Freud and creative writers

Freud's Concept Of Daydreaming And Its Application In Creative Writing

Understanding the source of inspiration of a creative writer -- or any artists for that matter -- has been one of the primary goals of literary critics, psychologists, and philosophers alike. Thus it should come as little surprise that Sigmund Freud approached the problem himself during his career as a psychologist in developing his theories of psychoanalysis. Freud (1907) tackles this problem in his oft-cited essay "Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming." Quite conversationally, Freud outlines the issue at hand: it is entirely unclear from what source the creative writer draws. In other words, reading a work of literary fiction provides scant clues as to what wellspring of inspiration the author relied upon to create the work. Further, if one were to question the writer about the source of his inspiration, he would likely balk at such a query and suggest that the poetic impulse exists in all individuals and is not as unique as the critic might believe (although this might only be the response from a humble creative writer). But whatever the response, the seeker of the wellspring of creative inspiration will be left with few -- if any -- leads to follow. Freud recognized that the creative impulse must have a source somewhere within the individual or within the history of that individual. With this in mind, Freud developed the notion that creative writing is a form of daydreaming, in which fantasies are given literary life.

In posing that daydreaming can be seen as the source of creative writing, Freud launched himself on a search for the genius and inspiration that exists behind literary giants such as Shakespeare (Dawson 2004, p. 42). But more than this, Freud was also keenly interested in the source of inspiration for those individuals who produced what is usually considered to be a lower quality of literary work. Though Freud focuses primarily on the latter kind of creative writing, his conclusions have implications for all forms of creative writing. Though it is not necessarily obvious, "Freud makes explicit the aesthetic speculation [...] that literary composition (especially of works usually judged to be "lesser" art) may resemble day-dreaming" (Luther 1997). After much deliberation, this is the conclusion that Freud reaches in his search for the source of creative writing. But the question remains how Freud made this deduction.

In order to identify daydreaming as the source of creative writing, Freud turns to the subjects he, arguably, understood the best: psychological development, particularly during childhood. All of Freud's work on the subject of psychology is driven by the underlying assumption that the first few years of life are pivotal for the later development of the individual (Brophy, 2006, p. 135). Thus, to understand the source of inspiration for the creative writer, Freud looks back to the idealized childhood for any parallels that might suggest a source of creative writing. In fact, this approach proves quite successful. Freud points out correctly that children have a similar tendency to rely on their imaginations to create worlds divorced from reality or ones that are only partly dependent on reality. Writers have a similar penchant for imagination (Freud 1907, p. 132).

But, we could counter, all people have the capacity to exercise their imaginations. Children do it as do creative writers, but so does the bank teller who imagines himself on a hiking trip or the construction worker who envisions winning a lottery ticket. So what is it, then, that makes the childhood use of imagination relevant in a discussion of creative writing? According to Freud, it is the fact that both children and creative writers, unlike the rest of us, take the fantasies they create very seriously. While most adults view daydreams and fantasies as shameful exercises that distract from reality, children and -- arguably -- creative writers take the worlds they create very seriously and invest their waking lives in the construction and execution of those worlds (Freud 1907, p. 133).

For the creative writer, earnestness when it comes to the act of creating worlds within writing is a reflection or substitution of the same seriousness that the individual would have had for play when a child. In both cases, Freud argues, the act of creation is facilitated through the fantasy, through the daydream. Since fantasies for Freud are driven by a dissatisfaction with reality, it is apparent that creative writing, like childhood play, develops out of a fundamental lack of satisfaction with the way that the world is combined with the desire to imagine it differently (Freud 1907 p. 134). Creative writing is a kind of wish fulfillment in which the writer imagines, or daydreams, a different world and then spins a literary exterior around that dream (Dawson 2004, p. 42). The writer is thus "an egotist shaping infantile phantasies into acceptable adult form" (Brewster 2002). This is a crucial point because in general daydreams and fantasies are perceived as vulgar and a waste of time in the adult world. Only children and artists can be tolerated the vice of daydreams. The creative writer can manage the feat of transforming the daydream into an acceptable adult form by presenting it as a form of literature and art. Such an avenue, however, is unavailable to most people either due to a lack of ability or a lack of will.

From this, then, we see that writers are at play like children, but with a seriousness that allows their creations to be perceived as valid and even entertaining in the adult world (Brophy 2006, pp. 140-141). But no matter how literary or sophisticated, whether or not we are speaking of William Shakespeare or Michael Crichton, Freud explains that the act of creative writing is fueled primarily by a dissatisfaction with the way the world is, a desire to create something new through imagination to fill a perceived gap or to make a more satisfying reality in which a Hero wins and evil is vanquished. True, not every story is as straightforward as this, which is perhaps why Freud focuses on less literary acts of creative writing such as popular fiction. Nonetheless, the implication persists in his conclusions that all creative writing is the daydream made manifest in the written word. The clever writer masks his egotistic daydream in enough literary aesthetics that the reader can forget for a moment that he is only living through the fantasy of the writer (Freud 1907, p. 137-138). The creative writer using language and literature to "trick" his audience into forgetting for a moment that creative writing is merely an extension of daydreamed fantasy.