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[Emily Dickinson] was not an alcoholic, she was not abusive, she was not neurotic, she did not commit suicide. Neurotic people or alcoholics who go through life make better copy, and people talk about them, tell anecdotes about them. The quiet people just do their work.
Both within psychological disciplines and outside of it, there is a continuous attempt to correlate creativity with inner psychological life, both pathological and normal. The myth of the inevitably “crazy artist” is enduring, and survives because of our fascination, mixed with envy, of the creative genius' ability to accomplish what lies beyond the capacities of most of us. Adding to an already extensive body of literature, recent contributions have continued to try to illuminate this fascinating, but difficult field. Notably, publications by Jamison (1993), Gardner (1982), and a previous by Gedo, among others, have increased our understanding of this area of study. The fact that the achievements of the greatest thinkers, artists, and scientists, “are truly out of the reach of the vast majority of humankind” (p. 3) makes it difficult to separate fact from fantasy, and scientific finding from deep bias. The literary terrain concerning creativity and psychology might be compared to a vast jungle expense, dense with verbose undergrowth, shaded by reams of unclear pages, resisting the illuminating penetration of insightful beams, and almost impossible to travel through without a guide who has some prior knowledge of the labyrinthine complexity of its trials and deceptions. Is Gedo the guide who can successfully lead us through this intellectual terrain, or with him, might we remain without a usable trail and lost in the bush?
In my review of his previous work, Portraits of the Artist (1983), I describe it as having the greatness of a book that raised thought-provoking questions and encouraged discussion of controversy (Rotenberg, 1985). Gedo's contribution, The Artist and the Emotiona