| Abstrakt: |
Freud recognized that psychiatric knowledge of creative individuals presents challenges of a radically different kind, in contrast to the understanding of average clients seen in a psychiatrist's routine practice, and he admitted that “before the problem of the creative artist, psychoanalysis must, alas, lay down its arms” (Freud, 1928/1961, p. 177). Since Freud, little has happened in psychology and psychiatry to throw appreciable light on creative processes in relation to the incapacitating emotional and cognitive problems experienced by some creative people. In this article, I take a fresh look at the now customary psychiatric assessment of creative artists who experience severe emotional and cognitive problems. Such problems have not been understood in the context of the artist's usually ignored struggle to live and work creatively in a world dominated both by psychologically normal people and by corresponding standards of psychiatric normality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] |
