of the 'old cinema' lecture theatre of their Regent's Street complex.
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