Creative dialogue

The role of imagination in the work of psychoanalysts, artists, and writers informs the way each constructs a creative dialogue. When it comes to understanding this creative dialogue, the interest is not only in the product, but also in the process of creative imagination. The varieties of creative imagination are highlighted in the work of the authors presented in this issue of “Creative Dialogues: Clinical, Artistic, and Literary Exchange.” In one form or another, each author will apply some aspect of psychoanalytic theory to further our understanding of the products of the human imagination as evidenced in art, culture, and psychoanalytic creativity.

Our understanding of unconscious processes in exploring and discovering the inner world of our patients has expanded as the psychoanalyst explores both unconscious and nonconscious processes. We are not only interested in the dynamic unconscious, but we are also aware of the development of nonconscious mental processing known as implicit relational knowing. This is memory without awareness and is nonsymbolic. Through the subjective experience of the artist's use of paint, the writer's use of words, or the exchange between patient and analyst, there is a freeing of the creative imagination that diminishes inhibitory anxiety, and thus new creative expressions are developed and deepened. Regulation of self-esteem is a motivational force in creative imagination to decrease inhibitions. What is reparative is the artwork, the literary work, or the co-created relational-intersubjective experience that evolves in the consulting room. It is these processes that deepen the experience of the self and the object world.

In this issue, we have the opportunity to present the creative work of two psychoanalytic societies who are both members of the IFPS. The Supervisory Symposium in June 2010 took place in Kaunas, Lithuania, with five members of the Postgraduate Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (USA) and the Kaunas Society for the