Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Irving and Suzanne Sarnoff have collaborated as authors and teachers. He is professor emeritus of psychology and she is a former lecturer in psychology, both at New York University. Co-authors of two books, one on human sexuality and the other on the psychology of marriage, they have made several national media appearances to discuss their research on how people create and develop loving relationships.

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Intimate Creativity

THE UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PRESS

Contents

Illustrations...................................................ixAcknowledgments.................................................xiIntroduction: Exploring Intimate Creativity.....................31 Relating and Creating.........................................232 Transcending the Culture of Individualism.....................453 Embracing a Collective Identity...............................694 The Unending Conversation.....................................965 From Inspiration to Implementation............................1206 The Harmony of Equals.........................................1447 Making Art/Making Love........................................1658 Couple and Community..........................................190Epilogue: The Composite Picture.................................214Appendix: Interview Questionnaire...............................229Notes...........................................................233Index...........................................................247

Chapter One

Loving and creating arise from the same basic core of yearning for the ultimate in human fulfillment. Both are experienced as a gratifying change from desire to consummation, from an imagined possibility to an accomplished reality. In going through this transformation, people derive tremendous enjoyment from releasing their pent-up tensions and expressing the constructive energies they have stored up within themselves just by being alive.

Love is so vital to our sense of well-being that we equate it with the central organ of existence-the heart. When we love and are loved in return, we say our hearts are overflowing with joy. When sorely troubled by our love-life, we describe the anguish as heartache and heartbreak. Even newborn babies need affection and sensual fondling to thrive, and love-starved adults can become depressed or physically ill.

Lovers crave union with every facet of their beings. They want to devote as much attention and care to each other as to themselves, and they desire to give and receive erotic pleasure. In fulfilling this innate need to express the affectionate and sexual wholeness of love, partners offer the best of themselves to one another and share the heights of emotional and physical satisfaction. Everyone is also born with the "instincts for exploring, for enjoying novelty and risk-the curiosity that leads to creativity," as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi has pointed out. "Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives," this expert on the psychology of creative behavior believes. "Most of the things that are interesting, important, and human are the results of creativity." It is our capacity for language, concept formation, learning, and creative expression that distinguishes us from all other animals. The process of creativity is so intriguing because "when we are involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully than during the rest of life. The excitement of the artist at the easel or the scientist in the lab comes close to the ideal fulfillment we all hope to get ... and so rarely do." And the benefits extend to others: "The results of creativity enrich the culture and so they indirectly improve the quality of all our lives."

The great majority of artists produce their work as solitary creators, conforming to the individualistic approach that still dominates the world of art in western society. Undoubtedly, the process of individual creativity yields its own psychological rewards. Bringing original ideas and esthetically pleasing objects into the world can be extremely gratifying. The same may be said about giving free rein to one's own imagination-without having to stop, consider, discuss, and incorporate offerings from another person. In addition, what an individual communicates and produces gives something of his or her innermost self to others, providing them with enjoyment and enlightenment. Others' positive reactions, in turn, bolster the artist's self-confidence and faith in being inventive.

It is impossible, however, for anyone to give and receive love without relating to someone else. Love can be fulfilled only by participating in a relationship with a real partner. On this point Alexander Lowen, a pioneering practitioner of bioenergetic psychotherapy, remarks: "Love as a psychological experience is an abstraction ... an anticipation that has not found its realization. It has the same quality as a hope, a wish, or a dream." And he concludes, "The appreciation of love as a psychological phenomenon must not blind one to the necessity of its fulfillment in action." Similarly, in his classic I and Thou, the eminent philosopher Martin Buber explains that the potential to relate lovingly cannot be actualized in social isolation; it is brought out by two people in their direct encounters. Buber believes this capacity for relating is the finest and most unusual of all human potentials for creativity.

Yet most lovers do not perceive one another as co-creators of their relationship. Nor are they aware that they themselves determine all aspects of this interpersonal creation. It is commonplace to hear people refer to their intimate connection as "it"-as if their relationship were some alien object imposed on them by an unfathomable and capricious source beyond their control, a "thing" they had no part in creating and have no further personal responsibility for directing. Such partners may say, "It is working," or "It isn't working," or "Hopefully, it will work out," when they are actually talking about the quality and outcome of their own creation.

A Loving Relationship Is a Collaborative Creation

Two people begin to create a loving relationship from the moment they experience a transporting click of attraction, a feeling of being involuntarily drawn to one another. To cultivate the emotional and erotic wholeness of their nascent love, however, they have to use their volition to make a myriad of agreements about how to express it. Some of these agreements are verbal, like arranging to go on dates or discussing where and how to spend their time together. But even more of their agreements are nonverbal, made simultaneously by both partners through facial expressions and gestures.

Because their communication is often very rapid, they may feel caught up in a process that bypasses their volition. Nevertheless, both are deciding what to do and comment upon, what to ignore and remain silent about. All of this decision making is jointly creative, since it brings into being experiences and expectations that had never existed before, either within or between these two people.

Building up a mental picture of the thoughts and feelings they are communicating, partners develop the same configuration of meaning about what is happening between them. Of course, both retain their own self-images. But now each also has a mental image of the other and of the two of them interacting together. And they carry this complex picture around in their heads-even when they are apart.

Both lovers grow increasingly cognizant of being partners in a psychological entity that did not exist when they first met. Eventually, they openly acknowledge the newly constructed connection between them. Now, instead of seeing themselves as just a "me" and a "you," they also...