Why study creativity and creative processes? We are at a point in history where we possess far more systematic information about psychological approaches and psychological functioning—small as it still is in an absolute sense—than any of the thinkers possessed who approached this topic earlier. The theory of creativity and of the creative process presented here pertains in one respect to an enduring scientific achievement of Freud’s, the understanding of the structure of dreams, and it is consistent both with psychoanalytic knowledge about personality function and with experimental psychological and psychiatric approaches. Now, with our knowledge and tools regarding the creative process, we can contribute to man’s deep understanding of himself. (756 pp.)
Download Tag: Albert Rothenberg
Madness and Glory
Phillipe Pinel, the doctor who became the world’s first psychiatrist, struck the chains and shackles from the mentally ill in the midst of the French Revolution. Patients were living in hideous conditions, exposed to the public as freaks, and received no useful treatment. A patient in the Bicêtre asylum/jail, former ministerial assistant Guillaume Lalladiere, manages, unchained, to escape. Hiding from hospital attendant pursuers in the streets at night, he inadvertently learns of a plot against the leaders of the Revolution. He goes through the rebellion ruled streets of Paris and tries to give warning to responsible government colleagues and others but no-one except Dr. Pinel, when Guillaume is returned to the hospital, believes him. With Dr. Pinel’s treatment, as well as the support of Genevieve, Guillaume’s love, and Jean-Luc, a canny young boy, he improves. But the plotters learn he has confided everything to Dr. Pinel and both are threatened with arrest and death. (332 pp.)
