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This volume is a personal account of the psychic experiences of the creative process. Based on the author's experience as a 'Sunday painter', drawings and paintings are used as source material for the study of the conflicts aroused in overcoming the inhibition to make free drawings. Self-observations of this struggle to achieve freedom of expression emerge as a notable 'piece of analytic work'. The self-analysis is impressive for its similarity to the dynamic interplay observed in the psychoanalyst's daily work with patients. The author's preconceived ideas, æsthetic values, and purpose undergo interesting transformations as the emerging impulses and their defenses are experienced.
In the working through of these experiences the author is led to conclusions that suggest this work to be a demonstration of some of Kris's formulations of the creative process. The discovery is made that 'passive receptiveness' with all its attendant dangers is a necessary precondition for the achievement of freedom of expression. In the author's words, 'First amongst the things to be noticed here was the fact that the mood or state of concentration in which the most expressive drawings appeared had a special quality. It was a mood which could be described as one of reciprocity; for although it was a dreamy state of mind it was not a state of dreaminess that shut itself off from the outside world or shuts out action. It was more a dreaminess that was the result of restraining conscious intention, or rather, a quick willingness to have it and then forego it.' Here, too, this striking description illuminates the oscillating process of 'regression in the service of the ego'.
From this use of 'regression', significant conflicts emerge to point up some of the strongest areas of resistance to freedom of expression. Outstanding