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The Boston Society of Gerontologic Psychiatry, whose membership includes a number of psychoanalysts, has produced a third book, a report on their 1964 symposium on ‘Vicissitudes of the terminal phase of life’. It includes four papers followed by a discussion and ends with a survey of the relevant psychiatric literature from 1961 to 1964. The latter is not impressive.
Robert N. Butler contributes ‘Creativity in later life’. Examining the biographies and autobiographies of creative people, he believes they are best described as ‘autodidacts’ from the Greek word meaning ‘self-taught’: ‘He is a self teaching himself’. This does not imply that he does not learn from others but he alters the meanings and amplifies the substances of such experiences after his own image (p. 52). This is not narcissism, for he is intensely self-critical: ‘The autodidact, studying himself, finds he is not whole’ (p. 55). He can never be complete in time and therefore suffers. Immortality through continuing recognition after death is his aim.
This formulation suggests an ego in touch with, and often persecuted by the self in Jung's sense of the term, from which emanates the longing for wholeness, the drive towards creation, and intimations of immortality. In the discussion, Dr Weisman pointed out that few people were creative but many were capable of responsible behaviour, which he felt was akin to creativity. He spoke movingly of the suffering of creative and responsible people when dying as they were more conscious than most of what was being lost.
McMahon and Rhudick in ‘Reminiscing in the aged’ redress the balance of thinking on this subject on the positive side. It is not just a sign of aging but an adaptation to the impoverished present by recovering the past. It is also a way of forming links between the generations by introducing the young to their shared history. ‘Denial as a social act’ by Weisman and Hackett also balances the usually negative interpretation of this mechanism. ‘Avoidanc