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This interesting book deals not only with creativity, but with many other topics, such as the stress of culture in the nuclear age, politics, the difficulties facing modern civilization, etc. As a consequence, the main theme, creativity, is not dealt with sufficiently.
The main emphasis in this review will be on the author's comments on creativity.
Meerloo, like Rank, stresses that creativity stems in part from man's quest for immortality and his attempt to deny death. To substantiate this belief, mention is made of poets and artists who have been driven to create during periods of great stress or impending death, the poetry of prisoners before an execution, who had never written before.
Meerloo makes a more fundamental point: that the creative endeavor springs from conflict and may also represent a means of discharging pent up conflict as well as offering a defense against it or sublimation of it. For example, he comments on the creativity of some mentally ill: “For them, writing or painting is like breathing; without it they would suffocate in their horrible delusions.”
The primitive art of the prehistoric hunter was filled with magic thinking and concreteness. Therefore, drawing an animal was tantamount to catching him. (Others, like Mandell, have shown that the art of cave dwellers psychologically becomes the object, thus serving as a kind of transitional object for those terrified by separation from loved ones.)
Creativity is also seen as sublimation and as a liberation from the bondage of instinctual forces. In his creative rebellion, man has succeeded in reshaping the world about him and has enabled himself to experience emotional vistas and relationships far beyond his original instinctual mold.