The Quest for the Father. A Study of the Darwin-Butler Controversy, as a Contribution to the Understanding of the Creative Individual: By Phyllis Greenacre, M.D. New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1963. 119 pp.

In this book Dr. Greenacre continues her series of scholarly and illuminating treatises on the gifted and creative, choosing for her subject this time a specific encounter in the lives of Charles Darwin and Samuel Butler in the form of a bitter personal controversy which took place between them.1 This is both a study of the psychology of creativity and an interesting psychographic essay into the lives of two gifted intellectuals of the nineteenth century.

The opening section makes further contributions to Dr. Greenacre's previous writings on the psychology of creativity. Since this material is drawn from the psychographies of two famous men rather than from clinical analyses of gifted patients, Dr. Greenacre elucidates some of the advantages which she sees as actually accruing from this method. These include the availability of the creative productions and other documents and records from the person himself; the scrutiny of similar documents and other evidence on a wide scale from many others who had relationships with the subjects; the lesser concern with confidentiality about such people years after their deaths; the settling of the dust of controversy, and a greater objectivity after a long lapse of time; the availability of the data and source material to other investigators. In many ways, the psychoanalytic biographer approaches his study from vantage points precisely opposite from those of the psychoanalytic therapist and, in general, has resources unavailable in therapeutic techniques.

In the subtle depths of the inner man, the patterns are more complicated in the creative person than in those less gifted. The scope of vision is greater, but there are also greater problems and greater potentialities of individuation and identity. Studying the early genetic psychological history in the lives of creative people, Greenacre finds deep sensitivity with reseponsiveness, special awareness of form and rhythm, richness in the texture of sensations, deeper resonanc