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ALBEIT a tremendous amount of literature exists on the process of creativity in artists and scientists, there always remains a mysterious area which cannot be explained satisfactorily. Anthony Storr successfully tries a new approach to the problem, which, though based on the fundamental tenets of psychoanalysis, aims at avoiding certain shortcomings of Freud in this specific field. I can easily agree with him that a basic failure of the psychoanalytic evaluation of creativity consists in insufficient distinction between the normal and neurotic. An outstanding artist and scholar, whatever “abnormal” traits might be found in his character and life setup, must not necessarily be judged according to the criteria used for neurotics and psychotics. We may also go along with Dr. Storr when he underlines a certain ambivalence of Freud as far as artistic values are concerned. It is true: the father of psychoanalysis apparently rates enjoyment of art lower than that provided by orgasm and deems civilization to be a rather negative factor imposing upon natural man restraints which interfere with his pursuit of happiness and therefore become unwelcome, although this type of sublimation proves to be necessary in order to alleviate the ravages of uninhibited drives and instincts. But we cannot subscribe to the statement, though backed by Ernest Jones and Lionel Trilling, that Freud had “little aesthetic appreciation.” This assertion does not fit a man who was fascinated by Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci and filled many of his works with citations from Shakespeare and Goethe. One should never forget Freud's 19th century natural science background which forced him, just during the incubation period of his new insights, to look for a physical and physiological basis in his recently won concepts.
This is the actual reason for what Storr calls Freud's “uneasy ambivalence towards artists” which made him “vary from denigration to adulation with few connecting links between those opp