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This book is ambitious at heart, although the form it takes and the way it is written look deceptively underplayed. There is a large literature on creativity, and on the psychology of it, much of which is probably well-known to readers of this Journal—from the Book of Genesis onwards—and it is probably safe to guess that working analysts have all at some time or other given thought to precisely the particular aspect that Storr is concerned with, namely that of motive. But, as far as he is aware, they have not turned their thoughts into a book. It is therefore justifiable for him to have done so, in his individual way.
To linger for a moment on the title, it should be noticed that the book is about creation (‘the action of making, forming, producing or bringing into existence’, Shorter Oxford English Dictionary), compared with creativity which is a psychologist's term, not yet in that dictionary, meaning the ability to bring something new into existence.
The title is comparable to that of Arthur Koestler's learned book The act of creation, which is about the way in which ideas are combined to produce new insights, but which also gives some attention to the specific topic chosen by Storr, the conscious and unconscious motivational drives of scientists and artists.
The lucid step-by-step method which Storr favours makes for easy reading. Each chapter has a title which is properly descriptive of its contents, an introductory paragraph setting out the argument and a concluding one that both summarises what has been said and leads on to the next. At frequent intervals throughout the book the reader is reminded of points made previously, which he would do well to keep in mind. The student with an over-long reading list should be grateful. If those remarks suggest a somewhat pedestrian book, or one which makes too many concessions to the kind of reader who likes all the work to have been done for him, I will immediately add that the variety of creative people, whose works and