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In this astute contribution to considerations of creativity, Jerome Oremland brings an object-relations and developmental perspective and his own distinct attunement to the psychodynamics—and works—of accomplished artists. Rather than limit himself to writers and visual artists, he includes such diverse figures as theatre directors, performers, scientists and business people in his purview, democratising the focus while continuing a psychoanalytic tradition of arriving at general truths by way of extreme instances: here, the achievement of gifted individuals. The clinical examples he provides reveal creativity released from neurotic binds as well as talents relieved of the compulsion to perform.
Like Trilling, Kris and others since, he stresses the essential health of creativity, scorning assumptions of pathology as a necessary accompaniment of artistic production; and like Loewald, he views sublimation as significantly more than a defence. He follows Winnicott in locating art and the creative process in the multiply active transitional space that interdigitates self and other, where each of us interacts subjectively with ongoing social reality. Oremland focuses attention on ontogenetics and psychodynamics, on the internal past and present of creative activity and the psychology of aesthetic response. Psychoanalysis offers basic ground, he argues, because it opens up to apposite approaches and respects the socialisation, interests and distinctiveness of individuals—all of whom, necessarily, go from infancy through bodily maturation and expectable stages of psychological development. He posits this development as universal—perhaps a bold claim in post-modern, global times—but, granted that supposition, proceeds to synthesise previous work cogently and to advance our understanding.
Briefly revisiting well-charted territory, Oremland touches on the comparability of dreams and works of art, recognising differences but pondering both as communications—aspects of dial