Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

January 16, 1961. ELEMENTS OF CREATIVE IMAGINTION. Warner Muensterberger, Ph.D.

By making comparisons between legends concerning the origins of fetishes used as ceremonial emblems by African and Australian tribes (masils, charms,

figures, teeth, etc.), and clinical material gathered from the literature and analysis of fetishists, Dr. Muensterberger derives some common denominators seen in the clinical syndrome and these magico-religious art forms or images. He points out that both rely on magic and therefore a split ego, and also confuse fact and fantasy in order to master traumatizations incurred by the still nascent ego. Primitive emblems, objects used in the ceremonial rituals of higher religions, and objects of the fetishist permit limited regression, and at times hallucinatory gratification where reality testing is temporarily reduced, and thought once again gains the quality of omnipotence.

Following the thoughts of Piaget, Beres, and Rosen on the genesis of the imaginative process', Dr. Muensterberger supports his main thesis—that the creative imagination and its expression evolves from an attempt to master separation anxiety. The retention of the image of the vanished object and its displacement onto what Winnicott has called the 'transitional object' is viewed as the Anlage of the image formation; its re-presentation with emotional prompting via magic, seen in the adult fetishist and creative artist, also serves to deny separation (as well as castration) anxiety. The author brings vivid examples from a legend concerning the origin of the ceremonial masks used by male members of an African tribe, as well as from a clinical case, to show how the male in his attempt to overcome the trauma of early object loss, with all its attendant sense of annihilation, creates 'reparative' substitutes to deny this loss. He cites a fascinating statement of a gifted African artist who tells how he prepares for his creative endeavors by depriving himself of food and wom