Creativity and Sublimation*

For generations, philosophers and poets and more recently psychoanalysts have been preoccupied with the enigma of the creative process. How define it? What motivates it? What are the attributes of the creative individual? What psychological elements do creative people have in common? Is creativity a direct outgrowth of neurosis and psychosis, a defense against it or a heroic, non-conflictual achievement of an individual who is able to produce despite his psychopathology?

Some have attempted to lump the entire creative process under the category of sublimation. More specifically, with our current interest in ego psychology, many emphasize the importance of the ego's synthetic function in being ultimately responsible for a new gestalt and hence, the creative product (1, 2, 4, 10, 13, 19, 20).

If we continue to use Freud's original definition of sublimation as involving essentially a de-libidinization and de-aggressivization of the corresponding instinctual drives, then we must proceed with caution before we equate creativity and sublimation.

My contention is that the motives for creativity and the creative process derive their strength from primitive, unneutralized, aggressive and libidinal derivatives. Furthermore, my own clinical material, obtained from the analysis of creative people, along with psychoanalytic exploration of the lives of great artists and writers (Leonardo DaVinci, Michelangelo, Shaw, Hemingway, Proust, O'Neill, etc.) substantiate my impression that in almost every instance, the urge to create springs from unresolved unconscious conflicts. It is the unconscious conflict that seems to provide the drive-cathexis so vital for the completion of creative work in individuals inherently endowed with specific sensory modalities. The reverse is also true: after periods of frenetic creative activity, one often notices a relaxation of tension in the artist, and a concurrent ebb in creative production. Economically then, there appears to be an optimum