Savior Imaginer (Science and Techniques of Imagination) by Florence Vidal (review)

244 B00k.Y He recalls, in a non-systematic fashion, his early experiences of neuroscience, medicine and psychiatry. His basic premise is that the scientific method interferes with life in a way that is not based on love. Technology does not necessarily have to be heartless, as it is nowadays. He criticizes science, which discounts anything that does not have a hypothesis to account for it; it also screens out all but the required information. The ’black-box’ view of a human and its empirical counterpart, whereby the whole is apprehended and accounted for by experimenting on the parts, determine attitudes and behaviour towards people and patients. This fragmentation. he says, is heartless and typifies modern medical research and practice. including psychiatry. Through personal recollections of psychiatric practice, the author emphasizes psychiatry’s contradictions. Instead of concentrating on relationships, it mainly makes use of medication and treatments like electroshock; these enhance the ‘vicious circle’ whereby the patient’s vital expression of feelings and experiences is repressed and controlled. The book is best outlined and concluded by one of the last of Laing’s statements: ‘This book makes no pretensions to be a guide to the perplexed. I am myselfperplexed. But I have tried. as best I can, to convey the nature of my perplexity.’ Artists will not find this book of particular interest. It may comfort and make happier those artists who believe that they have escaped the dramatic choice, which Laing seems to think inevitable, between love and science, feelings and technology. Perspectives in Creativity. Irving A. Taylor and J. W. Getzels, eds. Aldine. Chicago, Ill., 1975. 353 pp., illus. $14.75. Reviewed by Florence Vidal* This is a collection of essays by psychologists in the U.S.A. who specialize in the subject creativity. It is a fascinating inventory of their research, which has been pursued during the past 25 years. Moreover. the authors in developing their themes strive to describe their own intellectual itinerary, to explain why they were interested in the subject and how their own thoughts are generated. This accounts for the vital aspect of the book, which is written in styles ranging from those for the general public to those for specialists (there are few statistics and graphs). In the opening chapter the Editor, Irving A. Taylor, analyzes in detail the history of investigations on creativity and the different schools that have participated in this work. He reveals how the notion of creativity is attacked from the point of view of psychoanalysis. humanistic, holistic and associationistic psychology and of factorial analysis. This broad panorama makes it possible to view the subject of creativity in its essential aspects: the creative individual, the creative process, creative production and creative climate. Several authors investigate the rather paradoxical personality of many creative persons. On this subject, Barron states: ‘In the sequence of related acts which taken together as a process result in the creation of something new, there occur consistently a rhythmic alternation and occasionally a genuine resolution or synthesis of certain common antinomies. By this I mean that certain apparentlycontradictory and contrary principles of action, thought, and feeling, which usually must be sacrificed one to the other, are instead expressed fully in the same sequence, the dialectic leading at special moments to an unusual integration.’ Mackinnon explains why psychologists have taken so long to become interested in creative persons. Initially. psychologists considered humans either as machine-like subjects or pathological cases. It was only after the appearance of the concept of personality in their domain of interest that they began to study creative individuals, who differ so significantlyin emotional and intellectual qualities. Getzelsand Parnes find that more and more the creative act is being considered to be one that produces joy and pleasure for its author rather than one that is in response to a cultural environment. The process of artistic creation has been studied in particular by certain of the authors (Getzels, Barron and Anne Roe). In order to understand better the procedures employed by painters, Getzels analyzed the behavior of young * 12 rue Denfert Rochereau. 92100 Boulogne Billancourt. France. (Based on a text in French.) artists at a table on which there was a collection...