Insight and creativity

The author fi rst explains the concepts of creativity, play and aesthetic experience. He then outlines the psychoanalytic process as a creative one that shapes reality. Making a link between psychoanalysis and the humanities, he demonstrates that creative play is a fundamental aspect of the human experience of reality. Aesthetic experiences during the psychoanalytic process are comparable to the play by which children structure their world and artists' activity in following their urge to shape. Furthermore it is shown that creative actualisation testifi es to a quasi-biological need for coherence and structure. Through modern hermeneutics, the truth claims of aesthetic shaping can be established in epistemological terms. The basic principles of hermeneutics-historicity, linguisticity and communicative experience-fi nd their psychoanalytic counterparts in memory, representational shaping and transference-countertransference. Psychoanalysis is demonstrated to be simultaneously a science and an art. On the basis of a case history, aesthetic experience is shown to constitute a specifi c and unique form of access to psychic reality. Aesthetic experience and creativity do not only aid recovery from 'bad psychological states', they are also indispensable for the entire understanding of internal and external reality. It is possible to develop this understanding through a creative psychoanalytic attitude.

2006

Abstract: Four important themes in self psychology as developed by Heinz Kohut are remarkably congruent with current theoretical constructs in the field of evolutionary (Darwinian) psychology: (1) the concept of narcissism; (2) the claim for the innate human capacity for empathy; (3) the recognition of the importance of group cohesion and (4) the belief that individual psychological distress is produced by a changed environment rather than a dysfunctional self. By recasting Kohut's themes in a Darwinian framework and interpreting them with personal views of the phylogenetic origin and nature of the arts As one who writes about the arts from the Darwinian framework of evolutionary psychology, I have been intrigued to discover interesting and possibly fruitful correspondences between my ideas and selfobject theory as articulated by Heinz Kohut and others who, like him, have antecedents in the British psychological tradition called object relations. In Art and Intimacy (Dissanayak...

Psychoanalytic Perspectives, 2010

Spyros D. Orfanos: I am so happy to have this opportunity to speak with you, because I find your body of work amazing. You've done a tremendous amount of work in the area of creativity: You have written four books and dozens of articles, and you have taught and lectured on the subject. I'd like to ask you about a few other areas besides the study of creativity, because you've so elegantly integrated the creative and the clinical. But let me begin by asking you some background questions, and then we'll get into the actual work you've done. You're a psychologist and a psychoanalyst and also an art critic?

Theatrical Colloquia, 2018

The basis of the progressive functioning of the human beings lays in these two fundamental components: the intellect and the affective part. They cannot be separated, but they converge towards the same goal, although they are not in absolute mutual subordination. Extrapolating on the idea of the actor, we can say that the starting point for the artistic creation is represented by thought, imagination and improvisation; all of them accomplished in a systematically designed organization, with the aim of alterity appearing. The character is brought to life through the body of the actor, without being able to tell exactly how much of this is the artist’s emotion and how much the character’s. Also, the character’s emotions cannot guarantee purity, unless we consider the representation of the presence a moment of scenic, but not life-like truth. If we think of Peter Brook’s words, “a play is play”, the comments will remain open to many possible responses.

The Example of Charles Mauron, 1984

2019

In Plato’s Republic, when Socrates was trying to explain that what painters do, He said that to Glaukon ‘Take a mirror and hold it everywhere. Suddenly you made the sun, the stars, the world, self, the house, plants, all living entities’ Is it really so easy for the artist to reflect the world and the human? The purpose of art is clear despite all its undefinitions. Art wants to understand and explain human being. Because the greatest enigma about human life has always been about itself. It is still another matter that art can fulfill this function. For example, at the point of time killing, why is reading books a much more intellectual action than watching television? Both are fictional, created. However, there are differences between the pleasure a person receives while reading and watching TV. The book is suitable for my communication. It triggers the imagination because there is no visuality. As long as Oguz Atay's doesn't give details about novel’s protagonist, I can describe it in my head. But television gives me a ready product and prevents me from dreaming. Here is the impressive, the most important feature of art is that the reader / viewer can dream. We can come under the influence of the work as we can imagine. Because, as Freud argues, adults make daydreams to satisfy their desires. In this way, the artist reflects the daydreams into his work with free creativity. Freud's psychoanalytic theory is undoubtedly one of the greatest turning points of the 20th century. Of course, its effect has not only survived the 20th century, but it has spread to every aspect of academic life and daily life in the 21st century. In this context, I will consider how Freud deals with art and especially creativity through psychoanalysis.

2019

Call for papers n.6: The literary unconscious While reflecting on the connotation of the expression "literary unconscious" it is important to follow the path of one of the most tenacious and flamboyant red threads among those that construct the fabric of our culture. Since ancient times writers and poets have questioned what, in man, escapes the scope of consciousness: some to draw inspiration, others with the intention to fathom the unexplored depths of the human being. Thanks to the psychoanalytic 'revolution' this red thread already was further strengthened, from the very first steps commenced by Sigmund Freud as the path of a new discipline, in his recourse to the worlds, characters and models of literature as a favored tool for the development of theory and analysis. It would be difficult to illustrate in a few pages all connections that bring the literary world closer to the birth of psychoanalysis. It is quite enough to think of the use of mythology in Freud with the figure of Oedipus, in the numerous essays which have as their leitmotif pieces or passages of William Shakespeare, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and in the fascinating reinterpretation of Gradiva of Wilhelm Jensen. This bond will be very strong and evident also in the work of other famous analysts: in the exchange between Carl Jung and Hermann Hesse; in the teachings of Jacques Lacan that Jacques Cazotte, Edgar Allan Poe, James Joyce found as authentic conceptual goldmines for the thematic development and style of their analytic discourse. This thread, of course, also can lead in the opposite direction. The impact of the psychoanalytic literature revolution of the twentieth and twenty-first century has been extraordinary: in the work of David Herbert Lawrence, Thomas Mann, by Italo Svevo or the literary practice of the surrealists. For example, the lesson of psychoanalysis provides valuable material for building and exploration of the human soul in all its aspects.

2021

In this rich and prolific book Amir brings to our attention the many aspects of the relations between psychic processes and the principles of language. She casts a light on regions that are outside the reach of verbal expression or even clash with any effort at articulation. Her clinical innovations, anchored in her profound understanding of the mazes of psychic syntax, make a daring and original addition to the psychoanalytic canon.' -Prof. Aner Govrin, Doctoral Program in Psychoanalysis,