“Creativity Belongs to Being Alive”

Who am I? This is a point of inquiry that confronts us all, as members of the human race. Locked in the deepest corridors of our minds are the ingredients, the elements, that inform who we believe ourselves to be, or long to become. All too frequently, though, particularly in the aftermath of psychological trauma, critical aspects of lived experience are rendered unavailable to us. They remain defensively hidden from conscious experience, although they actively, and consistently, exert influence upon our sense of selfhood. These observations hold relevance for our work with our patients, who seek our help in locating a more stable sense of self, one that feels less intrapsychically and interpersonally alienated. How do psychoanalysts help our patients find meaning in answer to their search? The answer rests in the fact that the conduct of psychoanalysis is, itself, an act of creativity. Like poets, for instance, psychoanalysts invite our patients into liminal, or potential spaces, where internalized, dissociated experiences, might be interrogated creatively. As is true of poetry, psychoanalysis has the capacity to draw patient and analyst alike into psychic interiors, where resides the complexity of our humanity—always dynamic, always yearning, always alive, even if as yet unknown. Psychoanalysis, as does poetry, cradles us into as yet unauthorized corridors, trespassing past sentinels of the mind standing guard against truths as yet unthought. It is an otherworldly interior that we enter, one constituted of the rhythms of pain, and loss, of rage, and of the love that poetic forms elicit. The experience transcends fantasy. It is, rather, more like being in a dream—one that, in the exquisite language of D. W. Winnicott (1971/2005), “ha[s] poetry in it, that is to say, layer upon layer of meaning related to past, present, and future, and to inner and outer, and always, fundamentally about [one’s]self” (p. 48). With two case presentations, the author discusses how psychoanalytic form and language, in concert with poetic form and language, can attenuate the power of rigid, dissociative boundaries, and guide our patients’ journey toward discovery and potential change.