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This issue is provided by The Johns Hopkins University Press Journals Division and powered by Project MUSE® Terms and Conditions of Use Thank you for purchasing this Electronic J-Issue from the Journals Division of the Johns Hopkins University Press. We ask that you respect the rights of the copyright holder by adhering to the following usage guidelines: This issue is for your personal, noncommercial use only. Individual articles from this J- Issue may be printed and stored on you personal computer. You may not redistribute, resell, or license any part of the issue. You may not post any part of the issue on any web site without the written permission of the copyright holder. You may not alter or transform the content in any manner that would violate the rights of the copyright holder. Sharing of personal account information, logins, and passwords is not permitted. Peter L. Rudnytsky 161 PETER L. RUDNYTSKY Preface Although by no means the exclusive preserve of psycho- analysis, the theme of this issue of American Imago is indubitably central to it. The question at hand is whether, as Edmund Wil- son (1941) maintained in his classic exposition of the myth of Philoctetes as a paradigm of creativity, the “wound” of neurosis is inseparable from the “bow” of artistic power, or whether, as Lionel Trilling (1947) rejoined, “there is in fact no causal connection” between art and neurosis (169), and “whatever elements of neurosis” the artist may have “in common with his fellow mortals, the one part of him that is healthy, by any conceivable definition of health, is that which gives him the power to conceive, to plan, to work, and to bring his work to a conclusion” (175). The four essays here assembled are all landmark contri- butions to the understanding of their respective subjects. The absence of fanfare in George Mandelbaum’s title, “On Ben Jonson’s Comedies,” perhaps belies the dazzling quality of his reconstruction of the lasting reverberations in Jonson’s plays of the death of his father before Jonson’s birth and his mother’s subsequent remarriage to a bricklayer almost certainly before her son had reached the age of three. Donald Capps’s “Erik H. Erikson, Norman Rockwell, and the Therapeutic Functions of a Questionable Painting” takes off from the little-known fact that Rockwell was Erikson’s patient at the Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, during the 1950s to offer a beauti- ful and searching exploration, centered on the painting The Art Critic, of the roots of Rockwell’s creativity in his relationships with women—above all, his mother but also his first two wives—as well as in his second wife’s relationship to their three sons. Janet Hadda’s “Ginsberg in Hospital,” which has the distinction of garnering a story in the Los Angeles Times (Timberg 2007), draws on unpublished records to argue that Ginsberg’s 1949 stay at the Psychiatric Institute of Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, far American Imago, Vol. 65, No. 2, 161–163. © 2008 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 161 162 Preface from being either irrelevant or harmful to his artistic develop- ment—as previous scholars have presumed—in fact furnished an atmosphere of safety that allowed him to come to terms with the chaos arising from his mother’s schizophrenia, and thus to find his own voice and become the poet of Howl. Finally, in a comprehensive reinterpretation of the life and work of Harry Stack Sullivan, Carlton Cornett proposes that Sullivan’s concept of the malevolent transformation of the personality served as a means of “explaining himself to himself,” and ought to be set beside the traditional paradigms of Sullivan’s self-avowed schizophrenic illness and homosexuality as a frame of refer- ence for understanding both his greatness as a psychoanalytic theorist and his human limitations. This long-overdue issue is a time for both farewells and new beginnings. It marks the completion of my seventh year as edi- tor of American Imago. With deep regret, I must say goodbye to Kristen Smith, my graduate assistant at the University of Florida for the past four years. Indefatigable and tenacious, Kristen has saved me from incalculable errors and embarrassments. Not only I but all of our authors are lastingly in her debt. Fortunately, we look forward to welcoming on board Matthew Snyder, who shows every promise of living up to the standard set by his two predecessors, Kristen Smith and Sarah Mallonee, and leaving his own distinguished mark on the journal in the years ahead. In addition, thanks to the generosity of The Johns Hopkins University Press, we will from now on be the beneficiaries of the talents of Gina Atkinson, already legendary in psychoanalytic circles as the managing editor of The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, who will serve as the copy editor of our annual guest-edited Fall issue. I am also delighted to welcome Ellen Handler Spitz as our third regular columnist. Inspired by the example of War- ren Poland, Spitz will regale our readers “Apropos the Arts,” beginning with her meditation on a recent exhibit, “Weaving Women’s Words,” at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in Balti- more. It suffices to read “When Art Takes Hold” to be persuaded anew that Spitz writes from a place of emotional depth and intellectual luminosity that few, if any, can match. Ensconced in his “Clinician’s Corner,” Poland distills another inimitable potion of analytic and human wisdom in “Father-Son Ups and Peter L. Rudnytsky 163 Downs.” And in his “Letter from London,” Brett Kahr brilliantly rounds out our columns with “Tissues,” the latest in his series of pointillist sketches of facets of the psychotherapeutic encounter that are almost invariably passed over in silence by conventional handbooks for perplexed practitioners. Our closing section on books features a dialogue between Robert A. Burt, Alexander M. Bickel Professor of Law at Yale, and Elyn R. Saks, Orrin B. Evans Professor of Law, Psychology, Psychoanalysis, and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California, about Saks’s sublime autobiographical memoir, The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness. Originally commissioned by Anne Dailey for her Fall 2007 special issue, “Legal Analysis,” this innovative format for a col- laborative book review will captivate readers as the interlocutors raise issues that dovetail no less perfectly with the theme of “pathology and creativity.” Finally, my loyal left hand, Vera J. Camden, utilizes her review of Phillip Freeman’s sui generis collection, Adaptations: Disquisitions on Psychoanalysis, 1997–2006, as the springboard for a melancholy reflection, channeling both Swift’s “Modest Proposal” and Shakespeare’s King Lear, on the contemporary state of American psychoanalysis. If the upshot of Camden’s epilogue is to affirm the kernel of truth inK arl Kraus’s satirical apothegm that psychoanalysis is itself the disease of which it purports to be the cure, then this only underscores the irreduc- ible paradox that psychoanalysis, like art, is indeed inseparable from neurosis while being simultaneously a supreme expression of the human striving for health. References Timberg, Scott. 2007. Before “Howl,” the Hospital. Los Angeles Times, January 7. Trilling, Lionel. 1947. Art and Neurosis. In The Liberal Imagination: Essays on Literature and Society. Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1953, pp. 155–75. Wilson, Edmund. 1941. Philoctetes: The Wound and the Bow. In The Wound and the Bow: Seven Studies in Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1965, pp. 223–42. George Mandelbaum 165 GEORGE MANDELBAUM On Ben Jonson’s Comedies This paper examines Ben Jonson’s comedies from the psychoana- lytic point of view. The author argues that Jonson’s comedies embody derivatives of his unconscious memories as well as of the fantasies they engendered. These derivatives appear in a recurrent sequential pattern of scenes in his work. Comedies embodying these patterns helped Jonson to keep his memories buried; when his effort at mastery broke down, he “acted out.” The action and structure of the comedies also functioned as a continuing defense against depression, the syndrome that Freud in his day called “melancholia.” Jonson’s great failing as a playwright—his continuing inability to create lifelike, three-dimensional characters—re- sulted from his inability to detach himself sufficiently from the pressure exerted by his inner life. Introduction Ben Jonson (1572–1638) is the earliest English author whose life and character are clearly and sharply etched by histori- cal documents. In being accessible to biographical analysis, he differs radically from the two great masters of comedy—Shake- speare (1564–1616) and Molière (1622–1673)—about both of whom we know very little. Many of the documents we have about Jonson are directly connected with, and arise from, two of the central, recurring motifs of his life. The first is his continuing inability to maintain a stable and moderate level of self-esteem. Jonson’s struggle with the issue of self-esteem reveals itself in his highly inflated, arguably grandiose view of himself and his role as a writer. In his poems and reported conversations with others, as well as in the numerous addenda to his plays, Jonson I am indebted to Norman Holland and Lee Grossman for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper and to Marvin Nierenberg for encouragement during its writing. American Imago, Vol. 65, No. 2, 165–190. © 2008 by The Johns Hopkins University Press 165 166 On Ben Jonson’s Comedies continually proclaimed that he was not only the moral spokes- man of his society but the ultimate arbiter of its literary taste; only he, he repeatedly insisted, knew what a great play was and only he could write one. Along with this self-inflation, Jonson evidenced extreme sensitivity to criticism or failure.

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