Meeting of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York

January 20, 1969. NARCISSISTIC FUSION STATES AND CREATIVITY. Gilbert Rose, M.D.

Dr. Rose believes that the prestructural point of view tends to equate creativity with psychopathology. But the evolution of psychoanalysis from a theory of the abnormal toward a general psychology of behavior makes it easier to recognize the mind's normal, garden-variety creativity. The data of ego psychology show that perception and memory are minor 'creative' events, that identity formation shapes reality and orients one within it, and that some dream imagery may be uniquely integrative and may illuminate connections which are not purely private. Because of this 'democratization' of creativity, it is necessary to distinguish between the regressively and progressively integrative aspects of the creative process. The dream and paranoid fantasies are examples of regressive integration; psychological growth and identity formation are examples of progressive integration. Narcissism refers to the original oneness of infant and mother. But even in adult life the boundaries between self and object-representations may remain fluid and interchangeable.

Narcissistic fusion states may contribute to creative imagination in two ways: (a) the traumatic degree of overstimulation inherent in the emergence from narcissistic states may stimulate the creative impulse by initiating repeated returns to narcissistic states in efforts at mastery; (b) the fluidity of early ego boundaries in narcissistic states may encourage development of imaginative forms by fostering the co-existence of multiple frames of reference. When the ego makes a reparative attempt to master the trauma of the birth of ego boundaries by returning to a narcissistic fusion state and the beginnings of reality, the integrative function of the ego attempts to harmonize the reactivated narcissistic state in the light of reality. Fluid boundaries between self and object-representations within the ego are subjected to the force of th