Rivalry with the Product—A Specific Type of Inhibition in Creative Activity1

A divorced woman in her early thirties had been engaged in a struggle during analysis to resume the creative writing which she had given up many years previously. Between seventeen and twenty-one, she had had many articles and short stories accepted for publication. At twenty-one, following the termination of an intense love affair with a writer of international repute, which had lasted two months, she had given up creative writing. During the five years of her marriage to a brilliant, prolific, and cultivated creative artist, she produced nothing. After her divorce from him she obtained a position in a field allied to writing. A research worker of recognized ability, she wrote nothing beyond the requirements of her assignments. Following two abortive experiences in psychotherapy, she came to analysis because of her alarm at increasingly uncontrolled emotional outbursts at the love with whom she had been involved for two years, H., a man considerably inferior to her in cultural background and intellectual attainments. During her outbursts she was a screaming, possessive, demanding infant, utterly without shame or dignity. While she had always considered her emotional intensity a mark of distinction, she had now begun to regard these episodes with alarm, self-reproach, and disgust. This primary motivation for analysis was accompanied by a dim awareness that her personality problems must have played an important role in the cessation of her creative