A Psychological Theory of Artistic Creation

Abstract

Although the projective schools of psychology have contributed much to the study of the artist and his work, we still have come little closer, despite their efforts, to obtaining an explanation of artistic creation that is any more satisfying than the vague Socratic dictum of “poetic madness.” With the advent of the psychoanalytic school, at the turn of the century, the artist seemed about to give up his secrets to an inductive analysis of human behavior; but so uncritically did the orthodox analyst accept the theory of sublimation, that in the end we were left with the artist's genealogy instead of gaining what originally promised to be a richer interpretation of his creative method. The experimentally minded psychologist, for his part, still views the artist's inspired moments with misgiving and disdainfully passes it off as an unsuitable project for the laboratory because of its elusive nature. Were we to study the diary notes, letters and biographies of the artists for clues to the creative process, w...