https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4323-8030
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ABSTRACT
This paper connects the critical discourse on the ‘creative class’ with a longstanding lineage of thought on creativity in psychoanalysis, demonstrating their combined value in understanding worker subjectivity and exposing the perils of contemporary creative work. Drawing upon object relations theorizing in particular, the argument is made that the ‘objects’ of contemporary creative work coupled with its surrounding ‘potential space’ prove severely impoverished, giving rise to a newfound experience of alienation. Accounts of creative workers are presented to further elucidate alienation’s unconscious correlates, as well as to suggest ways of mitigating creativity’s compromised expression through the process of ‘sublimation’ – a concept central to the psychoanalytic theorizing on creativity, yet wholly absent from the contemporary discourse. Implications for the critical study of the ‘creative class’ are discussed.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Such an approach is not uncommon to the psychoanalytic study of organizations, which often deploys vignettes and a narrower range of empirical material to ‘flesh out ideas’ and substantiate ‘experiments in thought’ (Stein Citation2007, 349, 364; see also Kvale Citation1999; Ulus and Gabriel Citation2018).
2 Two points are worth noting here: one, the term ‘mother’ need not be gender-specific, and two, pre-Oedipal need not equate to anti-Oedipal.
3 Biographical accounts describe Freud’s nanny as a surrogate mother of sorts, stepping in to care for Freud when his younger brother fell gravely ill and died, which catapulted Freud’s mother into a profound state of grief and withdrawal (see Gay Citation1988; Whitebook Citation2017).
4 ‘We ought not to exalt ourselves so highly as completely to neglect what was originally animal in our nature’ (Freud Citation1910b, 61).
5 The connections made to childhood in psychoanalytic accounts of creativity should not be conflated with childish behavior or the need to become a child in order to be creative. ‘Adults who regress do not become children’, maintains Knafo (Citation2002), ‘[r]ather, they invoke earlier modes of functioning and experience that are similar to those that once prevailed’ (32).
6 Pseudonyms are used for all participants.
7 It is in this sense that the paper can be said to draw inspiration from an emerging ‘psychosocial approach’ defined by ‘a cluster of methodologies which point towards a distinct position, that of researching beneath the surface and beyond the purely discursive’ (Clarke and Hoggett Citation2009, 2–3).
8 Winnicott (Citation1963): ‘the object must be found in order to be created. This has to be accepted as a paradox’ (187).
9 We might also find here intriguing parallels with the more radical portrayals of creativity captured in the notions of ‘creative activism’ (Harrebye Citation2015) and ‘creative disruption’ (Muhr Citation2010). While space does not permit a thorough comparison, any such radicalized creativity from an object relations perspective will necessarily be forged in a relational process that opens up the very potential space for disruption.