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In this study I hope to show that the fantasies of creative people are prone to a unique modification through which they become more hallucinatory or delusional in quality than the usual fantasies. The unique elaboration of the artist's fantasies for creative purposes is brought about by a form of mental functioning which operates in a manner that will be here considered as beyond the reality principle. It is possible to study the genetic origins of these hallucinatory and delusional fantasies and the nature of mental functioning designated as beyond the reality principle. I also suggest that creative activity is more in the service of the ego ideal than in the service of the ego.
Freud first described the psychoanalytical aspects of the artist's creative process according to his two main principles of mental functioning. He suggested that the artist is capable of establishing a reconciliation between the pleasure principle and the reality principle in his creative work (3). Nevertheless, Freud later maintained that psychoanalysis must lay down its arms in its attempt to comprehend totally either the creative artist or the creative process (5).
The two fundamental principles of mental functioning also proved to be insufficient to clarify the operation of some mental phenomena other than creative functioning. In order to comprehend more clearly the psychological nature of the repetition compulsion and the traumatic neuroses, Freud postulated a