Keys and locations of creativity. Between the wish and the prohibition, transgression

Abstract

The hypothesis put forward by this paper is that the creative process requires, from the psychic perspective, that something akin to transgression is at stake, swinging between what is permitted and what is repressed. Such condition is based on the need to dodge the costs of an inexcusable social construction of the individual. It is also suggested that there are some dimensions which support the creative act, common to different human activities and domains, regardless of the uniqueness of the person who creates.
The paper then resorts to three diverse scenarios to illustrate this hypothesis. The first one, Charles Darwin, as a testimony of
transgression in scientific thinking, while, following Freud, the other face of that transgression will be displayed (its rigorous and methodic character). In the second scenario, a clinical psychoanalytic vignette shows a six-year-old boy who does not submit to the official version of a legend, provides a reflexive intervention, thus recreating his psychic functioning. In the third case, a family scene reveals the creativity of a girl of three who gives a different version (alters) the fictional plot of a piece of children’s literature.