Arieti Creatividad

(1980).
Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 16:287-306

New Psychological Approaches to Creativity
Silvano Arieti, M.D.
IN THE TOIL OF OUR EXISTENCE, we all confront daily our basic
needs, aspirations, and troubles. In one way or another, we are all mendicants
for love, searchers for new crumbs of truth, for a taste of softness and
serenity, or for a patch of beauty. We do the best we can in our own petty,
customary ways.
Although each of us tries to retain his autonomy and originality, all of us
are very much influenced and to some extent molded by the environment in
which we live. Although not conditioned like Pavlovian dogs, we are
relentlessly subjected to repetition of stimuli, persuaded to follow beaten
paths, to adjust to a routine.
A combination of chance events and of my own choices has made me
become intensely involved with two groups of people who confront their
basic needs, aspirations, and troubles in completely different ways, that is, by
attempting to transform reality. These two groups, the schizophrenics and the
creative persons, are both fugitives from the daily reality in which they feel
prisoners. The ones and the others are shaken by what they feel is terribly
absent in this world, and they send us messages of their own search, and
samples of their findings, that is, of the transformations which they themselves
have put into effect. But, some of you may object, the transformations of these
two groups of people are quite different. The creative person wants to change
reality in order to beautify it, or to enlarge the field of human knowledge or
experience, in order to provide usefulness, understanding, and predictability,
or to evoke a universal response. The schizophrenic instead is terribly afraid
of this planet, of remaining close to the soil, this soil which will eventually
bury all of us; but he has no wings to fly into high space. His flight from
reality is a way that fits his private, incommunicable feeling, his strictly
individualistic, bizarre, strange behavior which does not evoke consensus but
may even become destructive to the
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self and others. All this is true, and yet I hope to demonstrate that there are
points of contact between these two human conditions.
But before going into the heart of the matter, there are some possible
misconceptions that I wish to dispel. Some misapprehensions about
psychiatric, psychological, or psychoanalytic studies of creativity have been
frequently expressed by those people who are afraid that such studies would
equate mental illness with creativity, as, for instance, the first psychiatrist
who studied this subject, Cesare Lombroso, attempted to demonstrate long
ago. We must reassure everyone that nowadays we students of the creative
process do not intend to do so. We want only to differentiate and illustrate
some basic mental mechanisms which participate in the creative process.
Inasmuch as some of these mechanisms appear almost in isolation in some
mental illnesses, as if they were purposely devised in experimental
conditions, we psychiatrists have a contribution to make on the subject. Of
course we must remind ourselves that in the creative process of the normal
mind these special mechanisms do not occur in isolation or in misappropriate
sequence, but are harmoniously arranged or fused.
In pursuing the study of these mechanisms we have to retrace the different
steps which led to the work of creativity. But even this work of analysis is
resented by some literary critics and aestheticians because for them that
particular product of creativity which is a work of art is a perfect and
indissoluble unity. They strongly believe that it is impossible to separate form
from content, or part from whole. Such "dissection" would actually destroy
the aesthetic value.
This point of view is understandable in aestheticians as well as in
admirers of art, inasmuch as they are interested in the end result of the
creative process—the only one that elicits the aesthetic effect. Such an
approach, however, does not lead to a psychological understanding of the
creative process. The psychologically oriented student of creativity does not
deny that the work of art constitutes a unit where the content is indissolubly
intertwined with a particular form. But he is aware that this intertwining is
completed at the last stages of the process of creativity, and that these stages
are preceded by many others—some conscious, others unconscious—that at
times unfold in rapid and at other times in slow succession. The
psychological analysis of a work of art may temporarily suspend the aesthetic
appreciation, but eventually it should lead to a deeper
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understanding and more intense experiencing of the creative product.
It is with the advent of psychoanalysis that psychiatry started to offer
rewarding approaches to the problem of creativity. According to Freud,
creativity originates in man's conflicts that stem from fundamental biological
drives. The urge to create is seen as an attempt to find a solution to these
conflicts.
Just as the child attains wish fulfillment or some control over reality
through play and games, in which he generally impersonates an important
adult—a political leader, an army general, a movie star, a parent, etc.—so the
creative person produces a work of art in which he can realize his daydreams.
According to Freud, childhood experiences are very important in
accounting for the content of the creative product. Thus it is not an accident if
in one of Leonardo da Vinci's famous paintings the Virgin Mary and St. Anne
both appear with the infant Jesus—in contrast to the usual representation of
the Holy Family in Italian paintings. Leonardo had the unconscious need to
reproduce a childhood experience: He was raised by two mothers: his real
biological mother, a peasant woman; and his father's legal wife, in whose
home he grew up. According to Freud, Leonardo's conflicts over his
homosexuality also explain some of his creative activities.
Today it is difficult to accept Freud's theory as one which would explain
totally or even to a considerable extent the creative process. Motivation,
conscious or unconscious, is indeed very important; but it is difficult to accept
the idea that the whole phenomenon of creativity can be reduced to a
motivational mechanism. Practically all human behavior is motivated,
consciously or unconsciously; but only a small part of it can be called
creative. The essence of a psychological study of creativity consists exactly in
this: in trying to understand how a person's motivational need has been
transformed into a creative vision or realization, in other words, into new and
desirable forms. It is evident that early in life a large number of people
experience conflicts and frustrations similar, for instance, to those of
Leonardo da Vinci. Yet Leonardos are extremely rare.
Actually Freud's masterpiece The Interpretation of Dreams unlocked
doors to many different explorations of man, and could have opened new
avenues of research in the field of creativity, too. In Chapter VII of his book
Freud described for the first time the
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primary and secondary processes, which are two different modalities by
which the mind operates. The primary process originates in the primitive part
of the mind, what Freud called id and archaic ego. It is generally followed in
dreams, pathological conditions, and very early in life, before the secondary
process is developed. Freud enunciated what seemed to him the various
principles and mechanisms by which the primary process operates. These
principles and mechanisms are quite different from those used by the mind of
a normal person who is awake and uses logical thinking. The secondary
process develops later, although it makes its onset also in childhood, and is
the process ordinarily used in life. From a cognitive point of view, we may
say that the secondary process is applied in ordinary thinking, which follows
the traditional Aristotelian logic. We use the secondary process in our daily
contacts with reality.
The Primary Process
In my works on schizophrenia I have shown the modalities of the cognition
of the primary process (Arieti, 1948), (1974). Later (1950), (1964), (1967),
(1976) I showed how primary process mechanisms appear in the creative
process also, in strange, intricate combinations with secondary mechanisms
and in syntheses that, although unpredictable, are nevertheless susceptible of
psychological interpretation. It is from appropriate matching with secondary
process mechanisms that these primitive forms of cognition, generally
confined to abnormal conditions or to unconscious processes, become
innovating powers (Arieti, 1950), (1964), (1966), (1967), (1976). I have
proposed the expression tertiary process to designate this special
combination of primary and secondary process mechanisms (Arieti, 1964).
In making the distinction between primary and secondary process and in
stressing the role of symbolism in general, the audience will recognize how
much I owe to Freud and, also, how much I differ from him. The concept of
the tertiary process does not exist in Freudian theory. Freud has the great
merit of having stressed the importance of the psychic reality as something to
be distinguished from the reality of the external world. But he insisted that the
two realities must remain separate, lest psychic reality be used as an escape
from external reality. Psychiatry has followed Freud's footsteps, especially in
connection with therapy. However, when we
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deal with the problem of creativity, a different prospect is desirable. The
tertiary process, with specific mechanisms and forms, blends the rational with
the irrational. Instead of rejecting the primitive (or whatever is archaic,
obsolete, or off the beaten path), the creative mind integrates it with normal
logical processes in unpredictable syntheses from which the new and the
desirable emerge.
The relations between the primary process and the creative process are
many, and I have described them at length in my book Creativity: The Magic
Synthesis(1976).
In this presentation I shall focus on only a few of them, and especially on
one of the most basic and far-reaching: identification based upon similarity.
For the sake of clarity and continuity I shall summarize some things I have
said about the primary process in my work on schizophrenia. Before doing so,
however, I wish to say that when I started my research on schizophrenia,
approximately thirty-five years ago, I found myself in an advantageous
position. This advantageous position was due to my knowledge of
Giambattista Vico, which I had acquired while I was a student in college. I
soon realized that the schizophrenic patient, when he thinks in a typically
schizophrenic way, adopts a type of cognition that corresponds not only to
Freud's primary process thinking but also to Vico's archaic mentality. As a
matter of fact, I called the special logic of the schizophrenic paleologic or
archaic logic. I wrote that what seems schizophrenic forms of irrationality are
instead reemerging archaic forms of rationality.
The seriously ill schizophrenic, although living in a state of utter
confusion, tries to recapture some understanding and to give organization to
his fragmented universe. This organization is to a large extent reached by
connecting things that have similar parts in common. Many patients force
themselves to see similarities everywhere. In their relentless search for such
similarities they see strange coincidences, that is, similar elements occurring
in two or more instances at the same time or at brief intervals. By considering
these similarities as identities they attempt to find some clarity in the
confusion of the world, a solution for the big jigsaw puzzle.
A red-haired young woman in a post-partum schizophrenic psychosis
developed an infection in one of her fingers. The terminal phalanx was
swollen and red. She told me several times, "This is
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my red and rotten head." She did not mean that her finger was a symbolic
representation of herself, but, in a way incomprehensible to us, it was really
herself—or an actual duplicate of herself. Another patient believed that the
two men she loved in her life were actually the same person, although one
lived in Mexico City and the other in New York. In fact, both of them played
the guitar and both of them loved her. Another example that I often quote is
that of a patient who thought she was the Virgin Mary. Asked why, she
replied, "I am a virgin; I am the Virgin Mary."
Many patients at this stage of regression indulge in an orgy of
identifications. The patient tries to find glimpses of regularities in the midst of
the confusion in which he lives. He tends to register identical segments of
experience and to build up systems of regularity upon them. Not only does he
experience an increased immediate grasping of similarity, but he responds to
such similarities as if they were identities. The psychiatrist Von Domarus
conceived a logical formulation of this disorder, now known as the principle
of Von Domarus. The principle states that "Whereas the normal person
accepts identity only upon the basis of identical subjects, the schizophrenic,
when he thinks in a typical schizophrenic way, accepts identity based on
identical predicates." (1944) In other words, in the primary-process type of
organization, similarity becomes identity. In Aristotelian logic, only like
subjects are identified. The subjects are fixed; therefore, only a limited
number of deductions is possible. In primary process thinking (paleological
thinking) the predicates lead to the identification. Since the predicates of the
same subject are numerous, the deduction reached by this type of thinking is
not easy to predict. The choice of the predicate that will lead to the
identification is psychodynamically determined by conscious or unconscious
motivational forces.
Another characteristic of the paleologic organization is the change in the
significance of words. The words lose part of their connotation. That is, they
may not refer to a class any more. The verbalization itself, the word as a
phonetic entity, independent of its meaning, acquires prominence. Other
primary process mechanisms may take place after attention has been focused
on verbalization. In many expressions of patients who think paleologically,
two or more objects or concepts are identified because they can be
represented by the same word. The verbal symbol thus becomes the
identifying predicate. This leads to what seems to be a play on
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words. For example, a patient who was asked to define "life" started to define
Life magazine. An Italian patient whose name was Stella thought she was a
fallen star. An American patient whose name was Marcia thought she was a
rotten person. In Italian, a language she knew well because she had spent her
childhood in Italy, the word marcia means "rotten." At times the patient loses
the proper denotation of a word and gives it another one that is suggested by
the verbalization. For instance, a patient who was shown a pen and was asked
to name the object replied, "A prison." The word "pen" elicited in him the
idea of the vernacular of penitentiary. Often the verbalization is exploited to
fit certain preoccupations of the patient. For instance, every time one patient
heard the words "home" and "fair, " he thought they were the slang
expressions for homosexuals, "homo" and "fairy."
In summary, when we consider verbal expressions of primitive thinking in
contrast to those of mature thinking, we are impressed by what to us seems a
loss or diminution of the socially-established semantic value (semantic
alteration) and by the increased value of the verbalization (formal
pregnancy). What seems to us a semantic loss does so only in reference to
our socially-accepted connotation.
Homonymy and similarity of words are also used in other, more
complicated forms of paleologic thinking in order to obtain identification or
to give plausibility to thoughts that are determined not by logic but by
otherwise unsustainable motivations. As an example from pathology, I shall
quote a patient whom I examined during the Second World War. During the
examination, she told me that the next time the Japanese attacked the
Americans it would be at Diamond Harbor or Gold Harbor. When she was
asked why, she replied, "The first time they attacked at Pearl Harbor; now
they will attack at Diamond Harbor or at Sapphire Harbor." "Do you think
that the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because of its name?" I asked. "No,
no, " she replied, "it was a happy coincidence." Note the inappropriateness of
the adjective "happy." It was a happy coincidence for her, because she could
prove thereby the alleged validity of her present paleologic thinking. Her train
of thought was stimulated by the word "Pearl, " which aroused associations
with precious stones.
Another primary-process mechanism, common to dreams and
schizophrenia, is the concretization of the concept. In schizophrenia, concepts
that cannot be endured by the patient as long as
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he uses them at an abstract level are translated into concrete representations.
For instance, a patient had the delusion that his wife was poisoning his food.
He had a gustatory hallucination that made him taste the poison in the food. In
this case, the patient was actually experiencing a general situation in which he
felt his wife was "poisoning" his life.
Wit
Freud first developed his concepts about the primary process in his studies
on dreams, and later he applied them to his studies of psychoneurotic
symptoms. He opened a direct path to the understanding of the creative
process with his book on the psychology of wit. Freud became interested in
the problem of wit when he noticed that certain dreams resembled jokes,
especially when they were interpreted. He did not disregard this apparently
accidental similarity, and upon studying the problem discovered numerous
analogies between wit and dreams. In wit, as in dreams, Freud focused his
attention on the unconscious motivation of the joke—a very important point
indeed. However, he made a rather hasty analysis of the formal mechanisms
of the joke.
I owe my interest in the creative process again to my work with
schizophrenics. It originated with my interest in the apparently witty
expressions that I have heard from schizophrenic patients from the beginning
of my psychiatric practice. To be exact, these expressions are witty for us, not
for the patient, who uses them in complete seriousness. A patient whom I
examined many years ago had the habit of oiling her body. When asked why,
she replied, "The human body is a machine and has to be lubricated." The
word "machine, " applied in a figurative sense to the human body, had led to
the identification with man-made machines. The patient meant literally what
she said. Her delusional remark is witty only for us. In this case, too, we, not
the patient, create the joke, because we recognize illogicality in her apparent
logicality.
Another patient complained that there were two initials on an office door
at her place of employment that referred to her. They were "O.B., " and she
thought they meant she was an "Old Bag." Although she worked in that office,
she conveniently overlooked that they stood for "Ordering and Billing."
Another patient, whom I discussed in supervision, thought he was Jesus
Christ. When
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asked why, he said, "Well, I have had so much Carnation milk that now I am
reincarnated."
These are examples of primary process catching similarities, of identifying
by virtue of these similarities, in accordance with the principle of Von
Domarus, which I have discussed earlier in this paper. Identifying by virtue of
identical predicates, including identical or similar verbal symbols, is one of
the most common mechanisms in that form of creativity which is wit. Let us
examine, for example, a joke which I heard at a time when everyone thought
the Pope would always be an Italian. Vito was visiting his old friend Carlo,
the Mafia member, in the State penitentiary. "You know, Carlo, " he said,
"you're just like the Pope. You're Italian, you live in a big house, you can't go
out with girls, and you're in for life." In this joke there are many technical
mechanisms involved; one is "representation through the opposite." A Mafia
member, condemned to a life term, is equated with one of the most respected
and revered persons in the world, the Pope. Trying to identify a subject with
its opposite reinforces the effect of the joke, but the fundamental key to the
joke is the possibility of identifying two apparently unidentifiable subjects.
One character in the joke, Vito, apparently wants to console his old pal Carlo,
who has been sentenced to a life term, by identifying him with no less a
person than the Pope himself. How can this logical identification be made?
By abandoning Aristotelian logic and reverting to the paleologic of the
primary process, like the logic of the schizophrenic. Carlo and the Pope
become identical because they have some predicates in common: They are
Italians, they both live in a big house, cannot go out with girls, and are "in for
life."
The same mechanism is applied here as the one applied by the patient who
considered herself the Virgin Mary because she was a virgin and by the
patient who thought his wife was putting poison in his food when actually he
thought she was poisoning his life.
Poetry
The poet is a creative person who often uses the metaphor to reinforce his
theme. Aristotle wrote, "The greatest thing by far is to be a master of
metaphor; it is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others; and it is also a
sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the
similarity in the dissimilar." (Poetics, 1459a) The metamorphosis which
occurs in dreams and
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psychosis becomes a metaphor in poetic creativity. The object is temporarily
identified with another because of a common trait or predicate. Thus, there is
an artistic application of the Von Domarus principle. For instance, a woman
is represented as a rose because both the flower and that particular woman
have at least one attribute in common: being beautiful. It would take too long a
discussion here to illustrate all the processes which go into the making of the
metaphor, a topic with which I have dealt in my book Creativity: The Magic
Synthesis. At times the poet has almost the capacity for imagery that the
dreamer has, or that capacity for "orgies of identification" that the
schizophrenic has (Arieti, 1974). In the making of metaphors the poet uses
images in unpredictable ways. For example, Victor Hugo, in his poems,
compares the stars in multiple and, to the average person, inconceivable
ways: to diamonds, other jewels, golden clouds, golden pebbles, lamps,
lighted temples, flowers of eternal summer, silvery lilies, eyes of the night,
vague eyes of the twilight, embers of the sky, holes in a huge ceiling, bees that
fly in the sky, drops of Adam's blood, and even to the colored spots on the tail
of the peacock.
The successful metaphor, even when it seems to subtract from reality, adds
to our understanding and confers aesthetic value. When the poet says A is like
B, where nobody else would be able to see that similarity, he transports us
into a universe where real and unreal unite and gives us a vision of
unsuspected depths and dimensions. When Shakespeare, in Macbeth, writes:
… Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more; it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing …
we perceive a greater, even if dubious, understanding. The poet purports to
give us a series of definitions of life. Were we to remain in the realm of our
daily reality, we could insist that life is not a candle, is not a walking shadow,
is not a poor player, is not a tale told by an idiot. But our realism is
suspended. Although these definitions of life are not those given in the
dictionary or in a textbook of biology, we sense that we are getting closer to
touching a special truth that only the metaphor can offer us. The metaphor
seems to transport us closer to a world of absolute understanding
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that is more real than reality. At the same time, we are conscious that these
words are pronounced by Macbeth, the hero of evil, certainly not a man to
whom we should listen as master of life. Is he right? Is he wrong? Is this
vision of life determined by a life of crime? There are no sure answers to
these questions. The metaphors have enlarged the realm of possibilities of our
understanding.
Another characteristic that writers, especially poets, and people using
primary-process thinking have in common, is the use of homonymy or
similarity of words, as I have already mentioned. I shall start with a classic
example from Shakespeare.
In Shakespeare's Othello, Othello is a black man, a Moor. Actually, in the
original Italian story, written by Giovanni Battista Giraldi Cinthio, from
which Shakespeare took the plot, Othello was a white man, a Venetian
patrician who was a lieutenant in Cyprus in the year 1508. Cinthio's story
gives no names, but historical documents indicate that the episodes reported
by Giraldi Cinthio really took place and that probably the family name of this
lieutenant was Moro. Moro, in Italian, means Negro or Moor, but in the case
of this lieutenant, Moro was his last name and had no reference whatever to
his race or color. It could be that in preparing the historical background for
his play, Shakespeare mistook a family name for a name referring to the color
of the person involved. I am more inclined to believe that such coincidence
stimulated Shakespeare's mental associations. Shakespeare may have had the
inspiration that if Othello were really a Moro (Moor) or a black man, the
story would have an uncommon artistic twist and the contrast with the fair
Desdemona would be accentuated. A real pun was made of the name Moro.
Similar puns, quasi-puns, and strange plays on words are common in
literature and especially in poetry. A typical one is from Petrarch, who, in a
great variety of ways, plays on the word Laura, the name of the woman he
loved:
L'aura che 'l verde lauro e l'aureo crine
soavemente sospirando move.
Here the name Laura is felt and heard in three different words (l'aura—the
zephyr; lauro—the laurel; l'aureo crine—the golden hair).
At times an assonance is used to emphasize a connection, not apparent but
residing in the depths of the human soul, between
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two different and seemingly contrasting meanings. The most typical example
of this mechanism that I know of is in Shakespeare, when Othello says, in
reference to Desdemona, "I kissed thee ere I killed thee." Kissing is generally
associated with love and killing with hate; the two words, which are almost
opposite in connotation, are united by the assonance, but this union
symbolizes that they have been united by Othello's mad passion. Thus by
resorting to special verbalization, this sentence includes the whole theme of
the tragedy.
Dante, too, resorts to plays on words that, at first impression, are
reminiscent of schizophrenic cognition. In La Vita Nuova, a book consisting
of poems and poetic prose, he wrote that once he saw Beatrice walking on the
street preceded by her girlfriend Giovanna, who was once the beloved of
Dante's friend and fellow poet Cavalcanti. Dante wrote that Giovanna,
because of her beauty, was often called Primavera, which in Italian means
"spring." Dante then makes a peculiar play on words. Primavera signifies for
him prima verrà, which in Italian means "she will come first, before." (That
is, before or preceding Beatrice while walking.) But a second play on words
is even more revealing. The real name of Beatrice's friend is Giovanna (the
feminine of Giovanni or John in English). Dante then compared her to John the
Baptist, who came before or preceded the coming of Christ.
The underlying, unconscious motivation appearing several times in Dante's
works is his wish to identify Beatrice, whom he occasionally calls the
daughter of God, with Jesus Christ. He wants to make this identification not
only in order to glorify the object of his love, in real life a woman named
Beatrice, but in order to transform his profane or earthly love into a sacred or
divine love.
Dante must resort to the ambiguity of primary process thinking in order to
make this identification possible. But he knows that this way of thinking,
which he follows, is not logical. He knows that if people believed that he
accepted these ideas as true they would consider him insane, but he manages
to pass the reality test by using a trick made available by his secondary
process mechanism. He says that he does not really believe in these ideas. He
writes, "It seemed that Love spoke in my heart" and said those things. He tells
the reader that this is fantasy, but there seems to be little doubt that he would
like to believe part, at least, of this fantasy.
I regret that lack of time does not permit me to illustrate how
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primary process mechanisms become available to creative persons, and by
combining in specific ways with secondary process mechanisms they become
innovating powers in fine art, science, religious experiences, philosophy, and
other fields. I deal with these subjects in my book Creativity: The Magic
Synthesis.
Before leaving this subject, however, I think it is important to spend a few
more words on the passage from the primary to the tertiary process.
What pertains to the primary process is a wealth of possible images and
imaginations which search for forms, in the cases discussed, verbal forms.
The primary process, with its predicative thinking, offers an infinity of
processes, a jeu imaginaire (an imaginary play), an indeterminacy which
seeks a precise external expression. The primary process presents a freedom
which seeks a rule, the logic of the secondary process. It is animated by a
tension which finds its resolution in the finding of the symbol. The real object
which is to be identified and the found analogic representative (for instance,
in Victor Hugo's example, the stars and the lighted temples or the colored
spots on the tail of the peacock) are irreducible among themselves, and yet
they are reduced when the secondary process reaches the peak of experience
of the tertiary process. Another part of the infinity and of the impossible
becomes finite and possible as a creative product, which from now on will
enrich man.
Creativity and Environment
Psychiatrists, psychologists, and educators are interested in the problems
of the relation between creativity and the environment and in the cultivation of
creativity. Because of lack of time I can discuss these very important topics in
only the most cursory way.
A phenomenon which has perplexed the student of creativity is the fact that
geniuses, or human beings considered highly creative, have appeared
throughout history not randomly, as one might expect, or uniformly, but in
clusters. This uneven distribution seems to indicate that special environmental
circumstances and not exclusively biological factors determine the occurrence
of creativity. It is enough to think of four major examples—the classic Greek
period, the Italian Renaissance, the group of people who conceived the
American Revolution and gave the world a new concept of man, the
contributions of the Jewish people since the nineteenth
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century—to realize that creativity does not occur at random, but is enhanced
by environmental factors. This is a phenomenon that has been known since
antiquity. Valleius Paterculus, a Roman historian who lived from 19 B.C. to at
least 30 A.D., wrote that distinct epochs of a few years' duration give rise to
great men. The greatest Greek tragedies appeared over a short period with the
work of "three men of divine inspiration, " Aeschylus, Sophocles, and
Euripides. Greek philosophy had an heroic era with another three men,
Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Since Velleius, many other authors have also pondered why creative men
of the rank of genius appear in clusters. But not until the work of the great
American anthropologist Kroeber did we have a serious study of the problem.
(1944) Kroeber stated that "Inasmuch as even the people possessing higher
civilization have produced cultural products of value only intermittently,
during relatively small fractions of their time span, it follows that more
individuals born with the endowment of genius have been inhibited by the
cultural situations into which they were born than have been developed by
other cultural situations." He also states that "genetics leaves only an
infinitesimal possibility for the racial stock occupying England to have given
birth to no geniuses at all between 1450 and 1550 and a whole series of
geniuses in literature, music, science, philosophy, and politics between 1550
and 1650. Similarly with the Germany of 1550-1650 and 1700-1800,
respectively, and innumerable other instances in history." If Kreober is
correct in his conclusions, we must accept that the possibility for the
development of a large number of creative people always exists in certain
populations. In my book I have reported nine socio-cultural factors which,
according to my analysis, promote creativity. I cannot discuss here this
important topic, and I have to refer the audience to my writings.
The Cultivation of Creativity
The science of promoting creativity in the individual person is in the initial
stages. I think that we must be candid on this matter and admit that all of us,
authors concerned with this problem, have so far been able to come up with
rudimentary and tentative notions. There is still a great discrepancy between
what we know about the creative process and our ability to use this
knowledge for the purpose
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of promoting creativity. Our modesty in admitting our results should not
eclipse our pride in participating in a pioneer work with the hope that new
advances soon will become apparent.
It is to be expected that educators and sociologists will resort more and
more to child and adolescent psychiatry, school psychology, school
psychiatry, and mental hygiene in their efforts to accumulate that body of
knowledge which, once applied, could promote creativity and remove
inhibiting factors. There is also the possibility, as it will appear from what
follows, that some characteristics or habits which have so far been
considered unhealthy or undesirable may be recognized as favorable to
creativity. The reverse may also be true.
Studies made independently by several authors have determined that highly
intelligent persons are not necessarily highly creative (Getzel and Jackson,
1962; Hammer, 1961). Although creative people are intelligent persons, an
exceptionally high IQ is not a prerequisite for creativity. On the contrary, it
may inhibit the inner resources of the individual because of too rigid self-
criticism or too quick learning of what the cultural environment has to offer.
We must add that a great ability to deduce according to the laws of logic and
mathematics makes for disciplined thinkers, but not necessarily for creative
people.
As a therapist and an educator I have recommended the adoption of simple
attitudes for the fostering of creativity in the individual (Arieti, 1966),
(1976). Although these recommendations are particularly suitable for the
adolescent and for the young adult, they are also applicable to any subsequent
age.
The first condition to be considered is aloneness. Aloneness may be
viewed as a partial sensory deprivation. To a much smaller degree it tends to
reproduce what the experimentally induced sensory deprivation brings about.
The alone individual is not constantly and directly exposed to the
conventional stimulations supplied by society. He has more possibility of
listening to his inner self, of coming in contact with his inner resources and
with some manifestations of the primary process. Unfortunately aloneness is
not advocated in our modern forms of educating adolescents. On the contrary,
gregariousness and popularity are held in high esteem. The emphasis today is
on "togetherness" and on "other-directedness." Calling a person an introvert
has become a derogatory remark.
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Aloneness should not be confused with painful loneliness or with
withdrawal or constant solitude. It should only mean being able periodically
to remain alone for a few hours. Aloneness, as we have characterized it,
should be recommended not only as a preparation to a life of creativity, but
also as a state of being when creative work is in process. At the present time,
emphasis is instead on teamwork, especially in scientific research. It is more
than doubtful that an original idea can come from a team, although teamwork
is often useful for expanding and applying the original idea and, more than
anything else, for developing the technology by which the original idea is
applied to practical uses.
In artistic work teamwork is almost unthinkable, although occasionally
resorted to in mediocre productions. One cannot even theoretically visualize
that such classics as Dante's Divine Comedy, Michelangelo's statue of Moses,
and Shakespeare's Macbeth could be created by more than one person.
In science, too, great discoveries and inventions have been made by
solitary individuals. When more than one individual has made the same
discovery or invention, the innovating ideas were obtained independently (for
instance, in the cases of Newton and Leibnitz for calculus, of Wallace and
Darwin for evolution).
A second characteristic which seems to promote creativity is one which is
contrary to the present spirit of American culture: inactivity.
By inactivity, of course, we do not mean schizophrenic withdrawal or
catatonic immobility, or excessive loafing, but the allowing of periods of time
during which the person is permitted to do nothing at an overt behavior level.
If a person must always focus his attention on external work, he decreases the
possibility of expanding his inner resources. Here again American upbringing
promotes an opposite attitude: high school and college students are
encouraged to work during summer vacations.
The third characteristic is daydreaming, a form of mental activity frowned
upon by people who are immersed in the practicality of life and want
immediate actions. Daydreaming is often discouraged as unrealistic or, at
least, as enlarging the gap between the individual's ambitions and capacities.
Often it is discouraged because it is thought to promote a vicarious fantasy
life that slows up the implementing of realistic and approved-of behavior.
Although it is true that excessive daydreaming may have these characteristics,
it is
- 302 -
equally true that daydreaming is a source of fantasy life that may open up
unforeseeable new paths of growth and discovery to the individual. It is in
daydreams that the individual permits himself to stray from the usual paths
and go on little excursions into irrational worlds. Daydreaming affords human
beings relief from the everyday conventions of society. The youngster who
daydreams as a rule proceeds either spontaneously or under friendly
suggestion from an educator who promotes creativity into free thinking
(fourth condition).
In free thinking a person must allow his mind to wander in any direction
without restraints or organization. Although any type of thinking becomes
more or less organized, in a state of abandon or freedom from inhibitions the
individual will realize that free similarities, that is, analogies, between
perceptions, apperceptions, concepts, or even systems and abstractions tend
to occur repeatedly. The free thinker must not discard them, but be in a state
of similarities catching, which is the fifth condition.
The person who wants to enhance his creative processes must allow
himself to indulge in this practice of catching similarities, which are often
only superficial or accidental resemblances. Even if the statistical probability
against having caught a productive similarity is overwhelming, the individual
should not drop the habit of registering all similarities. This leads me to
discuss another requirement for the creative individual, which is even more
difficult to accept: gullibility. Gullibility includes ruling out criticism and
suspending judgment for a certain period of time, but it goes beyond that
stage. It also goes beyond accepting similarities as accidental or due to mere
coincidence. It encompasses a primitive, pristine regard for similarities that
are differentiated from the manifold of the universe in the context of a
hypothesis—however seemingly absurd and rudimentally conceived—that the
similarity has a meaning. Gullibility means also a willingness to explore
everything: to be open, innocent, and naive before rejecting anything.
Remebrance and inner replaying of past traumatic conflicts is another
important characteristic. It is generally assumed that once a person has
overcome a psychological conflict or the effects of an early trauma, he should
try to forget them. Forgetting in these cases would require an act of willful
suppression, not of unconscious repression.
- 303 -
While some creative persons recognize that this belief is not right, they fall
into another fallacy. They believe that the neurotic conflict is a prerequisite
for creativity. At times they are reluctant to undergo psychotherapy or
psychoanalytic therapy because they are afraid that if they lose their conflicts
they will also lose the motivation to create. We must remember that conflicts
always exist in the psyche of man and that we must distinguish between
nontraumatic conflicts and traumatic or neurotic conflicts. Nontraumatic
conflicts need not concern us. On the other hand, traumatic or neurotic
conflicts of the creative person should be solved and not ignored even after
their solution. If the traumatic or neurotic conflicts are not solved, they will
remain too deeply felt and too personal. The creative person will not be able
to transcend his own subjective involvement, and his work will have no
universal or general resonance. On the contrary, the solved or almost-solved
conflict may be re-evoked at the same time with a sense of familiarity and
distance and may be more easily transformed into a product of creativity.
Alertness and discipline are other requirements. Although they are
necessary prerequisites for productivity in general, they acquire a particular
aspect in creativity. Many would-be creative persons, especially in the
artistic fields, would like to believe that only such qualities as imagination,
inspiration, intuition, and talent are important. They are reluctant to submit
themselves to the rigors of learning techniques, discipline, or logical thinking
on the pretext that all these things would stultify their creativity. They ignore
the fact that even such people as Giotto, Leonardo, Freud, and Einstein
studied under teachers.
In summary, most of the aforementioned conditions for creativity increase
the availability of the primary process—through openness to the inner self,
freethinking, suspension of control, removal from distracting stimuli—but the
last two require a sharpening of secondary process faculties with the
involvement of our will and a sense of commitment.
Creativity and Psychotherapy
There is a last point that I want to touch upon before terminating my long
speech, because it is particularly relevant to this audience.
What is the relation between psychotherapy and creativity? Can we call
the therapist, or the patient, or the therapeutic encounter, creative?
- 304 -
In ideal therapeutic situations the patient is supposed to associate freely
with no inhibition whatsoever. The therapist is supposed not to judge at all, to
be receptive to everything, and to make connections and inferences.
In his most typical productions the patient represents the primary process;
in his most typical activity the therapist represents the secondary process. In
the encounter of the two, something new and constructive emerges which has
some aspects of the tertiary process of creativity: insight, understanding,
widening of horizons, solutios of conflicts, opening of new avenues of life.
In the therapeutic situation whatever synthesis or denouement occurs is the
result of at least two persons, or more persons in group therapy. But the
synthesis of which I have spoken to you today is not only magic, because it
brings about the new and the great from the old and the little, but for another
reason as well: that it all occurs within one individual; primary, secondary,
and tertiary process are engaged in simultaneous interplay in one single
person.
In the therapeutic situation the synthesis is in the encounter, in the dyadic
situation, an asymmetrical situation because therapist and patient have
different roles and positions. They both offer material for creativity, but the
new is the concerted work of the two. Although the result may be a great and
new enlightenment, it is questionable whether we can call it creative, unless
new creative procedures are created. I think we can use the word magic when
it is in one mind that out of the plurality of dimensions made available by the
potentially infinite human symbolism, the new unit is created.
In psychotherapy there is an I-Thou relation which is different from that of
the normal creative person. Although asymmetrical, this interpersonal relation
is more normal than that specific to the creative person in the act of creation.
The creative process requires a certain alteration of the I-Thou relation.
During his creative work the creative person puts some distance between
himself and the surrounding world and becomes intensely aware only of his
solitary, intrapsychic processes. But this is only a temporary cleavage of the
I-Thou relation, which ultimately will reinforce the I-Thou relation with the
creative product which will enrich both the I and the Thou, the creative
person, and all the others. And here by contrast I shall mention again, and for
the last time, the schizophrenic. His I-Thou relation is not only altered but
very abnormal. Being a human being, the schizophrenic, too, is confronted
with a
- 305 -
plurality of dimensions. As a matter of fact, because he is so sick and
disintegrated, the plurality of dimensions comes forth in an obvious, obtrusive
manner. He presents not only what Festinger called cognitive dissonance, but
something very pathological which I have called multifocal thought because it
focuses on different meanings at the same time. The patient's thinking links the
relevant with the irrelevant, the past with the present, love with hate,
heterosexuality with homosexuality, male and female, and so forth. The
plurality of dimensions, inhibited to some degree in the normal person,
expands enormously in the schizophrenic and returns to the surface, as film
exposed more than once, as bizarries, as word-salad.
Thus I hope I have demonstrated that, after all, it is not so strange for the
psychiatrist to become involved with these two so unusual and divergent
transformations of reality: psychosis and creativity. If we pursue this area of
inquiry in all its ramifications, we become astounded at the vast panorama of
human existence which becomes available to the psychiatrist. He can look at
certain forms of schizophrenia and touch the nadir of human existence, and
may explore the harmonized fantasy of the creative person, and participate in
the zenith of human life.
REFERENCES
Arieti, S. 1948 Special logic of schizophrenic and other types of autistic
thought Psychiatry 11 325-338
Arieti, S. 1950 New views on the psychology and psychopathology of wit and
of the comic Psychiatry 13 43-62
Arieti, S. 1964 The rise of creativity: From primary to tertiary process
Contemp. Psychoanal. 1:51-68 [→]
Arieti, S. 1966 Creativity and its cultivation In Arieti, S. (ed.), American
Handbook of Psychiatry 3 722-741 New York: Basic Books.
Arieti, S. 1967 The Intrapsychic Self: Feeling, Cognition, and Creativity in
Health and Mental Illness New York: Basic Books.
Arieti, S. 1974 Interpretation of Schizophrenia New York: Basic Books.
Arieti, S. 1976 Creativity: The Magic Synthesis New York: Basic Books.
Freud, S. 1901 The Interpretation of Dreams New York: Basic Books, 1960
[→]
Freud, S. 1961 Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious New York: Moffat,
Yard.
Von Domarus, E. 1944 The specific laws of logic in schizophrenia In
Kasanin, J. S. (ed.), Language and Thought in Schizophrenia: Collected
Papers Berkeley: University of California Press.
- 306 -
Article Citation [Who Cited This?]
Arieti, S. (1980). New Psychological Approaches to Creativity. Contemp.
Psychoanal., 16:287-306
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(1980).

Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 16:287-306

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