 Freud, in his Autobiographical Study (1925), openly states that psychoanalysis can do nothing to clarify the essence of artistic talent, nor can it explain the means with which the artist works – that is, artistic technique. But creativity is a mental phenomenon, and as such it is a legitimate object of study for the sciences of the mind, whose research does not concern the artistic or scientific results produced by creative thought, but thought itself.
Throughout the entire 20th century, psychoanalysis sought to identify the roots and causes of creative thought. Psychologists and educators tried to understand how it develops and how it works; if and how it can be taught or encouraged; which personality traits are associated with it. Meanwhile, the cognitive sciences focused instead on memory, learning and information processing. Some proposed methods for practicing creative thought.
The physical locus of the mind is, of course, the brain, the earliest modern studies of which date back to the second half of the 19th century, when Broca and Wernicke localized the brain’s language centers. Today, the neurosciences are working to discover, among other things, which areas of the brain interact during the creative process, and how creativity is connected to language and eyesight.
The overall result is quite a puzzle, the pieces of which don’t fit together very well. Some are similar and might even seem at first glance to be interchangeable. Others are missing. It’s complicated, but that’s the way it should be: trapping thought that defies established schemas within a schema would be a difficult paradox to accept.
In any event, since psychoanalysis, with its discovery of the unconscious, was first to investigate the deepest causes of creativity, comparing the thoughts of a few prominent authors might be helpful. First, however, we need to address the most common prejudices with regard to creativity and the mind, and that is the idea that creative thought and mental illness are not only connected in some way, but that creativity is the result of mental illness.
The psychoanalyst Aldo Carotenuto reminds us that those who have direct experience with mental illness or neurosis know that it is generally not the pathology that makes someone creative. In fact, neurosis is a above all a sterile condition. We cannot therefore explain artistic production in terms of the artist’s personal pathology. The meaning and character of the work of art are in the work itself, and not, as some maintain, in the human conditions that precede or determine it.
Freud: displacement and sublimation
Sigmund Freud investigated the motivations of creativity, shedding light on the unconscious and pathological components.
Freud saw creativity as a positive response to an unconscious childhood desire, largely sexual in nature, that has been frustrated and then removed – that is, forgotten- by the conscious mind.
But removing painful or traumatic events by simply forgetting them results in neurosis, the mental disorder that is created when painful experiences are buried in the unconscious and then try to resurface in a variety of ways: compulsions, meaningless gestures, nervous tics, manias and obsessions that only appear to be without motive.
But there is another possibility, which is finding a creative release for the neuroses. This occurs when the libido – that is, the emotional tension of a desire (for attention, affection, love) that has been frustrated in the past – instead of expressing itself through neurotic behavior, shifts in a way that Freud called displacement, redirecting this tension toward socially acceptable creative activities that become an alternative source of gratification for unfulfilled desires.
In a nutshell: for Freud, creativity is the fruit of the sublimation of the energies unleashed by a frustrating situation, and of their reorientation in a productive direction. This happens when the the reality principle (i.e. the awareness that one must deal with difficult situations and devise ways to get out of them) replaces the pleasure principle (the need to satisfy any and all desires immediately and unconditionally).
Jung: archetypes and symbolic function
The thought of Gustav Jung is less causal, less linear and less systematic than Freud’s. The complexity of his vision and the scope of his research make it difficult to convey them fully in just a few lines.
Here, in any case, are a few of the broader points, and some substantial differences between Jung and Freud. For Jung, the libido is psychic energy, not exclusively sexual. The psyche is a set of complexes, or a system of representations charged with energy and characterized by their own affective tone (e.g. the “mother complex”). The Ego is also a complex, the most solid and (when in good health) stable, and is connected to the personality, self-representation and self-perception of the individual.
Jung posited a collective unconscious, by which he meant a basic psychological structure composed of archetypes shared by the entire human race. These archetypes are innate, and can manifest themselves in the form of myth, which can in turn be mirrored by individual experience.
For Jung, it is the dialectical relationship between internalized and opposing archetypes (Animus/Anima, Persona/Shadow...) that generates the mental dynamics of every individual and fuels the libido. The Shadow is our dark, though not necessarily negative side, which we tend to ignore, even if is often the vehicle of creative energies. The Persona is instead our public mask, respectful of social conventions. Anima (spontaneous, intuitive, maternal...) is the feminine aspect that dwells in the collective male unconscious, while Animus (logical, rational, wise) is the male aspect of the collective female unconscious.
The relation between innate and immutable archetypes and contingent individual experience produces – thanks to the Symbolic Function – a synthesis charged with creative potency.
It is an alchemical transformation that Jung calls individuation. It is a dynamic synthesis that becomes manifest when the ego is able to negotiate with the anxiety, ambiguity and ambivalence, that are intimately bound to human experience. This synthesis enables one to transcend opposing archetypes by integrating them, and to interact with the world through perception, thought, intuition and sentiment, whereas most individuals tend to engage only one of these functions, with perhaps a second one in a subordinate way.
We’re talking about an instinctual process here: for Jung, sexuality, activity, reflection and creativity are all instincts, and it is the creative instinct that makes humans different from other species, and which moves us toward spirituality and production of symbols. Psychotherapy also strives to develop the latent creative potential of the patient.
The individual who is able to interact with the world in a mature way also knows how to cultivate relationships and produce creative visions by maintaining contact with his or her Self the locus of our wisdom, our calling, and the tension within us that enables us to develop our potential.
Arieti: extraordinary creativity and tertiary process
Psychoanalyst Silvano Arieti makes a distinction between ordinary creativity, the kind capable of improving the life of the creator by making it more fulfilling and rewarding, and extraordinary creativity, the kind that invents new paradigms and contributes to progress, improving the lives of everyone.
For Arieti (Creativity: The Magic Synthesis, 1976), the individual capable of extraordinary creativity has greater access than the average person to imagery, metaphor, figurative speech and other forms connected to the primary process, which is unconscious or pre-conscious. The dreamer, the schizophrenic and the creative individual alike share a facilitated access to the primary sphere. But while the schizophrenic remains trapped there and the dreamer loses track of his nocturnal musings when faced with the rational light of day, the creative individual selects, adopts and adapts primary materials, applying the integrated and logical thought that belongs to the secondary process.
The magic of creative synthesis – the tertiary process – demands a higher than normal dose of receptive passivity, which allows the primary materials to emerge suddenly, unexpectedly, quick as lightning; while meditating, reflecting, fantasizing, relaxing, doing drugs, dreaming... But it also demands a higher dose of awareness and intentional activity to properly manage those materials.
It is a magic, Arieti writes, of which the creative person is the repository...; a secret that he can reveal niether to himself nor to others. What is no longer a secret is the way his creative process unfolds and reaches its conclusion, and which conditions facilitate its emergence.
Hillman: soul, calling, possession
The Jungian theme of archetypes is expanded by psychoanalyst James Hillman, who boldly projects it into the broader dimension of archetypal psychology, a therapy for ideas rather than individuals.
In The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling (1996), Hillman asserts that images with an archetypal value, those that are universal and necessary, are what lie at the root of myths, the symbolic structures with which the soul enters in contact to express its own energy and recognize, as it must do, its own true calling that exists beyond social pressures and contingent circumstances. Only by honoring the myth that each of us carries within – the tiny acorn that contains all the potential of the great oak – is it possible to construct a balanced relationship with reality, to avoid pathological waywardness, to grow in the world and fulfill our destiny.
We all have a destiny: creativity is not a gift or a special blessing, nor is it a skill, a talent or an artifice. It is instead an immense energy whose origin lies beyond the human psyche, pushing us to dedicate ourselves to ourselves through a specific nexus with others. Creativity compels us to devotion toward the self in its process of becoming through that very nexus, and carries with it a sense of both impotence and growing awareness of one’s own luminous power… it is more human and more powerful than its possessor who, in reality, runs the risk of being possessed. Operating as a coaction, its force is always excessive.
This possession can take many forms. Among the archetypal models to which creative experience can adhere, and which can combine with or contaminate one another: the wisdom of the senex, which makes order from chaos; the irresponsible playfulness of the puer, which seeks and challenges the unknown; the recklessness of the rebel or the fool, associated with shadow, destruction, death; the laic audacity of Prometheus, who steals the secrets of nature, discovering and inventing its own. Success rewards ambition and leaves the individual trapped in the myth he has created for himself, while the great mother nurtures and regenerates, an extension of the feminine – sensual, imaginative, extravagant, sensitive to aesthetic experience. Like Poincaré, beauty is fundamental for Hillman: when we are touched, moved and open to the soul’s experience, we discover that what lives there is not only interesting and meaningful, necessary and acceptable, but also attractive, lovable, beautiful.
It is therefore the soul that finds the meaning of things, that internalizes events as experience, that communicates through love, that feels religious anxiety and has a special relationship with death, and that realizes the imaginative potential intrinsic to our nature that creates experience through reflective speculation, dreams, images and fantasy (Re-visioning Psychology, 1975).
In The Myth of Analysis (1979-1991) Hillman considers the creativity of Freud and Jung, their fertile visions, productive lives and discoveries. For a psychologist, being creative means following one’s destiny by cultivating the soul and putting his or her own in play in order to help others recognize theirs. But since human beings are required to love their own soul, and since the soul becomes psyche through love, it is the myth of Eros and Psyche that could become central for the kind of creative psychology we see before us today – explicit, emotive and human.
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