Adaptation: A Study in Creativity and Inhibition

Creativity is a complex process that necessitates the expression of various aspects of the self. The creator must be willing to separate from the world, go inside her mind, and play in her fantasies. She must be both self-reflective and self-critical. She must be willing to risk exposure, dare to be different, and delight in her own production. Creativity involves melding opposing aspects of the self, as the creator both thinks and acts. She is thoughtful and considered on the one hand, and daring and impulsive on the other. Consciously or unconsciously the creator always performs for an external audience who passes judgment on her productions, whether that audience is reader, viewer, or expert colleague (Britton, 1998; Kris, 1952, Olinick, 1997). As important as this external audience is to an artist, it is the internal audience, the internalized self and object representations, with which the creator must struggle and contend. The question of what makes it possible for some people to create while others are blocked in their creative endeavors has long been of interest to psychoanalysts. Issues of guilt, shame, fear, aggression, and sexuality, in conjunction with the internalized critical and supportive voices, all play their part in encouraging or inhibiting creativity.

The movie Adaptation provides an excellent example of both the expression and inhibition of the creative process. It is a movie about a screenwriter's attempt to adapt a book about orchids to the big screen. Although its focus is on Charlie Kaufman, a neurotic, blocked screenwriter who struggles to create despite his unceasingly negative internal voices, all four of the main characters are involved, in their own ways, in the creative process. Donald, Charlie's looser, coarser, buffoon twin brother, decides to emulate his brother and take up screenwriting himself. Susan Orlean, the reserved, inhibited, dissatisfied author of The Orchid Thief, is a highly regarded and successful writer. And then there