Art and the Handicapped Child by Zaidee Lindsay (review)

Books 177 Work, Creativity, and Social Justice. Elliott Jaques. Int. Universities Press, New York, 1970. 262pp. $6.50. ARoadtoCreativity:ArthurMorgan: Engineer, Educator, Administrator. Clarence J. Leuba. Christopher Pub. House, North Quincy, Mass., 1971. 232 pp. $6.95. Reviewed by: Harold I ( .Hughes* Withsuchapparentlyunrelatedtitlesas‘TheHuman Consequences of Industrialization’, ‘Death and the Mid-LifeCrisis’and ‘Learningfor Uncertainty’, the collection of fourteen essays by Elliott Jaques, originally published separately, gets its coherence from the motivation of the author to discover a scienceof industrialsociety.‘Thereis nothing inherently less precise in social meaSurementthan there is in physicalmeasurement. ..an empirical science of humanlawmaybeapracticalendeavour’,he says. If Jaques does not reach this goal, he takes a big step toward it as he brings to bear an impressive educational background and rich experience as both a practicing psychiatrist and a consulting industrial psychologistin England. For illustration, one may cite his Freudian analysis of why industrial salary scales are frequent sources of conflict and how they would be determinedinanidealsociety .Itisnotenough,hebelieves, to recognize that management promotes unnecessary frustration and insecurity or that greed and envy are stirred by manifest inequity. He disavows the current assumption that labor’s ‘greedy selfinterest is supposed to have supplanted a responsible giving of fair work in return for one’s pay’. While competitive and self-seekingmotives operate on both sidesof the bargainingtable, Jaquesstresses that loving impulses play a bigger role than is generally recognized. Consideringpast and current labor conflicts in Britain as well as in the United States, other observerswill challenge this view. For the artist, Jaques’ analysis of creativityin an industrial societywill hold particular interest, Man goes through two aging climactics, the first in his mid-thirties and the second about sixty-five. In his twenties and early thirties, his creativity is precipitate and ready-made. Many poets and composers achieve greatness as young adults and then bum out. The death rate among such creative artistspeaks atthe age of thirty-seven. Inthis group are Mozart, Raphael, Chopin, Rimbaud, Purcell, Chatterton, Baudelaire and Watteau. A classic illustration of the mid-life crisis is Dante, whose realization of his ultimate death is immortalizedin the Divine Comedy which he started at age thirtyseven . Tension, idealism, depression and tragedy often accompany precipitatecreativity. In contrast, creativity after the late thirties is quite different. Although the inspiration may be hot, the execution is more studied and the artist is resigned to the inevitable imperfections in the finished product. ‘Out of this mature resignation comes the serenity in the work of genius, true * State University of New York, Potsdam, N.Y. 13676, U.S.A. 12 serenitywhichtranscendsimperfectionby accepting it’. Sculptors and painters in oil typically produce their greatestworks after forty. From a psychoanalysisof the individual, whether artist or business manager, Jaques marshals his adviceto industrial societyon how to achieve social justice but in doing so makes us realize how little we know about ourselves. Unless one reads the subtitle of the second book, one will miss the inducementthat it is about one of the great creative men of America, Arthur E. Morgan. Best known as the first chairman of the TennesseeValleyAuthority, Morgan led an equally distinguished life as flood control engineer, college president and philosopher laureate to two generations of Franklin D. Rooseveltliberals. Morgan first gained national prominence after the Dayton, Ohio flood in 1913when he organized the Miami ConservancyDistrict, a combinedfloodcontrol and community development project. Hardly through with that controversial but highly successful undertaking, he assumed the presidency of nearly-defunct Antioch College and made of it one of the great liberal arts centers of higher education , known world-widefor the unique combination of sound scholarship, research and practical experienceit offered to students. Dischargedby Rooseveltin 1938for ‘contumacy’, meaninga refusal to make politicalappointments of personshedeemedunqualified,Morganthenfounded Community Services in Yellow Springs, Ohio, as a non-profit organization to help develop the real values of urban life without losingthe old values of the small, personal community. At 94 he is still active in this endeavor. Leuba, a retired professor of psychology at Antioch, is fascinated with creativity. In a way reminiscent of other psychologists, he summarizes theisolatedtraits ofcreativearchitectsand scientists, concludingthat the mere possessionof these traits is not enough to ensure a creative life. Something else (is it the interactions among...