Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis

Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists collects personal reflections by therapists who are also professional artists. It explores the relationship between art and analysis through accounts by practitioners who identify themselves as dual-profession artists and analysts. The book illustrates the numerous areas where analysis and art share common characteristics using first-hand, in-depth accounts. These vivid reports from the frontier of art and psychoanalysis shed light on the day-to-day struggle to succeed at both of these demanding professions. From the beginning of psychoanalysis, many have made comparisons between analysis and art. Recently there has been increasing interest in the relationship between artistic and psychotherapeutic practices. Most important, both professions are viewed as highly creative with spontaneity, improvisation and aesthetic experience seeming to be common to each. However, differences have also been recognized, especially regarding the differing goals of each profession: art leading to the creation of an art work, and psychoanalysis resulting in the increased welfare and happiness of the patient. These issues are addressed head-on in Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists. The chapters consist of personal essays by analyst/artists who are currently working in both professions; each has been trained in and is currently practicing psychoanalysis or psychoanalytic psychotherapy. The goal of the book is to provide the audience with a new understanding of psychoanalytic and psychotherapeutic processes from the perspective of art and artistic creativity. Drawing on artistic material from painting, poetry, photography, music and literature, the book casts light on what the creative processes in art can add to the psychoanalytic endeavor, and vice versa. Art, Creativity, and Psychoanalysis: Perspectives from Analyst-Artists will appeal to psychoanalysts and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, theorists of art, academic artists, and anyone interested in the psychology of art.

George Hagman, LCSW, is a clinical social worker and psychoanalyst in private practice in New York and Stamford, Connecticut. He is on the faculty of the Training and Research Institute for Self Psychology, and the Westchester Center for the Study of Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy. This book is a companion piece to Hagman's prior Routledge volume Creative Analysis: Art, Creativity and Clinical Process (2015).

Introduction by George Hagman - Coming into Being as Artist and Psychotherapist: Keeping Self from Falling Together Too Soon Karen M. Schwartz - To Build a New World: Creative and Aesthetic Choices In Psychoanalysis David Shaddock - Making Waves Linda Cummings - Shame and Its Undoing: A Performer's Desire to Be Found Rosalind Chaplin Kindler - Artist/Analyst Diane Lawson Martinez - I've Got A Rock and Roll Heart: Reflections of a Musician-Analyst Heather Ferguson - Writing, Healing and Being Healed: My Life in Poetry and Psychoanalysis Lee Whitman-Raymond - Reclamation and Restoration: Heroes in the Seaweed Sandra Indig - On Being Able to Paint Anna Carusi - On Being and Becoming Julia Schwartz - Echo Dan Gilhooley - The Art(s) of Witness: Through the Camera and the Psychoanalytic Situation Donna Bassin