Libidinal Drive as Index of Creativity and Synthetic Ability in Artists

The goal of the present paper is to examine, within the context of psychoanalytic theory, the extent to which libidinal drive defines and enters into the artist's desire and ability to achieve synthesis, as reflected in imaginative responses to the Rorschach test. The basic Freudian postulate is that synthesis is the essential component in creative artistic activity, and that this ability depends on the ego's capacity to integrate libidinal and aggressive drive in the service of creative transformation. Integration can occur only if libidinal drives are readily available and preferably if they are present in excess of the aggressive (It is Eros that unites [Freud 1923, Silberman 1961])

There are many ways of obtaining an insight into the degree and quality of drive energy available to the functioning ego. Among these are dreams, free associations, phantasies, projective test responses, reflections, or ideation during the creative process. Numerous research studies of artists have in fact established that creative artists (painters, writers, dancers, actors) give considerably more evidence of primary process ideation than their non-artist controls in response to projective tests such as the Rorschach. This also applies to creative versus non-creative children, differentiated for creativity by means of the Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (Dudek and Verreault 1989)

Primary process ideation is defined as a drive derivative; that is, it is organized by drive, and as such carries all the characteristics of fluid drive energy rawness, intensity, lawlessness, and intolerance of delay. It is the young child's original, analogical way of expressing