Looking Back: Notes From the Creative Literary Editor

Abstract

In this piece I discuss the early years of Psychoanalytic Perspectives; how the first issues of the Journal were organized; the origins of the Creative Literary Section; my work on “Notes from the Creative Literary Editor” in every issue; calls to the worldwide psychoanalytic community for poetry and stories from the creative unconscious; and summaries of topics for the section such as “From Painting into Words,” “From One Unconscious to Another,” “People in Analysis,” “Mothers of the Milky Way,” “Dreams as Poetry,” “The Art of Thomas Ogden,” “Letters to Dearest Mother from Famous Writers,” “D.W. Winnicott: The Unexpected Poet,” and “Creativity and Madness.”

Keywords:

• creativity
• creativity in psychoanalysis
• dreams
• imagery
• poetry
• unconscious

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bonnie Zindel

Bonnie Zindel, LCSW, is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York, and a supervisor, faculty, and training analyst at National Institute for the Psychotherapies (NIP). She is a novelist, playwright, and editor; and was a founder of Psychoanalytic Perspectives, where she served as Creative Literary Editor for 17 years. Bonnie has presented papers on creativity at international conferences, and has conducted writing groups for psychoanalysts for over 25 years. She is the editor of Writing on the Moon: Stories and Poetry from the Creative Unconscious by Psychoanalysts and Others (Karnac, 2017; Routledge 2018). Her play, My Simone, based on the life of Simone de Beauvoir, was nominated for a 2017 Gradiva Award. Bonnie received the NIP Distinguished Achievement Award in 2004 for creative contributions to the field.