On the Artist and the Creative Process

Norma Jabin presented the first paper, titled “Thoughts on Creativity.” A great artist's work reflects truths of his or her time and culture and thereby is an aesthetic experience that makes the work accepted as great by all who view it. Many great artists are ahead of the times and foresee cultural evolution and

intuitively capture universal and timeless truths in their works. In becoming a painter, Jabin learned that creativity is the art of making form out of chaos, of combining elements in such a way that “something new” is formed. It is experienced as “giving birth” to new life where none had existed-and most artists experience sudden ecstasy, a “eureka” sensation, when the phase of creative synthesis is completed. This glorious feeling is sometimes also frightening; it can arouse a fear of exposure, a fear that the work is not good enough to be acceptable. The more original and significant it is, the more the artist is open to scrutiny. A true artist must be brave enough to express his or her inner self. In contrast, repression is detrimental because it can cause the artist to censor valid emotionally laden ideas and intuition, and block insights.

In concluding her paper Jabin outlined the stages the artist goes through in the process of creating: The first phase is that of immersion, the second is the gestation and incubation phase, then a phase of integration takes place, all from the unconscious. A sudden illumination phase occurs when the artist's conscious insight into what is created is revealed, accompanied by feelings of exaltation.

Margaret Owen Tsaltas presented a paper called “Artists I Have Known and Psychoanalysis.” Very little has been written about the development of young, living artists, their peculiar requirements for growth, and the special clinical needs their growth patterns require. The purpose of the paper was to describe the development of artists the author had known, along with a proposal for further study of the early life developmen