Meetings of the New York Psychoanalytic Society

October 15, 1957. THE CREATIVE IMPULSE: BIOLOGIC AND ARTISTIC ASPECTS. Bernard C. Meyer, M.D. and Richard S. Blacher, M.D.

A detailed clinical study of an artistically gifted Negro woman illustrates well-established analytic formulations about 'the intimate psychic interrelationships between the bringing forth of an artistic product and the act of parturition' as well as the way that the artist, by analogy to the 'supreme creator', partakes of 'divine attributes'. A thirty-nine-year-old woman was seen in the psychiatric ward of a general hospital in the eighth month of an illegitimate but planned pregnancy. Material is presented from psychotherapeutic interviews, from her diaries of twenty years, and from her other writings. Clinically observable was a state of elation followed by periods of depression and notable exhibitionism of her pregnant state with the expressed wish to remain so forever. The therapists feared that delivery would precipitate a psychotic state. Delivery at eight months was followed by a psychotic episode of twenty-four hours' duration characterized by severe panic and the wish to be held and treated like a baby. She recovered and was discharged from the hospital within a week. Further observations were made a year later. She had been an actress, singer, painter, sculptress, and writer, showing considerable talent in each. She had, however, 'stuck to nothing and completed nothing'; she never felt satisfied and felt rejected by her mother. It was learned that shortly before her pregnancy the white common-law wife of her brother (four years older than the patient) had had a baby. Still later it was learned that she had had seven other siblings who had died, six of diphtheria and one of 'maternal neglect'. She had a strict but covertly seductive father and there had been attempted seductions by the older brother. In her family the men were 'gods'. From her diaries—which she treated as confidant, love object, and God to whom she 'con