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September 3, 2003. With regard to Laurie Wilson's retrospective review of Ernst Kris's Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (JAPA 50/4), it should be noted that Phyllis Greenacre, William Niederland, and Philip Weissman can stand with Anton Ehrenzweig and Pinchas Noy among those who have questioned or been critical of Kris's model of “;regression in the service of the ego” as a theoretical framework for the psychoanalytic understanding of the creative process.
Greenacre (1962) did “not see the artist ‘regressing in the service of the ego’ quite as fully as Kris described but would say rather that he has readily at hand and actively available elements of experience which in more ordinarily balanced people could not be reached except by regression” (p. 132). Essentially, this is an extension of her view that the primary process is far more readily accessible in creative individuals.
“Instead of speaking of ‘regression in the service of the ego,’” Niederland (1967) stated, “I am rather inclined to view the situation in connection with the total ego organization which, in the persons under scrutiny, showed both ‘regressive-prone’; and ‘progressive prone’ features in constant interaction under the influence of unalterable body restorative stimuli.… In exploring the lives and ills of creative personalities, one becomes increasingly aware of the great amount of energy available to them. Their energies appear to converge on the creative process and seem to be regression, not so much in the service of the ego as in that of ego restoration, sometimes of ego survival (pp. 20-21).
Weissman (1967) advocated that Kris's concept “be replaced by more detailed statements on the specific ego functions. A more serious problem confronts us in the evaluation of the state of the ego and its function in the creative process. It is a presumptive assessment to state that a controlled regression in the service of the ego takes place during inspiration when we have not as yet specified which speci