We see that javascript is disabled or not supported by your browser - javascript is needed for important actions on the site. Read more

What's New - Home - Login

Member $avings: $81,569,616.98 | Books Available: 794,830 | Members Online: 215

Swap Used Books - Buy New Books at Great Prices!

How To Swap Books Sign Up Search submenu

PBS Market (New Books)

Gift Buying Guide

Book Browser Advanced Search Books Posted Today Member Book Reviews Award Winning Books NYT Best Sellers Amazon Best Sellers Most Traveled Copies Club Wish List

Discussion Forums Book Lists

Club Lists My Book Lists My Watched Lists Create a List

Blog Donations

School Donation Program In Memory of... Military Donation Program Friends of PBS

Box-O-Books Maps The Eclectic Pen Fun Stuff

20 Questions Sudoku Bookmark Creator

Top 100

Requests Posts Swappers Referrers Reviewers

Pulse of PBS Spread The Word

Invite Friends Bookmarks Facebook Page Facebook App More Ways...

Photo Gallery Recipes Club Tag Cloud Member Testimonials

Help Center submenu

How To Swap Books Browse Help Docs Ask the Librarian PBS Member Icons Live Help

Kiosk

PBS Market (New Books) Go Shopping Buy Credits Buy PBS Money Upgrade Membership Gift Certificates Transfer Credits

Need Help?

Search - Creative Characters

Creative Characters
Author: Elisabeth Young-Bruehl

The study of creativity is as old as western thought. In recent times any crisis of confidence is likely to involve anxiety about the loss of creativity--scientific, artistic, technological--and to set off a new search for creativity's definition. — In Creative Characters, Elisabeth Young-Bruehl reflects on the long search for an understanding of... more » creativity and offers a novel approach. She notes that studies of creativity fall into types. Some look at the act of creation, others focus on the creators, while others stress the conscious or unconscious motivations of creative people. All these approaches share certain limitations. They lack an integrative perspective and they search for a common denominator--one definition of the creative process, a single creative type--which obscures the diversity of creative people and their work.

Young-Bruehl here offers an original analysis of creativity based on a theory of character. Creative people, she argues, create in the medium of their characters. They develop (usually unconsciously) an image of their characters or, in other terms, an ideal for the organization of their minds and lives, which they both aspire to and project into whatever they create. This character-ideal appears in their works, their social visions, their philosophies of nature, and also their understandings of creative processes, their own and others'. What creative people wish for themselves, for the psychic order in themselves, is what they wish for in their lives and works.

Young-Bruehl suggests that there are three broad character and creative types, each comprised of many variations. She displays these ways of getting one's psychic act together or getting a product together by turning to three ancient Greek theorists of creativity--Plato, Aristotle, and Zeno--and three modern theorists--Nietzsche, Freud, and Proust. She then proceeds by clustering biographical vignettes and portraits of ideas in which she can show--rather than try to define--the creativity as well as the character ideal she has in mind.

Of special interest to Young-Bruehl is what individuals say about their own creativity, especially when creativity is not explicitly their topic. Her approach is primarily psychoanalytic, but she also uses philosophical analysis, literary criticism, history of science, and biography.

Psychoanalysts and psychologists will find the book not only a new approach to creativity, but a new way of doing applied psychoanalysis: there have been many psychobiographies but no effort has been made to survey them and draw conclusions. Philosophers will discover a major contribution to the theory of character, one of the most neglected subfields of philosophy. Finally, in Creative Characters biography readers will see how the study of individual lives can lead to reflection on larger questions.

ISBN-13: 9780415903691
ISBN-10: 0415903696
Publication Date: 8/22/1991
Pages: 275
Rating:

0 stars, based on 0 rating

Publisher: Routledge
Book Type: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
Reviews: Amazon | Write a Review

Genres:

Back to the Top ↑

Search - Creative Characters

Loading...