Churchill’s Black Dog
‘Extremely engaging… A book full of good moments and humane insights.’Alan Ryan, ObserverThis book collects the essays of one of England’s best-known and most distinguished psychiatrists. Its theme is creativity. What internal dynamic forces artists, scientists and politicians to devote so much time and energy to creative invention? Anthony Storr weighs and tests Freud’s theory that creativity is the result of dissatisfaction by examining the impulses which drove such figures as Churchill, Kafka and Newton.Whether he is exploring the ‘divine discontent’ that motivates creativity, analysing Jung’s mid-life crisis, assessing the psychology of jealousy in Othello or denouncing the abuses of psychiatry, Storr brings wisdom, erudition and compassion to all his subjects in this highly readable and human collection, which is accessible to those who know nothing about psychoanalysis as well as to those who know a great deal.
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ANTHONY STORR
CHURCHILLâS BLACK DOG
And Other Phenomena of the Human Mind
HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
Previously published in paperback by Flamingo 1990
Reprinted twice
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1989
Copyright © Anthony Storr 1989
Anthony Storr asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
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Source ISBN: 9780006375661
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780007392476 Version: 2016-12-08
Contents
2. Kafkaâs Sense of Identity
5. Othello and the Psychology of Sexual Jealousy
6. Aspects of Adult Development
7. Psychoanalysis and Creativity
9. Jungâs Conception of Personality
10. Why Psychoanalysis Is Not a Science
13. Why Human Beings Become Violent
Freud defined psychological health as being able to love and work. The majority of the essays included in this collection are more concerned with the latter activity than with the former. I have long been interested in the psychology of the creative imagination. What internal dynamic forces impel men and women to devote so much time and energy to creative invention, whether in the arts or in the sciences? Although success may eventually bring the conventional rewards of fame and money, many artists and scientists struggle for years without attaining either, and some win recognition only posthumously. For example, Gregor Mendelâs experiments laid the foundation for the science of genetics. Yet it was not until sixteen years after his death that the value of his work became widely appreciated. Creative work must be inspired by drives which have nothing to do with worldly success.
Freud considered that imaginative activity originated from dissatisfaction.
We may lay it down that a happy person never phantasies, only an unsatisfied one. The motive forces of phantasies are unsatisfied wishes, and every single phantasy is the fulfilment of a wish, a correction of an unsatisfying reality. (Standard Edition, 9:146)
Freud tended to dismiss fantasy as illusory, escapist wish fulfillment, along with dreams and play; a view which I regard as profoundly mistaken, and which is dealt with at some length in the essay âPsychoanalysis and Creativity.â The great creative achievements of mankind are not to be equated with idle daydreams. Nor, as Freud claimed, is the creativity of the artist quite different from that of the scientist, an assumption which is examined in âWhy Psychoanalysis Is Not a Science.â
Yet there is a sense in which Freud was right to derive imagination from dissatisfaction. For is it not part of human destiny never to be content with what is, but always to be seeking something better? This âhunger of imagination,â as Dr. Johnson called it, operates at every level, from mundane desires for more food or money to utopian visions of universal harmony, whether on earth or in heaven. It is surely this hunger which accounts for manâs supremacy as a species. If man, like some insects, was preprogrammed to be more or less perfectly adapted to his environment, he would live a stereotyped life with neither the need to look for anything better nor the capacity to imagine it. But man is extremely flexible. Because he is not specifically adapted to one particular environment, he can adapt to many. Because he only has a few inbuilt responses, he is capable of learning, of invention, of assimilating novelty, and of creating symbols, a capacity considered in the essay âThe Psychology of Symbols.â Manâs creative adaptability paradoxically derives from his primary lack of adaptation.
Moreover, the life-span of both men and women extends far beyond the period of life during which reproduction is a prime concern. âAspects of Adult Developmentâ explores some of the changes which take place during the mid-life period and afterward, and underlines the fact that some of the works of art which we most treasure have been created by those past middle age.
