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Dissertations - 2006
The limit as potency: a study of the relations between shame and creativity
Alexandre Schmitt
Advisor: Liliana Wahba
Key Words: shame, creativity, Jung, analytical psychology.
Abstract: This study seeks to formulate hypothesis concerning the relations between shame and creativity based on a Jungian theoretical framework and complemented, whenever necessary, by theoretical developments from other psychological schools of thought. Shame has been widely researched through many theoretical approaches starting from the eighties of the last century. Creativity, in turn, is a subject that is being studied a lot – a real literary fever about it can be observed –, but the researches that study the relations between these two phenomena are rare. Common sense vision on the subject is that shame is an affect that inhibits creativity, but it is possible to suspect, based on the Genesis and on Hephaestus myths, that shame may also be an affect that fosters it. Organized in six chapters, this study starts with a brief introduction and goes on with a revision of the literature on shame, trying to place this affect inside the Analytical Psychology’s theory of affects, as well as to distinguish it from some feelings like guilt and embarrassment. A whole web of concepts that establish a relation with this affect, such as integrity, self-esteem and inferiority complex is constructed. Still in this chapter the strategies of defense that are commonly employed by people to protect themselves against this painful affect are studied. In the third chapter, a revision of the literature on creativity under the Analytical Psychology’s theoretical framework with the approaches of authors such as Carl Gustav Jung, Erich Neumann, Verena Kast, Paul Brutsche, Luigi Zoja, James Hillman and Rosemary Gordon is presented. In the fourth chapter, the literature is again revised, this time, the one that concerns the few existing studies about the relations between shame and creativity. Finally, in the fifth chapter – the last chapter before the conclusion – the studies that were mentioned in the revision of the literature are discussed and the following hypothesis about the relationship between shame and creativity is formulated: two defenses commonly employed against shame – withdrawal and avoidance – may contribute, respectively, for a favorable environment to creativity and for high performance. A small study concerning the role that social minorities may have in the creative production is also developed and the hypothesis that the inferiority feeling – an element associated to shame – has an archetypical character is also formulated. The hypotheses are exemplified with two brief discussions of the biographies of two famous creators: Maria Callas and Carl Gustav Jung.
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