The Compulsion to Create: A Psychoanalytic Study of Women Artists [Paperback]

Susan Kavaler-Adler (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 041590711X | ISBN-13: 978-0415907118 | Publication Date: September 1993

In "The Compulsion to Create", Kavaler-Alder offers a theoretical understanding of the psychological forces at work in the female artist. Drawing on the work of the object relations school - especially Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Harry Guntrip, Margaret Mahler and D.W. Winnicott - she argues that the compulsion to create is an addiction to an internal parent object and constitutes a pathological state of mourning. The importance of the father's role, which may be positive, rejecting or seductive, in the female artists creative process is thoroughly considered. Kavaler-Adler develops her theoretical position by focusing on the lives and works of women writers including Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin and Edith Sitwell. In conclusion, she examines how psychotherapy can be used to help artists and writers modify self-destructive forces within them, while simultaneously enriching their creative work; by presenting the case of a living female artist she makes clear how the diagnostic can be applied to actual clinical practice. "The Compulsion to Create" focuses on the defensive aspects of creativity.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. Susan Kavaler-Adler is the Founder and Executive Director of the Object Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis. She is the author of the Creative Mystique: From Red Shoes Frenzy to Love and Creativity as well as approximately forty journal aricles and book chapters. Dr. Kavaler-Adler has been in private practice for twenty-five years as a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst, and has specialties in creativity and creative process groups, and mourning and mourning regrets groups. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (September 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041590711X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415907118
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,055,309 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating and informative psychological survey, February 9, 2001

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Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Compulsion to Create (Paperback)

The Compulsion To Create: Women Writers And Their Demon Lovers is a fascinating and informative psychological survey of women and the literature they create, especially as reflected by the lives and work of such luminaries as Charlotte Bronte; Emily Bronte; Emily Dickinson; and Edith Sitwell. The reader is treated to such issues as compulsion versus reparation, mourning and creative-process reparation, creative women and the "internal father", and the Demon Lover theme as literary myth and psychodynamic complex. A highly recommended addition to women's studies, literary studies, and psychological studies supplemental reading lists, The Compulsion To Create is original, revealing, insightful, challenging, at times iconoclastic, and always entertaining.