The Compulsion to Create: A Psychoanalytic Study of Women Artists

In "The Compulsion to Create", Kavaler-Alder offers a theoretical understanding of the psychological forces at work in the female artist. Drawing on the work of the object relations school - especially Melanie Klein, Ronald Fairbairn, Harry Guntrip, Margaret Mahler and D.W. Winnicott - she argues that the compulsion to create is an addiction to an internal parent object and constitutes a pathological state of mourning. The importance of the father's role, which may be positive, rejecting or seductive, in the female artists creative process is thoroughly considered. Kavaler-Adler develops her theoretical position by focusing on the lives and works of women writers including Charlotte and Emily Bronte, Emily Dickinson, Sylvia Plath, Anais Nin and Edith Sitwell. In conclusion, she examines how psychotherapy can be used to help artists and writers modify self-destructive forces within them, while simultaneously enriching their creative work; by presenting the case of a living female artist she makes clear how the diagnostic can be applied to actual clinical practice. "The Compulsion to Create" focuses on the defensive aspects of creativity.