Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Through the life stories of women such as Camille Claudel, Virginia Woolf, Katherine Mansfield, Anne Sexton, Suzanne Farrell and others and through clinical case studies, Susan Kavaler-Adler offers penetrating insights into the nature of the creative process. Kavaler-Adler contrasts unsuccessful psychological treatments with object-relations therapy that is able to resolve the pathological narcissism of creative addiction and allow the emergence of healthy modes of self-expression.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The present work is an extension and amplification of the author's earlier The Compulsion to Create (1993). The two books present an in-depth examination of creative women; they should, in fact, be read in order, since Compulsion gives a thorough presentation of "object relations" theory and detailed criticism of other approaches. The primary focus in both works is the driven quality of creative work in so many women. Unresolved conflicts with the father and, in some cases, the mother produce a "red shoes frenzy" in which a woman must keep creating at the cost of interpersonal relations, health, and ultimately, her life. Camille Claudel, Katherine Mansfield, Diane Arbus, and Bertha Pappenheim (Freud's Anna O) are used to illustrate the unrelenting nature of such creativity. Most interesting are Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, whose lives, and suicides, give a contemporary picture of this "dance of death." Hope is presented, however, in the lives of Anais Nin (described in The Compulsion to Create), Suzanne Farrell in her relation with George Balanchine, and two case histories. These women developed balanced and healthy "object relations" and show a more positive "flow" in their creativity, as described by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in Flow (CH, Sep'90) and Creativity (1996). For researchers, faculty, and professionals. P. L. Derks College of William and Mary

Booklist Review

Object-relations psychotherapy is the theoretical basis for Kavaler-Adler's approach to how women may develop healthy creative selves. Expanding on ideas examined in The Compulsion to Create, Kavaler-Adler highlights the lives of such outstanding artists as Camille Claudel, Virginia Woolf, and, more recently, Diane Arbus. Suzanne Farrell and the ballerina's relationship with George Balanchine is cited as a successful "fantasy of union with a muse," in contrast to the destructive tendencies of others in the study who were never able to overcome "an unstable sense of self . . . from early trauma." From an analytical viewpoint, perhaps most fascinating is a critique of Anne Sexton's therapy with various doctors; Kavaler-Adler speculates on care that might have helped rather than hindered the poet, who eventually capitulated to the suicidal demands of her darker self. Compelling reading for all who remain curious as to why gifted artists often suffer the worst despair. --Alice Joyce

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Susan Kavaler-Adler is the Founding Director of the Objects Relations Institute for Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis in New York and the author of The Compulsion to Create (Routledge, 1993).