The Ninth Street Center What People Say About Us

Going the Wilde Way
Homosexuality: Its impact on creativity
and inclination towards creative pursuits

by Meenakshi Gautam
University of Texas at Austin

. . . . Paul Rosenfels, an influential psychiatrist, has done much to assist the modern understanding of homosexuality in his 1971 monograph Homosexuality: The Psychology of the Creative Process. He broke with psychoanalysis in the 1940's and was the first American psychiatrist to defend homosexuality in print. Many pioneers of modern psychology did not see homosexuality as an aberration, indeed Freud himself in his "Letter to An American Mother" stated: "Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation, it can not be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of sexual functions produced by a certain arrest of sexual development" (Ruitenbeek 1967). Rosenfels went further ahead and applying his understanding to homosexuality proved that it could be a valid lifestyle which could involve real love and affection and was not just "an infantile" stage within the Freudian sequence of sexual development.

Rosenfels' work on the creative power of homosexuality was groundbreaking. While others were seeing abnormality; he was seeing an opportunity for growth and inner development. This opportunity for growth is central to the whole of Rosenfels' work which begins with the assumption that the goal of "civilized living is to reach a state of contentment and happiness." He argues that the individual must adapt and grow and this requires psychic energies, but adaptation does not exhaust them; there is a "psychic surplus." This "psychic surplus" overflow can be channeled into the service of psychological growth which is, for Rosenfels, the foundation of happiness. Psychological growth requires an "inner identity" on the part of each individual, and this identity involves two capacities: love and power. Since love and power are the basis of the quest for happiness, then romance and relationships are an integral part of our quest.

In Rosenfels' complex understanding, Homosexuality contributes to a creative growth process since the homosexual lives closer to the real problems of human psychological development. The homosexual position evolves from a failure to reach heterosexual capacity in the terms dictated by the society, and this kind of failure in making conformity work underlies all creative individuality whether homosexual or not. No one chooses to fail, but in meeting the challenges inherent in failure in a way that leads to personal growth, the individual is able to place the responsibility for his failure outside himself, and this enables him to start a personal journey into a psychological world where his assets and resources can find new levels of fulfillment. Any individual who can use failure as a basis of growth opens the door to an independent course in life. In sum, since homosexuals need to have greater survival and adaptive skills, their ‘psychic surplus’ is more and can be channelized towards their psychological growth leading to a more fulfilled and creative life.

Rosenfels work prevents us from classifying all homosexuals as creative on three accounts. Much like Maslow and Ernest Van Den Haag (Ruitenbeek 1967), Rosenfels uses the term "creative" to describe an attitude towards life and self rather than as a capacity to produce tangible creative work (a piece of art, poetry or a new discovery) or an idea and this is in direct contrast to our definition of creativity. Coming out of the narrow boundaries of definitions and presuming that our definition of creativity may not be all-encompassing and thus sufficient for the current purpose even when we re-look at his work, non-conformity to societal norms is the bases for a creative individual according to Rosenfels. This implies that all successfully nonconforming individuals could be called creative individuals, which takes the advantage away from homosexuals and does not establish homosexuality as the causal factor for creativity. Also the premise is solely from a psychological point of view, ignoring a large amount of biological and social arguments relevant in this context . . . .

— Creative Strategies
Fall 2001, pp 1-25

[This is an excerpt from a longer paper, which can be found here.]