Special Issue on Psychoanalysis and the Muse

The idea for this special issue grew from the work of the late Morris Peltz, who sponsored a panel at the 2000 winter meeting of the American Psychoanalytic Association entitled “The Alternative Loves of Psychoanalytic Clinicians: Pursuit of the Muse.” Stuart Twemlow and Salman Akhtar were panel participants, and their work in this issue developed directly from this unexpectedly popular panel, which Morris deemed the “success of the meeting.” The panel was essentially a discussion of how and why analysts have another life. Over the ensuing years ideas were discussed and contributors came and left so we decided to pull together a group of people, some of whom are analysts, all of whom have psychoanalytic sympathies, who seemed to “worship” — to use another of Morris's words — at the alter of Muse, the Greek goddess presiding over the arts and sciences. All of us are students of the deeper layers of the mind. Some have made it into private employment, some practice it in the context of academia and others are simply fascinated by the intensity, depth and complexity of the human mind and what it can and does create.

Discussing the writing that makes up this issue, Stuart Twemlow, a psychoanalyst with an avocation as a serious student of martial arts and who uses Zen Brushings to develop technique, and his son Nicholas, who has spent the majority of his adult life in the study and writing of poetry, arrived at several disagreements about the role of, the existence, really, of an idea such as “inspiration.” Nicholas argues that the idea of inspiration can be coarse, and often simplifies the difficulties of writing, of the labors of an artist in general. In his view, there is room for the untrained artist; one need not obtain a diploma to take excellent photographs, or write a fine poem. But he does argue that much of what passes for art in the art therapy scene, for example, is an art devoid of difficulty, often sentimental or nostalgic, and usually trafficking in clichéd