Writing Out and Through*

The creative process provides mankind with an unique projective device which can serve as one facet by which we may understand ourselves as well as the unrecognized intrapsychic and “secret” conflicts of the creator. In this paper, I deal with written work and emphasize the role of the dramatist. I will attempt to establish a theoretical framework for the function of the created work as a controlled regressive vehicle and as a quasi-curative therapeutic device for the writer. Otto Rank (22) writing in Imago said, “When a passion can expend itself in words it is less apt to result in deeds.”

I feel that creativity can be discussed as a psychically descriptive entity but there is no composite for the individual creative artist. Each form of creative endeavor seems to demand intrapsychic prerequisites and preconditionings which determine the form that the artist utilizes in his own special manner. Thus, the poet, dramatist and novelist, etc., differ in past problems, individual solutions and the further development of a form of ego-expressiveness. All creative persons seem to share in the relative freedom from ambivalence at the creative moment, the ability to blend reality with primary process, controlled ego regression and sublimation of pregenital and genitally-derived libido.

Psychoanalytic knowledge provides us with a rational method for determining the origins of the thoughts of the creative writer. Fantasies which originate in the primary process and are secondarily elaborated, re-worded and polished with linguistic skill can be considered to be written-out. The result of the written-out primary process becomes interpretable in both its latent and manifest content. The original thought or the idea may be painful and it is thus comparable to a symptom; it may help to reveal a conflict which is threatening the emotional integrity of the author and is attenuated by writing. An “idea,” for purposes of this paper, may be considered to be