Before the threshold: destruction, reparation and creativity in relation to the depressive position

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the author revisits the classic idea formulated by Hanna Segal that creativity takes place from a depressive position impulse to repair previous destruction wrought on internal parental objects. The author proposes that in the light of psychoanalytic work with deprived and borderline children, there may need to be a rider to this formulation. By suggesting the myths of Ariadne and Orpheus alongside that of Oedipus as aids to psychoanalytic understandings, a development is posited here which may coexist with or even precede depressive struggles. Dread and hope, the author suggests, accompany both the creative artist and the child on the path towards expression of creative impulses. Such impulses exist before a ‘depressive position’ arrival point, or may follow it, in a cyclical rather than linear development, as Britton – drawing on Bion – suggested. This does not diminish the importance of reparation both in the individual psyche and in creative work, but makes space for the possib...