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Escaping to the Angels: A Note on the Passing of the Manic Defence
Author(s) -
Mogenson Greg
Publication year - 1996
Publication title -
journal of analytical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.285
H-Index - 23
eISSN - 1468-5922
pISSN - 0021-8774
DOI - 10.1111/j.1465-5922.1996.00077.x
Subject(s) - creativity , psychology , psychoanalysis , teleology , distress , social psychology , psychotherapist , epistemology , philosophy
This essay examines how some psychologically adroit individuals use creativity as a manic defence against the affects that they cannot bear to experience directly. Conceived within the perspectives of Jungian psychoanalysis, manic creativity is shown to effect a defence against the subjective distress of personal complexes by means of an identification with the archetypal cores of the complexes. This defensive use of creativity, however, may ultimately play a decisive role in healing. Indeed, when considered from a prospective or teleological point of view, manic creativity, for all its insensitivity to the suffering that has inspired it, can also be understood as gradually creating a container in which affects formerly defended against may be received and suffered, felt and grieved. It is in this way that manic creativity, though clearly a defence (and at times a very costly one), participates in the reparative initiative of the self.