The author demonstrates, using Camus's L'Étranger and three movies by John Huston, that in artistic creation one may speak of 'schizoid work of inspiration' just as one speaks of 'work of mourning'. The artistic production must then be an effort by the ego to protect itself from schizophrenic dissociation. It results from feelings of depression caused by expectation of abandonment by the loved object; this depression the ego attempts to deal with by means of depersonalization. Indifference and weakening of self-perception occur together with increased sadism and interest in the internalized object imagoes.

This abstracter can add that one of the movies discussed, We Were Strangers, is based on real happenings during a Cuban dictatorship. The alterations of fact introduced by Huston add significance to the author's postulates; for the true story bears more resemblance in several details to Camus's plot than does the movie version.