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PARTISAN REVIEW
Freud was right when he talked about the sublimation of neurosis
through art. Or do you thinkJung was right when he said that we
create in spite of and not because of our neuroses?
MVL:
I think normality, if there is such a thing, is incompatible with
the artist's vocation. I think we create because of some maladjust–
ment, of some conflict with the world or society. At least in our
time, it seems to me that artistic creation follows that maladjust–
ment, that disconformity . It would, doubtless, be inexact and
false to explain creativity - any kind - simply by referring to
neuroses the particular artist happens to suffer. There are lots of
neurotics, and not all of them are artists. In each case we would
have to take into account all the factors that enter into the situa–
tion so that we could arrive at an explanation based on the facts. I
naturally do not believe that neurosis explains everything: mal–
adjustment is merely a starting point. Here what Sartre referred
to as a "choice" seems to me quite logical: at a certain point you
simply take cognizance of yourself. And at that moment in which
you take cognizance of yourself, you begin to reorganize your life,
not only in relation to the neurosis that may be the origin of your
vocation but also in relation to the exercise of that vocation . This
has a reciprocal effect on your personality. The person who has
been writing for twenty years is in no way the person who has just
begun to write. Not only because he is twenty years older but be–
cause (of this I'm sure) his entire psychological structure has ab–
sorbed in some way the impact of that vocation. A vocation which
can be translated into years, months, days, hours of worry and of
routine work. That's my idea of it. It is, if you like, a somewhat
eclectic notion as regards Freud and Jung. But the psychological
explanation of what makes us artists seems insufficient to me, just
as the Marxist explanation of artistic creation seems insufficient to
me. It tends to suppress the individual in its attempt to explain
everything as a problem of social relationships. The social factor,
doubtless, does have a huge influence on the process of creation,
but it's not the only influence.
It
seems to me to be both a rational
and an irrational process in which instinct has a very important
role - and this role is precisely the one which has been least stud–
ied. There is a kind of programming in the creative person's per–
sonality which we can call instinctive. There are certain pulsa–
tions that I have felt while I write, pulsations that lead you or
push you and are beyond awareness. They are phenomena that
have a biological, physical character, that impel you in a certain
