The Nature of the Creative Process in Art: A Psychological Study

240 Pages·1968·6.974 MB·English

by  Jaroslav Havelka (auth.)

THE NATURE OF THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN ART
THE NATURE OF
THE CREATIVE PROCESS IN ART
A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY
by
JAROSLAV HAVELKA
University of Western Ontario
MARTINUS NIJHOFF I THE HAGUE 11968
© 1968 by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
All rights reserved, including the right to translate or to
reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form
ISBN 978-94-011-8694-0 ISBN 978-94-011-9512-6 (eBook)
DOl 10.1007/978-94-011-9512-6
TO MY SON, KAJA
CONTENTS
Priface. . . . . XI
Acknowledgements XIII
INTRODUCTION 1
I. REALITY, APPEARANCE, AND THE CREATIVE DISPOSITION 11
Conventional Reality and Mental Organization. 11
Categorical, Collective, and Created Reality . . 14
Evocative Function and Created Reality. . . . 17
Contemplated Reality and Creative Appearance 19
24
II. ON THE CONSCIOUS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS • . . . .
Some basic properties of Consciousness. . . . . 26
The first two levels of organization: Pure experiences and
Verbal labels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 28
Freud's basic approaches to the Conscious and Un-
consclOUS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 31
The origins of Emotionally charged Ideas and Repressive
Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 34
III. ON THE PRECONSCIOUS • • • . . • • . . . . . . • 38
The "Pre-experiential" stage of Mental Organization 38
An aspect of Preconscious: a Tacit Cognition. . . 45
The Problem of Double Significance: Articulated and
Non-articulated elements . . . . . . . . . . 47
The Origin of Poesis: Emotion and Preconscious . 53
IV. SOME COMMON ORIGINS OF SYMBOLIC FUNCTIONS AND THE
ORGANIZATION OF DREAMS • • . . • . • . . • 57
Sleep, Dream and its Interpretation. . . . . . . 59
Censorship, Latent and Manifest Dream Work . . 62
Symbol and Dream: Regressive and Progressive Pro-
cesses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 66
VIII CONTENTS
The Dream as a Symbolic Narrative . . . . . .. 70
The Relation between Dream-work and Symbol-work 72
Integration and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . .. 75
V. ON IMAGINATION AND SYMBOLIC FUNCTIONS. 77
A Variety of Imaginative Functions. . 78
Imaginative Inference.. . . . . . . . . . . . .. 80
Some Neuro-psychological Problems of Imagination. 82
Some Relations between Symbol and Imagination.. 85
Ambiguity related to Imagination. . . . . . . .. 86
The Subjective and Radical Ambiguity ofImagination 88
The Communicative Symbol, the Creative Symbol and
the Contemplated Image . . . . . . . . . . . " 92
Levels of Reaction to the Contemplated Image in Re-
ceiving Minds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. 95
VI. ON STYLE . . • . • . . . 99
Inner disposition of style 101
Overt stylistic expression. 104
Approaches to the history of art 106
VII. OEDIPUS, CULTURE AND CREATIVITY. . . . . . . . . 108
General Orientation . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
The Oedipus compleX!: Mental economy and Myth 110
Creativity versus Neurosis . . . . . . . . . . . 112
The Pleasure and Reality Principles in Interaction:
Neurosis and Culture . . . . . . . . . . 11 7
Culture and Neurosis: The Father complex. . 121
Archetypes and the Oedipus Myth . . . . . 126
The Dionysian and the Apollonian principles. 132
VIII. THE THEORY OF MODES I: THE STRUCTURE OF CREATIVE IN
TENTION AND ITS RELATION TO vARIOUS ASPECTS OF MENTAL
ECONOMY . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Introduction: On the Nature of Illusion . . . 137
Some Basic aspects of Intentionality. . . . . 141
Freud's approaches to Creative Intentionality. 143
A further approach to the same problem. . . 146
The Reduction of Expenditure of Neural Energies 149
Novelty and the Comic . . . . . . . . . . . 152
CONTENTS IX
Creative Set and Curiosity. . . 155
Economy of Mental Expenditure as it relates to the
Creative Process . . . . . . 158
The Problem of Condensation . . 163
Condensation and Emotion . . . 166
Conclusion about Intentionality and Condensation 173
Regression and Mental Economy. . . . . . . . 175
Childhood, Adolescent and Mature Imagination as it
relates to Regression . . . . . . . . . . . 179
IX. THE THEORY OF MODES II: THE TRAGIC AS MENTAL FUNCTION 189
Three types of The Tragic. . . . . . . . . 189
Functions of Fantasy related to the Tragic . . 194
The Relationship of Sublimation to the Tragic 201
The Problem of the Uncanny . . . . . . . 209
INDEX . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
PREFACE
No single factor determined the growth of this book. It may have
been that as a novice researcher in Behavioral Psychology I experienced
growing discontent with the direction of intellectual activity in which
the accent was on methodology and measurement, with a distinct
atmosphere of dogmatism, insecurity and defensiveness. The anathema
of tender-mindedness was attached to any study of mental manifes
tations that avoided laboratory confirmation and statistical significance.
Man in his uniqueness and unpredictable potentialities remained un
explored. Yet outside the systematic vivisection of variables and their
measurement men of originality and genius were studying the mind in
its complex yet natural interaction of aspirations, values and creative
capacities. It was almost too easy for me to turn to them for the re
orientation of my psychological interest, and it was not difficult to find
in Freud the most daring and penetrating representant of humanistic
psychology.
Furthermore, it could have been the fact that Freud's thoughts on
creative processes appeared to me at once starkly original and yet
incomplete and fragmentary, that led me to reconsider and expand on
them. Freud's fascination with culture and creativity, although frank
and serious, led him to a peculiar indecisiveness and overcautiousness
which was radically different from the dramatic boldness of his thera
peutic methods and the depth of his personality theories.
Thus, faced with the unique potentialities of these isolated elements
of Freudian theory, I felt tempted, first to critically evaluate them, and
secondly, to reconstruct the development of some of the essential mental
functions in creativity. In the latter activity I was greatly assisted, on
the one hand by the available neurophysiological and neuropsycho
logical theories and data, and on the other hand by existing critical and
psychoanalytical literature covering a variety of creative manifestations
ranging from literature to music. This massive information, naturally
XII PREFACE
not available to Freud, has provided the real background for the at
tempted reconstruction of functions and processes determining, in my
understanding, man's creative acts.
I wish to express my indebtedness to the graduate students and
colleagues of an inter-disciplinary seminar on Creativity held at the
University of Western Ontario, who witnessed my struggles with the
problem, and to thank them for their encouraging, shrewd, and some
times merciless criticism. They rescued some parts of my work from
errors, incivilities and misinterpretation. My appreciation is due to
Professor J. Peter Denny for his valuable comments and critical reading
of the first part of the manuscript; to Professor Ross Woodman for
helpful suggestions regarding the chapter on Imagination, and to
Professors William Stockdale and Ronald Bates for kind and critical
reading of parts of the manuscript.
I began work on this study supported by two grants from The Canada
Council, for which lowe my best thanks, and I am also indebted to the
University of Western Ontario for two grants from the Middlesex
College Research Fund, which assisted me in completion of the work.
I am especially indebted to Mrs. K.V. Pearce for her inexhaustible
patience with my linguistic idiosyncrasies, and for her editorial skill
and kind understanding, which contributed greatly to the completion
of this manuscript.
Finally, I am deeply grateful to Dasa, my wife, for her consistent
encouragement and unwavering faith.
J.H.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Permission to use quotations from copyright works is gratefully ack
nowledged to the following publishers and other copyright holders:
To Sigmund Freud Copyrights, Ltd., the estate of Mr. James
Strachey, the Hogarth Press Ltd., Basic Books, and W. W. Norton &
Company, Inc. for permission to quote from the Standard Edition of
The Complete Psychological Works oj Sigmund Freud; also to Basic Books,
Inc. for permission to quote from the Collected Papers of Sigmund Freud;
for permission to quote from F. M. Rilke, Selected Works, Volume II,
Translation by J. B. Leishman, The Hogarth Press Ltd. 1960, re
printed by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.; to the
Macmillan Company for permission to quote from Theories oj Mind
edited by J. Scher, (in E. R. John "Some Speculations on the Psycho
physiology of Mind") ; to Farrar, Strauss & Giroux, Inc. for permission
to quote from Neurotic Distortion oj the Creative Process by L. S. Kubie;
to Vision Press Ltd. for permission to quote from Aesthetics by Benedetto
Groce; to Harcourt, Brace & World Inc. and to Routledge & Kegan
Paul, Ltd. for permission to quote from Practical Criticism by 1. A.
Richards. The quotation from The Eternal Present (The Beginnings oj
Architecture) by S. Giedion, Bollingen Series XXXV: 6: 1957, is by
permission of The Trustees of the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
D.C. and the Bollingen Foundation, New York, and also by permission
of the Oxford University Press, British publishers of this work. The
author is also indebted to The Viking Press Inc. for permission to quote
from Freud: The Mind of the Moralist, by Philip Rieff; and to Editions
Gallimard for permission to quote from "Grandes Odes" by P. Clau
del, in Oeuvres Completes, Editions Gallimard.