Life and Art: The Creative Synthesis in Literature
Book Details
- Publisher : Routledge
- Published : 2009
- Cover : Paperback
- Pages : 340
- Category :
Culture and Psychoanalysis - Catalogue No : 26237
- ISBN 13 : 9781855756359
- ISBN 10 : 1855756358
Also by James W. Hamilton
A Psychoanalytic Approach to Visual Artists
Price £35.99
Free UK Delivery over £25
There are currently no reviews
Be the first to review
In this volume an inquiry into the nature of the creative process is attempted by paying close attention to the lives of various artists, poets, novelists and playwrights, and selected works of each in order to demonstrate an essential relationship between the two, and that it is most difficult to delineate the nuances of the creative act by treating them as separate entitites. Emphasis is placed upon the effect of early trauma, such as object loss and various forms of deprivation, as a powerful unconscious motivating factor and upon the dream and transitional object as facilitators of the creative effort.
Reviews and Endorsements
The plight of the artist was one of great interest within the field of applied psychoanalysis from its earliest days. In the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, considerable time was devoted to the discussion of this issue, Freud having relied so much upon literature and art for evidence to support his ideas about the unconscious. Ultimately, he became sceptical as to how thoroughly the creative process could ever be understood and reached the conclusion that "Before the artist, the analyst must lay down his arms."
The subjects of this study are allowed to speak for themselves through their works, autobiographical commentary and personal declarations wherever possible. These quotations and excerpts are meant to serve in a manner similar to that of a basic science to its clinical counterpart by furnishing a broader foundation for the derivation of further hypotheses.
Contents
1 Object Loss, Dreaming and Creativity: The Poetry of John Keats
2 Joseph Conrad: 1880-1910, His Development as a Writer
3 The Doppelganger Element in the Relationship Between Bertrand Russell and Joseph Conrad
4 Pre-oedipal Considerations in the Works of Eugene O'Neill
5 The Effect of Early Trauma upon Thomas Hardy's Literary Career
6 The Significance fo Transitional Phenomena and Sublimation in the Life and Writings of Vladimir Nabokov
7 Orwell's 1984 and the Creative Transformation of Intrapsychic Conflict
8 Thomas Wolfe's The Lost Boy: Sequelae of Childhood Sibling Loss
9 Heinrich Von Kleist and the Quest for Perfection and Immortality
10 The Plays of Peter Shaffer and the Vicissitudes of Twinship Rivalry
About the Author(s)
James W. Hamilton was a board-certified psychiatrist living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He published extensively on various clinical and theoretical issues.
Customer Reviews
Our customers have not yet reviewed this title. Be the first add your own review for this title.
You may also like
