We're all crazy

~Part of an ongoing series discussing Dennis Palumbo's Writing From the Inside Out (Transforming Your Psychological Blocks to Release the Writer Within).



Next time you're inclined to say you have writer's block, think of this - the man credited with inventing the term writer's block (Edmund Bergler) said about writers - the reason they write is psychic masochism.

I went and looked up a definition of psychic masochism:

Psychic masochists unconsciously want refusal, rejection, humiliation, defeat. The genuine "wish to get" of infancy is now a defense. They believe they want normal pleasure, but a person "who unconsciously runs after disappointment cannot be consciously happy."**

Isn't that a happy thought to start your day?

To ease your mind, Palumbo is not a fan of Bergler. He includes him mainly to refute what he considers a commonly held opinion that "the creative impulse, with its accompanying emotional difficulties, is merely the product of a psychological disorder. " (p. 57) At the time he wrote this book, apparently it was in fashion to consider all artists bipolar. It strikes me that does a disservice both to writers and to people who genuinely suffer from bipolar illness.


Palumbo points out that certain artists (like Van Gogh) certainly suffered from some form of mental illness but he was also incredibly talented so to draw the conclusion that all artists are crazy reflects a narrowness of vision that betrays the "scope, imagination, and appreciation for the hidden ways of the artistic heart." (p. 59)

I don't know about you, but I prefer to think of myself not as a psychic masochist, but as someone who explores the hidden ways of the artistic heart.

Happy writing.




**Basic Neurosis, The—Oral Regression and Psychic Masochism." International Dictionary of Psychoanalysis. Ed. Alain de Mijolla. Gale Cengage, 2005. eNotes.com. 2006. 22 Jul, 2010 basic-neurosis-oral-regression-psychic-masochism