1 Ernst Kris introduced the term “regression in the service of the ego” to distinguish from neuroses those submissions to morbid processes leading to psychic reparation and creativity. Cf. Kris, Ernst, Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art (New York: International Universities Press, 1952).Google Scholar Citations to this point could be numerous. For example, Lionel Trilling's classic paper, “Art and Neurosis,” in Trilling's The Liberal Imagination (New York: Viking Press, 1952).Google Scholar Also, Weissman, Philip, “Theoretical Considerations of Ego Regression and Ego Functions in Creativity,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, No. 1 (1967): 37–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Erikson's, Erik H. pathobiographies are pertinent, his study of Freud, for example, “The Dream Specimen of Psychoanalysis,” Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, No. 2 (1954): 5–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar An excellent paper I shall return to is Greenacre, Phyllis, “The Relation of the Impostor to the Artist,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. XIII (>1958): 521–540.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Reality, in the psychoanalytic sense, refers to a part of a complex functional principle. Reality is any external circumstance calling for a modification of impulses. The sense of reality is what organizes impulses into effective behavior and guarantees the security of continuity of the self, the experience of predictable efficacy. The loss of a sense of reality, as in schizophrenic episodes, leads to the terror of unpredictable impulsivity. To the performer qua performer the performance promises to organize very important expression-seeking impulses into effective behavior and is therefore an indispensable piece of reality, the sense of which stage fright threatens. The idea that his grasp on the performance—the organizing reality—might fail inspires great fear in the performer because then his unspeakable impulses will be revealed.

3 Funke, Lewis and Booth, John E. (eds.), Actors Talk About Acting, Vol. II (New York: Avon Books, 1961), pp. 189–190.Google Scholar

4 Philip Weissman has coined the term “creative psychosis” for the transient delusional and other morbid phenomena involved in certain creative activity. He states, moreover, that “the ‘creative psychosis’ of the creative artist is independent of his usual mental state which may be normal, neurotic or psychotic.” Weissman, , “Creative Fantasies and Beyond the Reality Principle,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, No. 1 (1969): 110–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 This is not to say that certain measures are not attempted, such as ritualistic actions, verbal litanies, hand-wringing—behavior I shall go into. But short of revising the entire persecutory fantasy of the audience, which is not feasible, these measures are merely straws in the wind.

6 One of the criticisms of psychological explanation is that it needlessly complicates phenomena already well understood. For an excellent discussion of this matter, which includes clarification of certain methodologic problems in relating psychology to art, see: Eissler, Kurt R., “The Relation of Explaining and Understanding in Psychoanalysis: Demonstrated by One Aspect of Freud's Approach to Literature,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. XXIII (1968): 141–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 See my essay, “Theatre Architecture: A Derivation of the Primal Cavity,” The Drama Review, Vol. 12, (Spring, 1968) [T39]: 105-116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 Hoffer, Willie, “Mouth, Hand and Ego Integration,” The psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. 3/4 (1949): 49–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Rangell, Leo, “The Psychology of Poise, with Special Elaboration on the Psychic Significance of the Snout or Perioral Region,” The International Journal of Psychoanalysis, Vol. 35 (1954): 313-332.Google Scholar

10 I am reminded of a patient, a female hysteric, who described how she would swoon and often faint during sexual relations when things didn't go as she anticipated they should. Her specifications were so precise that things very rarely went as they should, and the outcome struck terror, as well it might, in her various lovers, who naturally believed she was dying or was dead. Her behavior was a resurrection of issues of primal anxiety, her fainting warding off, for example, a rage reaction. In addition, her comatose state was a histrionic indictment of her lover's incompetence, aimed really at an early mother image—the patient as a child actually played dead to such a degree that she scared the wits out of her mother. Also, the patient was a poor collaborator. Her tenseness and frigidity parodied her image of her mother and deprived the lover of what he anticipated. Of course, there were more advanced issues involved in her fainting behavior—guilt, for example.

11 This formulation of a collaboration between an executive neuromuscular apparatus and a visceral system originating out of an early oral situation is consistent with René A. Spitz's studies on the “primal cavity.” For an exposition of some of Spitz's studies, see Donald M. Kaplan, op. cit. Rangell, in his contribution to a festschrift for Spitz—Counterpoint, Libidinal Object and Subject (Herbert S. Gaskill, ed., [New York: International Universities Press, 1963])—observes the independent agreement between his and Spitz's idea of the “primal cavity.”

12 “The psychoanalytic idea that current behavior derives from specific infantile stages of development leads to an error, common even among analysts, that the more chronologically archaic the source, the more “sick” the behavioral derivative. If this were true, then a mild depression, which derives from oral dynamics, would be more pathologic than a severe jealousy having a chronologically more advanced oedipal stamp. Actually, intensity—psychic economy rather than dynamics—is the diagnostic criterion. I say this on the outside chance that misformulations incidental to our discussion will be constructed, such as the I mistaken idea that it is “healthier” to be defiant than fidgety, or some such normative scheme. I should emphasize that there are no normative recommendations in our discussion, no prescriptions for a fictitious state of mental health.

13 Otto Fenichel makes a similar point several times in his extensive writing. He goes into it in detail in two places: “The Counter-Phobic Attitude,” The Collected Papers of Otto Fenichel, Second Series (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1954), pp. 163–173Google Scholar and “On Acting,” pp. 349-361.

14 “The most pertinent are “The Impostor,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. 27 (1958): 359-382;Google Scholar “The Relation of the Imposter to the Artist,” The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Vol. XIII (1958): 521-540Google Scholar; and “The Family Romance and the Artist,” ibid., 2-36.Google Scholar

15 Fritz, Wittels, “Unconscious Phantoms in Neurotics,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly,Vol. 8 (1939): 141-163.Google Scholar A definitive study of identifications, “phantoms,” the whole variety of “inner presences,” is Schafer, Roy, Aspects of Internalization, (New York: International Universities Press, 1968).Google Scholar

16 The psychosexual schedule I am alluding to here, which is cross-cultural, has appalled the general public and nonanalytic intellectuals alike since Freud first proposed it over sixty years ago in his notorious Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality. For a recent discussion of extra-analytic confirmations of Freud's theory, see Yazmajian, Richard V., “Biological Aspects of Infantile Sexuality and the Latency Period,” The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, Vol. 36 (1967): 203-229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 In her paper “The Family Romance and the Artist,” Greenacre describes the fantasy in detail in the lives of five men of genius: St. Francis of Assisi, Thomas Chatterton, Nikolai Gogol, Henry M. Stanley, and Rainer Maria Rilke.

18 I recall a patient, a young lady, who spent years in compulsive leisure, postponing an apprenticeship prerequisite to the profession she had studied for. In late spring one year she finally contracted a nine-to-five position for the fall. The intervening summer she very nearly spent in Europe with an aging lecher, a European, whose advances she was surprised she was about to yield to. Her would-be lover proved to be qualified by virtue of his claim to a title and a castle. Though barely twenty-five, the patient regarded the summer as a “last fling” before her descent into the quotidian.