The plight of the artist was one of great interest within the field of applied psychoanalysis from its earliest days. In the meetings of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society, considerable time was devoted to the discussion of this issue, Freud having relied so much upon literature and art for evidence to support his ideas about the unconscious. Ultimately, he became sceptical as to how thoroughly the creative process could ever be understood and reached the conclusion that "Before the artist, the analyst must lay down his arms."The subjects of this study are allowed to speak for themselves through their works, autobiographical commentary and personal declarations wherever possible. These quotations and excerpts are meant to serve in a manner similar to that of a basic science to its clinical counterpart by furnishing a broader foundation for the derivation of further hypotheses.Contents1 Object Loss, Dreaming and Creativity: The Poetry of John Keats2 Joseph Conrad: 1880-1910, His Development as a Writer3 The Doppelganger Element in the Relationship Between Bertrand Russell and Joseph Conrad4 Pre-oedipal Considerations in the Works of Eugene O'Neill5 The Effect of Early Trauma upon Thomas Hardy's Literary Career6 The Significance fo Transitional Phenomena and Sublimation in the Life and Writings of Vladimir Nabokov7 Orwell's 1984 and the Creative Transformation of Intrapsychic Conflict8 Thomas Wolfe's The Lost Boy: Sequelae of Childhood Sibling Loss9 Heinrich Von Kleist and the Quest for Perfection and Immortality10 The Plays of Peter Shaffer and the Vicissitudes of Twinship Rivalry
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