The compulsion to create : a psychoanalytic study of women artists

Foreword by Joyce McDougall.

1 Compulsion versus reparation. 2 From mother to father. 3 Mourning and creative-process reparation. 4 Creative women and the internal father. 5 The demon lover theme as literary myth and psychodynamic complex. 6 Portraits of two kinds of creative women. 7 Charlotte Bronte: biography and Jane Eyre. 8 Villette. 9 Emily Bronte I: The messenger of hope and the demon in the nightwind. 10 Emily Bronte II: Wuthering Heights and the demon lover. 11 Emily Dickinson: muse and demon. 12 Emily Dickinson's breakdown: renunciation and reparation. 13 Edith Sitwell I: The Demon Lover, poetry, and writer's block. 14 Edith Sitwell II: The aging narcissist. 15 The turn to psychoanalytic psychotherapy

'...a superb account of distinguished female writers from a psychoanalytic object relations perspective. The artists discussed often suffered tragic fates including suicide, fatal illness, lifelong wiithdrawal from people or alienation from the world....there is a widespread tendency to idealize the creative process and to discuss it only in terms of "healthy narcissism." While presenting a sympathetic and respectful attitude toward the creative process, Kavaler-Adler nevertheless does not idealize it and is forthright in discussing the problems the artist may encounter.'

Paperback (Katerbound)