Book Review: The Creative Process of Psychotherapy

Other aspects of this text may also give the reader pause for thought. There is something exceedingly odd about the statement, crucial to any understanding of Rothenberg's analysis, that in the creative process of psychotherapy "the patient...chooses new patterns of behaviour just as the creative artist actively chooses to produce new structured content and the creative scientist actively chooses new theoretical formulations". If we follow the logic of this statement we are forced to conclude that the creative process of psychotherapy is fundamentally identical to the creative process of art or science. An existentialist might applaud the way in which this appeal to foreground the importance of active choice in therapy, but this does not seem to be what Rothenberg intends. He writes as though choice (or rather some sort of "correct" choice) is identical to creation. In the loosest sense we might agree that in choosing one course of action from an unquantifiable multitude we do indeed create ourselves. It is difficult, however, to determine what Rothenberg means when he uses the word "choice". He concedes that it is highly unlikely that any therapy of "psychiatric illness" can succeed unless some shift by the patient towards overcoming the illness occurs, but for Rothenberg this shift may obtain in such a variety of situations as to remove any real meaning from the word "choice". He states "I will not go into instances of manifestly directed or forced therapy such as those resulting from psychotic breakdown and institutionalization, suicide attempt, antisocial acts and the like, because any of these may represent indirect requests or decisions for treatment". He also holds that the creative process may occur regardless of the type of therapy - from person-centred to formal psychoanalysis and medicine, or any combination of these.

Rothenberg offers research examples from a number of poets, playwrights, and novelists. We might wonder if he does not share something in common with Henry James, novelist brother of the psychologist William James, who was similarly concerned to strip bare the creative process and who seemed increasingly to deny the possibility of creativity the more precisely he attempted to portray its workings.

Simon Du Plock