The Muse

Psychoanalysts have long been fascinated with creative artists, but have paid far less attention to the men and women who motivate, stimulate, and captivate them. The Muse counters this trend with nine original contributions from distinguished psychoanalysts, art historians, and literary scholars-one for each of the nine muses of classical mythology-that explore the muses of disparate artists, from Nicholas Poussin to Alison Bechdel.
The Muse breaks new ground, pushing the traditional conceptualization of muses by considering the roles of spouse, friend, rival, patron, therapist-even a late psychoanalytic theorist-in facilitating creativity. Moreover, they do so not only by providing inspiration, but also by offering the artist needed material and emotional support; tolerating competitive aggression; promoting reflection and insight; and eliciting awe, anxiety and gratitude.
Integrating art history and literary criticism with a wide spectrum of contemporary psychoanalytic perspectives, The Muse is essential reading for psychoanalysts and psychotherapists interested in the relationships that enhance and support creative work. Fully interdisciplinary, it is also accessible to readers in the fields of art, art history, literature, memoir, and film. The Muse sheds new light on that most mysterious dyad, the artist and muse-and thus on the creative process itself.

Adele Tutter, M.D., Ph.D., is Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Columbia University, and Faculty at the Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training and Research and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. She is author of Dream House: An Intimate Portrait of the Philip Johnson Glass House, and co-editor, with Léon Wurmser, of the Routledge title Grief and its Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity (2015). She practices psychoanalysis in Manhattan.

Editor's Preface Adele Tutter; Introduction: Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses Adele Tutter 1 "A memory on your palette": Poussin's eternal feminine Adele Tutter 2 Hortense Fiquet Cézanne, as painted by her husband, Paul Susan Sidlauskas 3 Van Gogh's Arlesian muses Bradley Collins 4 Spilling it out: Dalí's signature Claire Nouvet 5 "Herb and Dorothy" Vogel: The collector as muse J. David Miller 6 Rebecca in the house: Musings on identification Nancy Olsen 7 The muse as rescuer and inspiration: Saul Bellow's Ravelstein Joseph D. Lichtenberg 1978 8 An improbable muse: Anne Sexton and Martin Orne Dawn Skorczewski 9 Alison Bechdel's mystic muse: A psychoanalytic allegory Vera J. Camden.