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There's a personal subtext to John Gedo's book which I think is of its essence, and inadvertently signals one of the problems with it. Referring to “young artists on the verge of professional success who have succumbed to the pressure of their families to attend medical school,” Gedo remarks: “I myself am the product of such an ethos: at the time I entered medical school, I was simply incapable of seriously considering any other alternative. Twenty years later, I was to discover that my first love is scholarship and writing. It has taken me thirty years more to abandon medicine altogether.” And then: “Commitment to creative activities alien to one's forebears is a very difficult thing to do.” (All quotations page 72.) This signals an important theme of the book: the conflict between the would-be artist and more conventional folk—the assumption is that there's something inherently superior about being an artist. It also signals an issue that Gedo is struggling with: his frustrated wish to be not just a scholar and writer, but an artist—a so-called “creative personality.”
The book shows Gedo straddling psychoanalysis (“medicine”) and culture (presumed to be “creative” before being proven otherwise), and not entirely at ease with either. His critique of Freud's conception of creativity (p. 7) suggests as much with respect to the former, although much more knowledgeable about the former than the latter, that is, much more psycho-analytically creative than culturally creative. His clinical vignettes and judgment have a sharp, sure edge that his cultural vignettes and judgment lack. Watching Gedo in clinical action is like watching the proverbial psychoanalytic surgeon. Too bad he gave up medicine—but the book shows that he hasn't given up diagnosis. Watching Gedo in cultural action raises more problems than it solves. Gedo rarely forges a successful link between clinical understanding, at which he is expert, and the understanding of culture, which he admires but whose imp