This book is about how traumatic psychological injury is passed down to the children and grandchildren of those who originally experienced it and about finding the shared humanity in families, in psychotherapy, in society, and in memories of the past that repairs the damage people do to one another.

This volume brings together some of the papers presented by leading scholars, artists and psychoanalysts at an annual Creativity Seminar organised by the Erikson Institute of the Austen Riggs Center. Looking at creativity through a psychoanalytic lens - and very importantly, vice versa - the authors examine great works, such as Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Mahler's Eighth Symphony, and William Gibson's The Miracle Worker; as well as great artists, such as Van Gogh and Lennon and McCartney, for what we might learn about the creative process itself. Deepening this conversation are...