Creativity, Mid-Life Crisis, and Herman Hessse*

This paper reviews some of the key issues noted in the psychanalytic literature regarding creativity, comments on some conceptions of the mid-life crisis, and illustrates the concepts while focusing on the mid-life crisis of Herman Hesse, the great Swiss writer.

The literature on creativity is voluminous, so I will comment only on those ideas which I feel are key or integrated concepts in my discussion of creativity. Although my concepts on creativity apply to all the arts, I will focus them on the writer. Let me begin with a few comments by noted novelists. “There is nothing true in Madame Bovary. It is a story of pure invention. I put none of my own feelings in it, nor anything of my own life. The illusion comes from the objectivity of the work.” These comments from Flaubert show his great use of denial in his consideration of his creativity, and, indeed, these denial mechanisms seem to be present in the rest of his life. On the other hand, Tolstoi noted, — “one ought only to write when one leaves a piece of one's flesh in the inkpot each time one dips one's pen.” This was said in great exasperation in 1904 at the end of his life, but was an explicit acknowledgement of Tolstoi's art as a part of himself. Henry James spoke of the creative germ of Spoils of Poynton originating