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In his book, Dreams and Drama, Alan Roland succeeds admirably in his attempt to contribute to the dialogue between “psychoanalysis and the arts and the artist” (p. 151). Roland is in a unique position to do so since he is an accomplished psychoanalyst as well as an artist (creating etchings, prints, and watercolors); he is also a playwright and a librettist. His book reveals him to be an accomplished essayist, too. Dreams and Drama, a discursive exploration of his robust ideas relating to the artist and the artistic process, to dreams, imagery and creativity, and to psychoanalytic literary criticism, is divided into these three major sections. Each section provides its own pleasures, so Roland displays his respect for art and artists, his insights into dreams and creativity, and his ability as a psychoanalytic literary critic. He does not respect the tendency toward reductionism he finds in much of applied psychoanalysis, and he argues vigorously for an interdisciplinary approach in the application of psychoanalytic ideas to the arts, where the artistic discipline is taken fully into account.
In the first section of the book, Roland displays skill and sensitivity as a psychoanalytic clinician in his presentation of four case histories of career artists in treatment. The case histories are thoughtful presentations illustrating the internal and external difficulties of establishing an artistic identity. Inhibitions of self-promotion and networking in their careers are more prominent in the clinical material than are blocks in artistic creativity. Also emerging from the clinical presentations is Roland's concept of the “artistic self.” The “artistic self” requires talent in a given area, as well as intrinsic aesthetic sensibility, along with transformational and self objects to help foster development, necessary for the “artistic self” to achieve actualization. Roland cites my own work (Nuetzel, 1995, 1999a, 1999b, 2000) and the work of Stephen Aaron (1986) on the artis