Albert Rothenberg

Eating Disorder as a Modern Obsessive-Compulsive Syndrome

Psychiatric symptomatology is clearly influenced by social factors. Such classical symptoms of the hysterical or conversion disorder as glove and stocking paralysis were once fairly widespread but appear today only in rather backward and poorly educated social groups throughout the world. Such a finding decidedly indicates social and educational causes. The purpose of this paper is to show that social and educational factors have also influenced obsessive-compulsive symptomatology; classical obsessive-compulsive neurosis has emerged today in a form involving food and disorders of eating. Among women of Western culture, the conditions known as anorexia nervosa and bulimia are the modern obsessive-compulsive disorders. First, social factors and individual diagnostic considerations, based on intensive long-term assessment of patients with these conditions, will be discussed. Then, results of a controlled diagnostic study of eating-disorder patients, also based on long-term observation, will be presented, and overall nosological implications discussed.

Artistic creation as stimulated by superimposed versus combined-composite visual images.

The creative role of homospatial thinking in visual art was assessed in an experiment with 39 highly talented young artists. In order to compare the creative effects of visual elements occupying the same space with identical elements arrayed in a combined foreground and background organization, superimposed slide images were presented to a randomly selected portion of the subject group, and the other portion of the subject group viewed the same slide images constructed into a figure-ground composite. Both groups produced three drawings stimulated by the slide stimuli, and these drawings were independently judged by three art experts. Results were that drawings produced by the group exposed to the superimposed images were rated higher in creative potential than those stimulated by the figure-ground controls. These results extend previous experimental findings of a tendency toward homospatial thinking in creative individuals in literature and visual art.

Artistic creation as stimulated by superimposed versus separated visual images.

An experiment was performed to examine the role of homospatial thinking in visual art. Each of 43 university-level art students produced three drawing stimulated by pairs of slides. Subjects were randomly assigned to view the pairs either superimposed on one another or separated on the screen. Drawings were independently judged by two internationally noted artists. As predicted, drawings containing an element from each component image intermingled were higher in creative potential when stimulated by the superimposed presentation; however, when sketches from either condition did not clearly contain images from both slides, the separated image presentation yielded the more creative result. Although results favor the hypothesis in part, the overall ambiguity of the data illustrates some of the difficulties in studying creative thought processes under experimental conditions.

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESPONSES IN THE HUMAN TO INTRACEREBRAL ELECTRICAL STIMULATION.

&NA; During interviews, intracerebral electrical stimulation of sharply localized areas in the temporal lobe of a young woman with psychomotor epilepsy consistently produced ego‐alien ideational experiences similar to those observed by Penfield. The responses were associated with considerable anxiety and with evoked electrical seizure activity. The use of the interview as the observational situation and careful study of the interview tape‐recordings made it possible to discover that the content of the ideational experiences was often a function of her prestimulation “mental content.” This finding led to an examination of Penfields formulations and to some alternative hypotheses about mechanisms that might be involved in psychic responses to temporal‐lobe stimulation.

Creativity, mental health, and alcoholism

Abstract Findings from a research project on the creative process spanning a 25‐year period are applied to considerations regarding mental health and creativity. Two specific creative functions are described: (a) homospatial process‐actively conceiving two or more discrete entities occupying the same space, a conception leading to the articulation of new identities; and (b) janusian process‐actively conceiving multiple opposites or antitheses simultaneously. Both of these processes are healthy, adaptive ones, indicating that mental illness does not facilitate creativity but interferes with it. Verbatim data from intensive interviews with the author, fohn Cheever, are presented to illustrate the relationship of that authors alcoholism to the writing of his outstanding creative achievement, the novel Falconer.

Bipolar illness, creativity, and treatment.

There have been in recent years increasing claims in both popular and professional literature for a connection between bipolar illness and creativity. A review of studies supporting this claim reveals serious flaws in sampling, methodology, presentation of results, and conclusions. Although there is therefore no evidence for etiological or genetic linkages, it is still necessary to explain interrelationships in those creative persons suffering from the illness. Examples of the work in progress of artists with bipolar disorder, Jackson Pollock and Edvard Munch, illustrate the use of healthy and adaptive creative cognition—janusian and homospatial processes—in the formers breakthrough conception during an improvement phase in treatment leading to the development of the Abstract Expressionist Movement and in the latters transformation of an hallucination into his famous artwork “The Scream.” Treatment options that do not produce cognitive effects are important for creative persons with bipolar disorder.

Differential diagnosis of anorexia nervosa and depressive illness: A review of 11 studies

A review of differential diagnostic information from 11 studies of patients with anorexia nervosa is provided. Both intercurrent depressive and obsessive-compulsive features are most frequently reported overall. In seven of these studies providing information about premorbid and intercurrent personality disturbances, obsessive-compulsive characteristics are reported as most frequent in four. It is suggested that presumed connections between anorexia nervosa and depressive illness may be secondary to a more direct link with the obsessive-compulsive syndrome.

Word Association and Creativity

The relationship between the tendency to opposite responding on word-association tests and creativity or originality was tested in this experiment. Standard word-association stimuli are administered individually to Ss identified as high and low in creativity, and responses are timed. That rapid opposite responding is significantly greater in highly creative Ss supports the hypothesis that the capacity to conceive and utilize one or more contradictory or opposite concepts, ideas or images simultaneously is associated with creativity (Janusian thinking). This finding also indicates that uncommon responses are not necessarily associated with creativity, as has been assumed in word-association originality studies, and it helps account for the lack of consistency in studies based on commonality of response.

Family background and genius

Objective: It is widely believed among professionals and laity that genius is born and not made. However, the early and still-influential statistical studies of Frances Galton on the inheritance of genius have neither been supported nor definitively refuted. This study empirically assesses the hereditary transmission hypothesis. Methods: We collected family background data on 50 Nobel Prize laureates in literature, 31 Booker Prize awardees, 135 Pulitzer Prize winners, and 20 National Book and National Book Critics Circle awardees. We compared these for incidence of occupational inheritance (that is, same parent–child occupations) with a matching group of 392 eminent persons in noncreative occupations; for predominant occupation type, we also compared subject data with data for 560 high-IQ nonprizewinners, as well as with general population occupational data. Results: Incidence of one or both parents in the same occupation was only 1% for literary prizewinners but 16% for eminent noncreative persons (P < 0.0001). The predominant (76%) family background constellation for prizewinners consisted of parent–child sex congruency either in applied-equivalent occupations requiring language, persuasion, or artisan skills (P < 0.0001, compared with control subjects) or in unrelated occupations with unfulfilled wishes for creative expression. Conclusions: Outstanding literary prizewinners do not manifest direct inheritance of creativity from their parents; instead, parents and children of the same sex are predominantly in applied-equivalent or performance occupations and have unfulfilled creative wishes. We suggest that early developmental influences on child motivation involve identification and competition with the parent of the same sex.

Opposite Responding as a Measure of Creativity

A proposal for using rapid opposite responding to the Kent-Rosanoff Word Association list as a measure of creativity is presented. Although a complex matter, this measure has the advantage of using a well standardized test as its basis. The proposed scoring system is based on the difference between the number of opposite and primary responses and the difference between mean response latency in those categories. This measure correlates significantly with assessed creativity in a group of successful executives.