Abstract
In this article, I discuss Paul W. Pruyser’s view presented in his article “An Essay on Creativity” (Pruyser in Bull Menninger Clin 43:294–353, 1979) that creative persons manifest early childhood qualities of playfulness, curiosity, and pleasure seeking and that adaptation is itself a form of creativity. I then discuss his article “Creativity in Aging Persons” (Pruyser in Bull Menninger Clin 51:425-435, 1987) in which he presents his view that aging itself is a potentially creative process, that creativity among older adults is not limited to the talented few, and that older adulthood has several specific features that are conducive to creativity. Significant among these features are object loss (especially involving human relationships) and functional loss (due to the vicissitudes of aging). Noting his particular emphasis on object loss and its role in late-life creativity, I focus on functional loss, and I emphasize the importance of adaptation in sustaining the creativity of older adults who experience such loss. I illustrate this adaptation by considering well-known painters who in late life suffered visual problems common to older adults. I suggest that in adapting to their visual problems these artists drew on the early childhood qualities (playfulness, curiosity and pleasure seeking) that all creative persons possess and that they are therefore illustrative for other older adults who are experiencing functional losses. I conclude with Erik H. Erikson’s (Toys and reasons: stages in the ritualization of experience, W. W. Norton, New York, 1977) and Paul W. Pruyser’s (Pastor Psychol 35:120–131, 1986) reflections on the relationship between seeing and hoping.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Pruyser’s later book The Play of the Imagination (Pruyser 1983) is based on this tri-part model. Strongly influenced by D. W. Winnicott’s writings on transitional objects and phenomena (Winnicott 1953), it includes chapters on illusion processing in the visual arts, literature, the sciences, religion, and music.
It should be noted that Freud discusses the “inhibition” that plagued Leonardo’s career as an artist, an inhibition that had much to do with the fact that his interests in art were being superseded by his interests in science (Freud 1964). Freud suggests that this replacement of artistry with a passion for experimentation was prefigured in Leonardo’s early childhood, when loving devotion to his biological mother, which was abruptly undermined when he was taken into his father’s home, was supplanted by a sexual curiosity which, in turn, led to an inhibition of the original devotion. In effect, a similar process occurred when his artistic work (which had deep maternal associations) was inhibited by his scientific inquiry (p. 27; see also Capps 2008b). Thus, although a tragic loss in childhood may be the spur to creativity, it may also be the principle cause of a subsequent inhibition of this very creativity. Of course, one might also argue that his scientific interests were no less creative than his artistic interests.
In his essay on creativity Pruyser suggests that this is precisely what Abraham Maslow has done with his view that “there is a self-actualizing creativeness which springs directly from the personality and may lead to doing anything creatively” (Pruyser 1979, p. 300; see Maslow 1968, 1970, 1971). He suggests that this way of thinking has led to the use of the word “creative” or “creativity” in titles of manuals on stitchery, cookery and sex. In this view, “anyone is creative if he or she has the wits to follow a manual” (pp. 300–301).
In The Play of the Imagination Pruyser (1983) quotes George Santayana’s declaration in The Sense of Beauty that “unless human nature suffers an inconceivable change, the chief intellectual and aesthetic value of our ideas will always come from the creative action of the imagination” (Santayana 1955, p. 117; quoted on pg. 207).
I discuss the river Lethe in my article “Alzheimer’s Disease and the Loss of Self” (Capps 2008a). In a section of the article titled “Embracing Forgetfulness,” I suggest the value of identifying one’s tendency to forget as an integral part of who one is, and cite a poem by Billy Collins titled “Forgetfulness” (Collins 1991, pp. 20–21) as an aid in helping one to recognize that an important part of one’s self is forgetfulness. In the poem Collins refers to a “dark mythological river whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,” thus making an ironic comment on the river Lethe, the river in Greek and Roman mythology which flows through Hades and whose water produces loss of memory in those who drink it (pp. 25–26).
Trevor-Roper’s allusion to Renoir’s arthritic fingers calls to mind the fact that Anna Mary Robertson Moses (popularly known as Grandma Moses) returned to painting (which she enjoyed as a child) when arthritis in her fingers made it difficult for her to continue quilting. As Jane Kallir points out, “Arthritis made it difficult for her to wield a needle, and when her sister Celestia commented that it might be less painful to paint, she readily took to the suggestion” (Kallir 1982, p. 12). After her husband’s death in 1927 when she was 67 years old, she made pictures for family members and friends but did not consider painting as a full-time occupation. She said that she “did it for pleasure, to keep busy and pass the time away” (p. 12). In 1938, her work was accidently discovered by Louis J. Caldor, an amateur art collector, in the drug store in Hoosick Falls, New York, where she lived, and he brought her work to the attention of Otto Kallir, who held an exhibition of her work at his art gallery in New York City in 1940. The exhibition was subsequently reassembled for a “Thanksgiving Festival” at Gimbel’s Department Store and she was persuaded to come for the event. Newspapers picked up the story of “Grandma Moses” so, at age eighty, she became a household name. She died in 1961 at the age of 101.
Marmor and Ravin discuss the possible reasons why Georgia O’Keefe may have been particularly susceptible to AMD. They indicate that for a period of time in her fifties, she practiced the eye exercises developed by William Horatio Bates (Bates 1920), noting that one of his exercises included the recommendation to flutter the eyelids while looking directly at the sun. It is not known if O’Keefe performed this particular exercise, but if she did, it could have been a factor in the development of her loss of vision. In any event, what is known is that she “was obstinate about her vision and refused to wear sunglasses, even in the powerful New Mexico sunlight” because she “objected to the distortions of colors that tinted lenses induce” (p. 200). Although “excess exposure to sunlight can predispose a certain type of cataract, and may be a risk factor (albeit not a major one) in the development of macular degeneration,” the authors conclude that “it is probably of greater relevance that she had a family history of the disease, which is influenced by genetic predisposition. Her maternal grandfather… suffered from it” (p. 200).
Marmor and Ravin (2009) note, for example, that because of his distorted figures, El Greco (1541?–1614?) has been thought by physicians and historians to have suffered from an astigmatism. However, when the Duke of Alba sent the American painter John Singer Sargent a booklet written by a Madrid ophthalmologist who argued that El Greco was astigmatic, Sargent disagreed on the grounds that “being very astigmatic myself” and thus “very familiar with the phenomena that result from that peculiarity of eyesight,” it seems “very unlikely that an artist should be influenced by them in the matter of form and not at all in the matter of color where they are much more noticeable” (pp. 21–22). Thus, although the common argument that El Greco was astigmatic is questionable, Sargent, by his own testimony, evidently was.
I have chosen to focus here on Dormandy’s consideration of changes in the techniques of older painters. I have discussed his consideration of their stylistic changes in my article “The Lessons of Artistic Creativity for Pastoral Theologians” (Capps 2010a, see also Pruyser 1976; Whitehurst 1996; Capps 1999).
The portrait paintings by the American painter Thomas Eakins (1844–1916) provides an example of an artist transforming what he sees in his mind when he sees an object in the real world, one which is particularly relevant to older adulthood. Elizabeth Johns (1983) notes in her discussion of his portrait of Walt Whitman: “Of all the material forces to which human beings were subject, perhaps the most obvious, and painful, was that of age—of ‘wear’—and Eakins did not hesitate to show a sitter as frankly old. One can see this in his portrait of [Walt] Whitman…. Notably, the work is simply a bust. Eakins could have complimented Whitman’s work as a poet with an environment that showed him sitting at his desk…. But Whitman was the man who had insisted that no real distinctions existed between him and other men and so Eakins showed him in just that way: as an old man, like other old men” (p. 163). In fact, because he wanted to make the point that Whitman “was a creature made of earth, an old creature… he exaggerated that age to make his point unmistakable” (p. 163). Johns also notes that Eakins aged sitters who were not already old. This was one of the ways that he could present his subjects as “vulnerable on every front: to disease, to irrationality, to sorrow” (p. 165). Thus, “he asked his sitter Walter C. Bryant, for instance, if he could make him look older ‘to do a fine piece of work as a work of art and not a likeness.’ Photographs contemporaneous with other sitter’s portraits suggest that a room full of Eakins’ portraits is a room full of prematurely older sitters…. In fact one of Eakin’s portraits was noted by those who saw it frequently as ‘getting to look more and more like the sitter every year’” (pp. 163–164). The fact that many of Eakins’ sitters “were enraged when they saw the finished portrait” (p. 165) suggests that they did not consider his transformation and translation of what he saw to be especially flattering.
In Fragile Connections (Capps 2005b) I present the case of James Hastings Nichols, a seminary professor, who, when it became evident that he was in the early stages of dementia (Alzheimer’s Type), smiled ruefully and said, “Doggone, I never thought I’d lose my mind” (p. 209; quoted from Miller 2003, p. 19).
Although Erikson’s reflections on hope are particularly relevant to the focus of this article on visual impairment, other writings on hope in the field of pastoral care and related helping professions may be cited (e.g., Capps 1997, 2001, 2010b; Pembroke 2009; Krauss and Hayward 2012; Pattison and Lee 2011; Pembroke 2009). I would also mention a sermon on hope preached by Paul Tillich at Harvard University in March, 1965, 7 months prior to his death at the age of 79 (Tillich 1990) and, in light of anecdotal evidence that for some older adults humor is nearly as important as hope, I would also want to draw attention to relevant literature on humor (e.g., Capps 2005a, pp. 24–34, 2008b, pp. 88–110; Vilaythong et al. 2003).
Erikson’s allusion to the child’s triumphant declaration “all done” has relevance to the much-discussed issue of painters’ difficulties in completing a painting or in declaring that a painting is in fact “finished.” Thomas Dormandy suggests that “a remote but possible explanation for the often brilliant artistry of old age” is the fact that very old artists often produce “unfinished fragments” (Dormandy 2000, pp. 281–282). He points to the “proverbial forgetfulness and supposedly enfeebled grip on practicalities of the aged and infirm: they might start something 1 day and forget about it the next and perhaps start something new or even the same thing over and over again” (p. 282). While these may appear to be signs of unmitigated loss of functional capacities, Dormandy notes that “some critics have detected in the unfinished state the very secret of the extraordinary impact of the late creations” (p. 282).
It is interesting to note that Erikson was a would-be artist before he became a psychoanalyst. He pursued a career in art for several years after completing Gymnasium but realized in his mid-twenties that it would not work out for him (see Capps 2008c). When he was subsequently teaching school in Vienna he entered psychoanalysis with Anna Freud, Sigmund Freud’s daughter. As Lawrence J. Friedman notes in his biography of Erikson (Friedman 1999), Erikson later indicated that “she never quite understood his difficulty in vocalizing what he visualized. She did not appreciate how hard it was ‘when I, born to be a painter, tried to say in words what I saw on my inner screen’” (p. 79). But she also encouraged him to become a psychoanalyst and when he demurred on the grounds that psychoanalytic sessions are so “intensely verbal,” she did not immediately respond but the next day she said to him, “I told my father what you said, and he said to tell him that he can help us to make them [the patients] see” (p. 69).
References
Bates, W. H. (1920). Perfect sight without glasses. New York: Henry Holt.
Capps, D. (1997). The letting loose of hope: Where psychology of religion and pastoral care converge. The Journal of Pastoral Care, 51, 139–149.
Capps, D. (1999). The lessons of art theory for pastoral theology. Pastoral Psychology, 47, 321–346.
Capps, D. (2001). Agents of hope: A pastoral psychology. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock Publishers (Original publication by Augsburg Fortress Press in 1995).
Capps, D. (2005a). A time to laugh: The religion of humor. New York: Continuum.
Capps, D. (2005b). Fragile connections: Memoirs of mental illness for pastoral care professionals. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press.
Capps, D. (2008a). Alzheimer’s disease and the loss of self. The Journal of Pastoral Care & Counseling, 62, 19–28.
Capps, D. (2008b). Laughter ever after: Ministry of good humor. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press.
Capps, D. (2008c). The mother relationship and artistic inhibition in the lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Erik H. Erikson. Journal of Religion and Health, 47, 560–576.
Capps, D. (2010a). The lessons of artistic creativity for pastoral theologians. Pastoral Psychology, 59, 249–264.
Capps, D. (2010b). The placebo effect and the molecules of hope. Pastoral Psychology, 59, 541–549.
Capps, D. (2012). The aging process as forward movement and the case for detours and backward steps. Journal of Religion and Health. doi:10.1007/s10943-012-9625-6.
Collins, B. (1991). Questions about angels. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh University Press.
de Beauvoir, S. (1962). The ethics of ambiguity (B. Frenchman, Trans.). New York: Global Press (Original published in 1947).
Deri, S. K. (1984). Symbolization and creativity. New York: International Universities Press.
Dormandy, T. (2000). Old masters: Great artists in old age. London and New York: Hambledon and London.
Erikson, E. H. (1950). Childhood and society. New York: W. W. Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (revised edition). New York: W. W. Norton.
Erikson, E. H. (1977). Toys and reasons: Stages in the ritualization of experience. New York: W. W. Norton.
Freud, S. (1963). Humor. In P. Rieff (Ed.), Character and culture (pp. 263–269). New York: Collier Books (Original published in 1928).
Freud, S. (1964). Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood (A. Tyson, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton (Original published in 1910).
Friedman, L. J. (1999). Identity’s architect: A biography of Erik H. Erikson. New York: Scribners.
Gedo, J. E. (1983). Portraits of the artist: Psychoanalysis of creativity and its vicissitudes. New York: Guilford Press.
Johns, E. (1983). Thomas Eakins: The heroism of modern life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Kallir, J. (1982). Grandma Moses: The artist behind the myth. New York: Clarkson N. Potter.
Kenner, H. (1962). The Portrait in perspective. In T. E. Connolly (Ed.), Joyce’s Portrait: Criticisms and critiques (pp. 25–60). New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts (Original published in 1948).
Kohut, H. (1980). Reflections on advances in self psychology. In A. Goldberg (Ed.), Advances in self psychology (pp. 383–396). New York: International Universities Press.
Krauss, N., & Hayward, R. D. (2012). Informal support from a pastor and change in hope during late life. Pastoral Psychology, 61, 305–318.
Lacan, J. (1977). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience. In Ėcrits: A selection (pp. 1–7). (A. Sheridan, Trans.). New York: W. W. Norton (Original published in 1949).
Marmor, M. F., & Ravin, J. G. (2009). The artist’s eyes: Vision and the history of art. New York: Abrams.
Maslow, A. H. (1968). Toward a psychology of being (2nd ed.). Princeton, NJ: Van Nostrand Press.
Maslow, A. H. (1970). Motivation and personality (2nd ed.). New York: Harper and Row.
Maslow, A. H. (1971). The farther reaches of human nature. New York: Viking Press.
Miller, S. (2003). The story of my father. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.
Pattison, N. A., & Lee, C. (2011). Hope against hope in cancer at the end of life. Journal of Religion and Health, 50, 731–742.
Pembroke, N. (2009). Witnessing to hope in the Christian community through irony. Pastoral Psychology, 58, 433–443.
Poling, J. (1992). Painting with Georgia O’Keefe. In C. Merrill & E. Bradbury (Eds.), From the faraway nearby: Georgia O’Keefe as icon (pp. 193–209). Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Pruyser, P. W. (1975). Aging: Downward, upward, or forward? Pastoral Psychology, 24, 102–118.
Pruyser, P. W. (1976). Lessons from art theory for the psychology of religion. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 15, 1–14.
Pruyser, P. W. (1979). An essay on creativity. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 43, 294–353.
Pruyser, P. W. (1983). The play of the imagination: Toward a psychoanalysis of culture. New York: International Universities Press.
Pruyser, P. W. (1986). Maintaining hope in adversity. Pastoral Psychology, 35, 120–131.
Pruyser, P. W. (1987). Creativity in aging persons. Bulletin of the Menninger Clinic, 51, 425–435.
Santayana, G. (1955). The sense of beauty. New York: Dover (Original published in 1986).
Tillich, P. (1990). The right to hope. The Christian Century, pp. 1064–1067.
Trevor-Roper, P. (1988). The world through blunted sight: An inquiry into the influence of defective vision on art and character (revised edition). London: Penguin Books.
Vilaythong, A. P., Arnau, R. C., Rosen, D. H., & Mascaro, N. (2003). Humor and hope: Can humor increase hope? Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 16, 79–89.
Volkan, V. D. (1981). Linking objects and linking phenomena: A study of the forms, symptoms, metapsychology, and therapy of complicated mourning. New York: International Universities Press.
Whitehurst, F. H. (1996). Art and pastoral theology. Pastoral Psychology, 44, 321–332.
Winnicott, D. W. (1953). Transitional objects and transitional phenomena: A study of the first not-me possession. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 34, 89–97.
Yeats, W. B. (1962). The four ages of man. In A. N. Jeffares (Ed.), Selected poetry (p. 179). London: Macmillan (Original published in 1935).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Capps, D. Child’s Play: The Creativity of Older Adults. J Relig Health 51, 630–650 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-012-9625-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-012-9625-6