The Creative Feminine and her Discontents : Psychotherapy, Art and Destruction

ISBN-13: 9781855755550 / Angielski / Miękka / 2008 / 152 str.

Juliet Miller

Opis

This book is an attempt to look at creativity from a female perspective. It is an exploration of what these specific difficulties for women might be and how we might think about them and try and find a way through them. The author is aware that men also experience difficulties with their creative selves, but she believes the problems are significantly different from the ones addressed here. The author does however address the fact that we all suffer, men and women, if women feel cut off from important aspects of their internal creative lives. If aspects of the creative feminine appear inaccessible to women, then they are also not available to men and this is a double tragedy.

Although the book is written from the perspective of a Jungian Analyst, primarily interested in the life of the psyche, the author also examines some of the historical, cultural and social reasons why women may have specific issues relating to their creativity. Together, she suggests, these all add up to a multi-layered and conflicted mixture of barriers and fears for women who wish to express themselves. The book explores women's subjective experiences of their creative selves as writers, singers, mothers, therapists and artists and argue that these subjective experiences are marginalized by the symbolism and language that is available to express and explore the creative feminine. It is a thesis of this book that one of the problems about writing or speaking about female creativity is that the language of a patriarchal world is restricted to speaking about women and not for them.

Spis treści

Introduction -- Creativity and Fear -- The search for a voice -- Using a voice -- Creativity and Procreativity -- The dilemma of motherhood -- The problem of infertility -- Creativity and Psychotherapy -- History, gender, and relating -- Patriarchy and hate in training institutes -- Creativity and Art -- Power and vulnerability in the work of Louise Bourgeois -- Creative destruction in the work of Cornelia Parker -- Conclusion

O autorze

Juliet Miller is a Jungian Analyst with a private practice in London. Prior to training as an analyst she worked as a documentary film maker on environmental, social and women's issues. She is especially interested in creative expression and the interface between the arts and psychotherapy. She is co-editor with Jane Haynes of Inconceivable Conceptions. Psychological Aspects of Infertility and Reproductive Technology.