Similar to mysticism, psychoanalytic views on creativity also generally fall into one of two camps. One camp labels creative expression a regressive phenomenon. Surprisingly, scholars of this persuasion do not at the same time find creative expression pathological. Freud's only essay dealing with the creative process, "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming" (1908/1985), exemplifies this view. For Freud, the creative writer is like a child at play: "He creates a world of phantasy which he takes very seriously - that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion - while separating it sharply from reality" (p. 132). Like childhood phantasy, creative expression is a wish fulfillment - "a continuation of, and a substitute for, what was once the play of childhood" (p. 139). For Freud, a strong experience awakens in the creative writer a memory of an earlier experience, from which a wish emerges that is then expressed through a creative work. Creative writing, for Freud, like a daydream, is a substitute for and continuation of childhood play.
For Hanna Segal and Harry Lee, creativity emerges out of a psychic need for restoration or restitution. Influenced by Melanie Klein, Segal (1991) pinpointed the origins of creativity in the depressive position: "It is a paradox that the artist's work is new and yet arises from an urge to recreate or restore" (p. 95). Similarly, Lee proposed that creative expressions are acts of restoration: inspiration is an unconscious mental process consisting of "an effort to achieve in fancy, and of oneself, the restitution to life and organic integrity of the particular person toward whom the artist had allowed himself to experience again the impulse to destroy..." (Lee, cited in Rothenberg and Hausman, 1976, p. 131). A work of art, for Lee, is a symbolic rendition of the restored internalized mother - now intact, undamaged, perfect, and beautiful in form.
The second camp for psychoanalytic views on creativity focuses on its unconscious or preconscious origin without the emphasis on regression. Lawrence Kubie (1958), for example, wrote that the "creative person is one who in some manner... has retained his capacity to use his preconscious functions more freely than is true of others who may potentially be equally gifted" (p. 48). This capacity is made possible by the process of free association. In a similar vein, Rollo May (1975) argued that creativity has a progressive dimension, where the "dichotomy between subjective experience and objective reality is overcome and symbols which reveal new meanings are born" (p. 91). For May, creativity is the expression
36 Creativity, Spirituality, and Mental Health
of the striving against disintegration and the struggle to bring into existence new kinds of being that give harmony and integration. Winnicott's (1971) view of creativity also meets the criteria of the second camp. In suggesting that creativity is found in the intermediate area of experience, the realm of illusion, Winnicott locates its origins in the preoedipal period when the relationship between mother and infant is central.
Existential analyst E. Spinelli (2001) suggests that an existential-phenomenological perspective on artistic creativity highlights the illuminative power of creativity as primary, in contrast to the regressive aspects emphasized by Freudian psychoanalysis. In doing so, it promotes a view of creativity as a new awareness, one which conveys a novel truth concerning being. Spinelli's view of creativity is coherent with the second psychoanalytic camp that includes May and Winnicott. While acts of creation, like play, may permit escape from disturbing realities and their resultant anxieties, Spinelli posits that they retain an inherent forwardness. Artistic creativity may provide a means by which novel and more "liberating" self/world interrelations are experienced by the artist. For example, artists often say they feel more "real" when they are immersed in creative activity. The act of creation, for Spinelli, thus has its own momentum and is in some ways akin to transcendence.
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