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“I sometimes think you could be more creative as a therapist.”1 I've never forgotten this comment from a gifted supervisor, made in the course of a positive yet otherwise unremarkable evaluation. It made me see how concerned I had been with “doing it right,” and how this might distract me from creative aspects of the work. I came to medicine from art history and was happy to think of psychiatry as creative. But as a new therapist, I was a dutiful pupil in the École des Beaux-Arts, bent on the mastery of established technique, with little sense as yet of innovation or personal style.
What is creative analysis? George Hagman's new book is a gallery tour of the subject, opening with a brief survey of what analysts have said about creative processes: Freud's comparison of creative writing to daydreams and the child's imaginary play, Kris's regression in the service of the ego, Klein's attempt to repair internal objects, and Winnicott's transitional space between the inner life and the object world. The book goes on to offer a description of the creative process that applies especially well to the analytic endeavor. This is then elaborated, with particular attention to the creativity of both participants.
Following Winnicott and influenced by self psychology, Hagman considers the work of art a type of transitional object, invested with fantasy and experienced as part of the self (p. 4). To begin, the artist makes a mark (in her chosen medium) and then responds to the mark she has