New Lamps for Old?*: Reflections from and on Phyllis Greenacre's “Childhood of the Artist”

In her sparkling paper on “The Childhood of the Artist,” Phyllis Greenacre (1971 ) speaks of splits in the self-representation of the artist. First, there is what she calls the “freakish” persona of the artistic self versus a more conventional, ordinary citizen self. Second, there is an innovative, relatively unbridled risk taker versus a sober, restraining critic.

This paper is an attempt to dramatize this split. First, the inventive side will be enacted in the form of an extended simile that juxtaposes Greenacre's ideas on the childhood of the artist with images drawn from the tale of “Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp” from The Thousand and One Nights. Next, the sober side will stage a critique of Greenacre's paper from vantage points located outside psychoanalysis and will address a few relevant issues neglected by her text.

Just as the magical lamp of Aladdin was found among jewel-fruits of diamond, opal, moonstone, jasper, and carnelian, so Phyllis Greenacre's paper is to be discovered in a treasure trove—a group of brilliant essays on creativity in the second volume of her collected papers. This is an oft-neglected classic with untold riches not only for clinicians but for all who are at work, for example, on the biographies of artists.