SOLITUDE: A Return to the Self

by Anthony Storr ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 11, 1988

A lecturer in psychiatry (Oxford) looks at the psychotherapeutic virtues of solitude. Some of Storr's earlier books have dealt with the psychology of art (The Dynamics of Creation) and aggression (Human Aggression). Here he retains his viewpoint (a sort of liberated Freudianism, with heavy doses of Jung), his theme (the way in which creative people achieve self-integration), and even some favorite case-studies (Franz Kafka, for example). His contention--which runs against the grain of classic psychoanalytic doctrine but will come as no surprise to most folks--is that self-realization can be found through isolation as well as through family and society. Storr marshals a formidable array of psychologists--Gellner, Winnicott, Bowlby, and Gardner among them--to buttress his argument, which veers from insight (his criticisms of Freud) to technical jargon (usually well explained) to platitude (""human beings change and develop as life goes on""; ""contemporary Western culture makes the peace of solitude difficult to attain""). More intriguing are his psychobiographies of artists and thinkers--e.g., Beethoven, Kant, Wittgenstein, Beatrix Potter--which demonstrate how isolation can trigger or strenghten creative skills. A humane, sensible, rather drab approach to a largely unexplored subject. While StoWs psychoanalytical spectacles have a nondogmatic, fairly wide field-of-view, much of his analysis will appeal only to specialists.

Pub Date: July 11, 1988

ISBN: 0743280741

Page Count: -

Publisher: Free Press/Macmillan

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1988

Categories: NONFICTION