Man: Creator, Discoverer, Instrument

The Paper I am presenting today comes from midstream, and some of you may feel after hearing it that it comes from mid-air. Whichever medium you consider its source to be, it is written en route by one who, to use Buber's1 formulation, has come out from behind his ideology, from any ideology, to confront and engage questions that have come up again and again in work and in living. This conference is being held at a time when psychoanalysis itself is in midstream and must not only re-examine its ideologies, but also its purposes, its functions in the practice of medicine, and its position as an interpreter of man and his existence.

To state the proposition of this conference as a question—Is Psychoanalysis a Creative Process?—leads me to the most important term, namely “creative.” These remarks are not intended as a semantic quibble, and I am fully aware that etymology is also history. Original usages and meanings of words need not be the measure of contemporary usage. Yet words do become cheapened, and we are also familiar in our times with words repeated again and again to make a lie an effective truth. People have been killed as a result of such alterations of words.

Creating means to me bringing into existence something new, something that has not been before. In another form it is ex nihilo—out of nothing. I am referring here, of course, to various creation myths, and especially the one that penetrates our Judeo-Christian civilization. What is important is that creation and creating have meant and conveyed a charismatic quality, a specialness, an atmosphere of ennoblement, if not divine. It has meant that creating has brought forth something unique; it has embodied life, the human spirit, the divine spark. It has evoked variously wonder, awe, fear and trembling. It has set the creator apart or has been the sign that the creator is different—no matter if the creation, the work, be man, a building or a painting.

The program of this meeting as well as the content of m