February 1, 1999. In that I have long enjoyed John Gedo's thinking and friendship, I am pleased that the editors asked him to review my book, The Origins and Psychodynamics of Creativity: A Psychoanalytic Perspective, in JAPA 46/4. Knowing Gedo to be a man of scant praise, I rejoiced in such language as “Oremland's mastery,” “he is particularly good at,” and the occasional “outstanding.”

He rightly describes the book as “slender.” I too was surprised that it ran to so few pages. Resisting the temptation to review well-traveled arguments regarding pathography and the psychoanalytic interpretation of artistic contents, I tried to stay with a concise, systematic psychoanalytic study of creating. Although some have faulted