The Act of Creation (64 page)

On its lowest level it is manifested in certain secondary or
crisis-adaptations of neuro-muscular mechanisms. The artificial limbs
invented by the Austrian surgeon Sauerbruch are flexed by muscles in the
stump which formerly acted as extensors, and extended by flexors. [7]
Other reversals of function are obtained by grafting operations. When
the musculo-spiral nerve which activates the extensors of wrist and
fingers is severed with resulting paralysis, the damage can be repaired
by grafting one of the flexor-tendons from the inner side of the wrist
on to the extensor-muscle. After a while the flexor will deputize for
his former antagonist, although it remains attached to the 'wrong'
(median) nerve -- which thus carries opposite orders to the remaining
flexors and to the transplanted one, along the same common path.* [8]
In these and similar grafting operations the first step is the undoing
of a fixed neuro-muscular connection; thereby the nerve to be grafted
becomes 'de-specialized' as it were -- the functional analogue to the
de-differentiation of structures -- and regains its multi-potentiality
to function in more than one way. The second step, when the grafting
operation is completed, is 're-specialization' of the nerve in its new
role, and the reintegration of the new neuro-muscular unit into the
whole. Similar considerations apply to Lashley's rats or Bethe's insects
-- except, of course, that in their case, the reorganization of functions
is spontaneous.
Thus there is a close parallel between the regeneration of structures and
the reorganization of functions after traumatic challenges; and both are
continuous with the regulative principle in morphogenesis. The antithesis
between 'localization of functions, fixed pathways' on the one hand, and
'mulitpotential pathways, selective responses' on the other, reflects
the earlier antithesis between the mosaic character and the regulative
character in embryonic development. But the seemingly opposite principles
turn out to be in fact complementary aspects of development. With each
successive step in the differentiation of the embryo, of the nervous
system, and of adult behaviour-patterns, the regulative powers decrease,
and the mosaic-character of structures and functions increases: tissues
become specialized, responses localized, habits automatized -- up to a
point. For all matrices of structure and behaviour display varying amounts
of flexibility even while the organism lives in dynantic equilibrium with
its environment; but the often unsuspected amount of its regenerative
potential becomes only manifest when a severe challenge induces it
to retrace its steps on the genetic gradient, as it were, and make a
fresh start.
Reculer sans Sauter
Hyper-excited organs or organ-systems tend to get out of control. During
the repair of physical injuries, the injured part tends to monopolize the
attention of the whole organism; in periods of starvation, the digestive
system asserts itself to the detriment of other parts; in rage and panic,
the sympathico-adrenal apparatus tyrannizes the whole; and when sex
is aroused, reason (as the Austrian proverb has it) 'descends into the
testes'. The over-excited part behaves as if it were in a temporary state
of 'physiological isolation' (
pp. 452
f.),
released from its restraints; it asserts its autonomy and sometimes
tends to usurp the functions of the whole.

 

 

Analogous situations occur on the cognitive level, where the
'hyper-excited part' appears in the guise of the
idée fixe
,
or a 'closed system' of beliefs. Both the achievements and aberrations
of human thought are to a large extent due to obsessional preoccupations
with religious and scientific theories, or political ideologies, more
or less closely knitted around some central idea, around a part-truth
usurping the role of the whole truth.

 

 

We have seen in the previous volume how an obsessional preoccupation can
force the whole mental organization into its service during the period of
incubation, and give birth to a new system of thought. But these are the
glorious exceptions; in the vast majority of cases, the 'over-valued idea'
(to use Kretschmer's [9] term) will become segregated from the rest of
the mental field, and assert itself in harmful ways. The results are
all too familiar: personalities whose whole outlook is dominated by
prejudice and biassed values; the compulsive rituals of neurotics; the
devouring obsession of the crank; and so on to the major psychoses in
which large chunks of the personality have been 'split off' and become
permanently isolated from the rest. The intrusion of magic causation;
inability to distinguish between fact and fantasy; delusions of grandeur,
or persecution by invisible powers, are symptoms of regression to earlier
levels, of the de-differentiation of thought-matrices -- of
reculer
sans sauter
.

 

 

 

Regeneration and Psychotherapy

 

 

Less extreme cases are neurotics who react to their traumatic
experiences by elaborating defence systems which enable them to
find some kind of modus vivendi with the world. One may call such
behaviour-patterns 'faulty integrations' -- like the newt's whose forelegs
move backwards. Psychotherapy aims at undoing faulty integrations by
inducing a temporary regression of the patient to an earlier level,
in the hope that he will eventually reintegrate into a more stable
pattern. Neuro-surgery, shock-therapy, and related methods aim at
releasing philogenetically older centres of the brain from cortical
restraints. In a less drastic form, Freudians, Jungians, etc., try to
make the patient revert to unconscious and infantile planes of experience,
and to regenerate, as it were, into a more or less new-born person.

 

 

Thus psychotherapy may be called an experiment in artificially induced
regeneration. It relies on the same basic process of
reculer pour mieux
sauter
, which we see operating on every level: from the flatworm
which replaces a lost head, through the crab which adjusts its gait to
the loss of a leg, to the rat which, unable to turn to the right, makes a
three-quarter turn to the left. We found the same pattern repeated on the
level of human creativity: the scientist, faced by a perplexing situation
-- Kepler's discrepant eight minutes' arc, Einstein's light-traveller
paradox -- must plunge into a 'dark night of the soul' before he can
re-emerge into the light. The history of the sciences and arts is a tale
of recurrent crises, of traumatic challenges, which entail a temporary
disintegration of the traditional forms of reasoning and perception:
a de-differentiation of thought-matrices, a dismantling of its axioms,
a new innocence of the eye; followed by the liberation from restraint
of creative potentials, and their reintegration in a new synthesis.

 

 

 

The Routine of Dreaming

 

 

There is also a mental equivalent for the less spectacular routine
regeneration of tissues, designed to compensate for wear and tear. The
analogue process is the maintenance of 'mental tissues' exposed to the
wear and tear of diurnal stresses, by the regenerative effect of nocturnal
regressions to the primitive levels of the dream. Experimental evidence
seems to indicate that the restorative powers of sleep are primarily
derived from the process of dreaming. Experimental subjects who were
woken up each time their EEG waves indicated the onset of dreaming,
displayed symptoms of fatigue and nervous disorder; long periods of
dreamless sleep could not compensate for dream-deprivation. 'Man cannot
persist long in a conscious state,' wrote Goethe, 'he must throw himself
back into the unconscious, for his root lives there.'

 

 

We have seen (Book One,
VII
,
VIII
) that these periodic plunges into the
unconscious are accompanied by the temporary disintegration of matrices
of logical thought. But they also entail a partial loss of identity, a
de-differentiation of the personality -- as indicated by the remarkable
degree of uniformity in the contents of dreams shared by people of
very different character, and by the relatedness of these contents
to mythological themes and symbols. These shared patterns led Jung to
postulate a 'collective' -- that is, individually undifferentiated --
level of the unconscious. On that level, members of the same culture seem
to share some degree of psychic equipotentiality expressed in 'archetypal
symbols'. These are supposed to be condensations of basic experiences of
the race in the distant past; hence their great emotion-rousing potential.

 

 

To recapitulate: the fact that art and discovery draw on unconscious
sources indicates that one aspect of all creative activity is a regression
to ontogenetically or philogenetically earlier levels, an escape from the
restraints of the conscious mind, with the subsequent release of creative
potentials -- a process paralleled on lower levels by the liberation
from restraint of genetic potentials or neural equipotentiality in the
regeneration of structures and functions. The scientist, traumatized
by discordant facts, the artist by the pressures of sensibility, and
the rat by surgical intervention, share, on different levels, the same
super-flexibility enabling them to perform 'adaptations of a second
order', rarely found in the ordinary routines of life.

### Cf. Learning III ###

 

 

Regeneration and Creativity

 

 

I must enlarge a little on this seemingly sweeping analogy, and try
to show that it is in fact based on homologous principles, traceable
on all levels of the hierarchy, and preserving their basic pattern
throughout them.

 

 

Differentiation and specialization of the parts are necessary for the
normal functioning of the whole; abnormal conditions call for radical
measures which may include a retreat of the over-exerted part to a
structurally less differentiated, functionally less specialized stage,
if the whole is to survive. The 'part' may be the newt's amputation
stump, or the unsolved problem in the scientist's mind which tortures and
obsesses him. We have seen that such regressions are mostly pathogenic,
but under favourable conditions they may redress the situation by
re-activating potentials which had been operative in the past but are
inhibited in the adult -- such as the regulative powers of the embryo
in the womb or the undifferentiated total-pattern-responses of its
nervous system. The period of incubation is a similar retreat, if not
into the womb, at least into long-outgrown forms of ideation, into the
pre-verbal, pre-rational games of the unconscious, the wonderland-logic
of the dream. The challenge which sets the process going is in all
cases a traumatic experience: physical mutilation or mental laceration
-- by data which do not fit, observations which contradict each other,
emotions which disrupt approved styles in art: experiences which create
mental conflict, dissonance, perplexity. The 'creative stress' of the
artist or scientist corresponds to the 'general alarm reaction' of the
traumatized animal; the anabolic-catabolic sequence of de-differentiation
and reintegration corresponds to the destructive-constructive sequence in
the creative act. The 'physiological isolation' of the over-excited part
which tends to dominate, corresponds to the single-minded and obsessive
preoccupation with the
idée fixe
-- Kretschmer's
'over-valued idea', Kepler's pursuit of a chimera -- which monopolizes
the whole mind; it will either lead to its reorganization by giving birth
to a new system, or to the cancerous proliferation of a degenerate tissue
of ideas.

 

 

Over-excitation of an organ or part is one of the four causes of
'physiological isolation'. The other three were: growth of the
whole beyond a critical limit; senescence; and (partial) blockage of
communication (
pp. 452
f.). Each situation has
its parallels on the mental plane -- of the individual, or the history
of thought. The unmanageable size of the total body of human knowledge --
or even a single province thereof -- created that dissociated phenomenon,
the specialist mind; senescent cultures produce degenerate art-forms;
blocked communications between Ptolemaic astronomy and the main body of
the physical sciences led to the untramelled proliferation of epicycles
in a closed system, divorced from reality.

 

 

'It is wonderful to see how analogies can blossom when they are given
a little affection', wrote the authors of a book I have repeatedly
quoted. [10] Particularly, one might add, if they have solid roots
in the earth. So let me carry analogy one step further. In Book One
(Chapters
V
-VIII) I have described various
aspects of the Eureka process; each of these re-structurings of thought
has its obvious correlate in regenerative processes on lower levels. The
'displacement of emphasis' to a previously irrelevant part or aspect of
experience corresponds to the sudden dominance of a hitherto subordinate
part of an organism -- such as the crab's second leg which becomes a
pacemaker. The 'reversal of logic' (or of the figure-background relation)
has its parallel in the reversal of physiological gradients during
regeneration. When psychological textbooks describe Duncker's experiments
as 'detaching' part of a visual percept from the context in which it is
'embedded', and 'attaching' it to the new context of the problem to be
solved (
pp. 189
f.) this description itself is
based on analogies from physiological processes. During incubation,
the intuitive groping of ideas towards the 'good combination', and
their guidance by 'gradients in the unconscious', reminds one of the
biochemical gradients in morphogenesis, or the 'contact-guidance' of
out-growing nerve-processes towards their end-organ. Lastly a 'nascent',
unverbalized analogy may be compared to an unarticulated organ-primordium.