A Spirit that Impels

'The reader of this impressive interdisciplinary book will not only be engaged by the topic of the psychoanalysis of art, but also by the art of psychoanalysis. Resulting from a decade of Creativity Seminars at the Austen Riggs Center, the respected former director of the Erikson Institute, Gerard Fromm, has both written and commissioned insightful essays on a formidable range of subjects on artistic creativity in painting, photography, the novel, classical music, popular music, film, and, just as importantly, in the history and practice of psychoanalysis.'- Michael Ann Holly, Starr Director Emeritus of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts and the author of The Melancholy Art'The Creativity Seminar at the Austen Riggs Center has been the scene of wide-ranging presentations by and discussions amongst a group of people equally well informed in current psychoanalytic practice and the scholarly study of the creative arts. Those of us who have not been privileged to attend now have the opportunity of listening in to the conversation through this extremely rich collection of papers by clinicians and scholars on the creative process and its manifestation in the lives and works of such diverse and fascinating figures as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Gustav Mahler, Vincent Van Gogh, and John Lennon and Paul McCartney. This is not your grandfather's "applied psychoanalysis"; A Spirit that Impels presents the most sophisticated contemporary approaches to the intersection of clinical insight and scholarly research by a very distinguished group of authors.'- Robert A. Paul, Charles Howard Candler Professor, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia'Clarity about creativity and its place in the architecture of a healthy spirit isn't easy to come by. Judging by this book, engaging this question is one of the things that gets psychotherapists out of bed in the morning. Reading it is like being a being a fly on the wall for their discussions - discussions interspersed with the testimonies of creative people. In the effort to say precise things about the tangled, complex interaction of internal and external influences, you can feel how much getting it right and saying it right matters, in part for the obvious reason that psychotherapy can and does save lives, but also because of the passion the therapists represented here have for their work.'- Sam Waterston, award-winning stage, screen, and television actor, director, and producer