Child's play: the creativity of older adults.

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.

Gossip, humor, and the art of becoming an intimate of Jesus.

In Living Stories (Capps 1997) I addressed the rather broad consensus among clergy and laity alike that gossip is destructive of congregational life, a consensus based on the view that gossip invariably involves negatively critical conversations about other individuals and groups. However, this view is not supported by social scientific research and literary studies on gossip, which present a more complex picture of this form of human communication. On the other hand, the claim that gossip is trivial is more difficult to challenge, so I made a case for the importance of the trivial through consideration of the formal similarities between gossip and the narratives that comprise the Gospels, including the fact that both employ an "esthetic of surfaces" that focuses on specific personal particulars and that the stories that are told derive their power from the freedom that the participants in the conversation gain from entering imaginatively into the life of other persons. The present article furthers the exploration of the affinities between gossip and Gospel narratives by noting the role of humor in fostering good gossip and the mutually supportive role of gossip and humor in the art of becoming an intimate of Jesus.

The aging process as forward movement and the case for detours and backward steps.

This article focuses on Pruyser's (Pastor Psychol 24:102-118, 1975) view presented in his article titled "Aging: Downward, Upward, or Forword?" that the later stages of aging are not a downward movement from a higher peak but the continuation of a forward movement, and that manifestations of gains as well as losses in older adulthood support this view. While expressing agreement with this view I draw on Sigmund Freud's discussion of the death instinct in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (Freud 1920/1959) to suggest that the later stages of the aging process may involve an increase in detours and backward movements. Suggesting that these detours and backward steps are potentially beneficial, I conclude that Freud provides guidelines for how we may view and evaluate the losses and gains that Pruyser identifies as characteristic of the later stages of the aging process.

The verbal portrait: Erik H. Erikson's contribution to psychoanalytic discourse.

This article makes the case that Erik H. Erikson developed a form of psychoanalytic discourse-the verbal portrait-which, although not unprecedented, became a focal feature of his work, and the testing ground for the cogency of his major contribution to psychoanalysis (the concept of identity). It suggests that Erikson was inspired to develop the verbal portrait because he came to psychoanalysis from art and was, in fact, a portrait artist. Drawing especially on the work of Richard Brilliant, it presents the view that a portrait is a portrayal of the subject's identity and goes on to show how Erikson's memorial to the cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict is representative of the verbal portrait.

John Nash, game theory, and the schizophrenic brain.

This article focuses on John Nash, recipient of the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1994, and subject of the Award winning 2001 film A Beautiful Mind, who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia in 1958 at the age of 29. After presenting an account of the emergence, course, and eventual remission of his illness, the article argues for the relevance of his contribution to game theory, known as the Nash equilibrium, for which he received the Nobel Prize, to research studies of the schizophrenic brain and how it deviates from the normal brain. The case is made that the Nash equilibrium is descriptive of the normal brain, whereas the game theory formulated by John van Neumann, which Nash's theory challenges, is descriptive of the schizophrenic brain. The fact that Nash and his colleagues in mathematics did not make the association between his contributions to mathematics and his mental breakdown and that his later recovery exemplified the validity of this contribution are noted and discussed. Religious themes in his delusional system, including his view of himself as a secret messianic figure and the biblical Esau, are interpreted in light of these competing game theories and the dysfunctions of the schizophrenic brain. His recognition that his return to normalcy came at the price of his sense of being in relation to the cosmos is also noted.

A spiritual person.

When asked in a questionnaire to describe a spiritual person, William James named one instead: Phillips Brooks. This article focuses on Brooks--his life, his sermons, and his poem "O Little Town of Bethlehem"--to make the case that he exemplified James' view of spirituality as "a susceptibility to ideals, but with a certain freedom to indulge in imagination about them." It also supports Belzen's (Mental Health, Religion & Culture, 12:205-222, 2009) view that there is no spirituality in general but only individual manifestations of it, a point that James' nomination of Brooks implicitly supports.

The psychological benefits of bad poetry.

The author was the founder and secretary pro-tem of the Bad Poets Society at Princeton Theological Seminary. This distinction does not appear on his official resume. The Society did not have meetings but it had a newsletter that came out several times a year comprised of bad poetry written by members of the faculty and staff. These poetic works included reflections on institutional matters. This article contains bad poetry by the author relating to such matters. This poetry illustrates Sigmund Freud's (Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious. Norton, New York, 1960) view of humor as saving in the expenditure of painful emotions, costly inhibitions, and difficult thinking. The parasitical nature of bad poetry is also noted and illustrated with the author's own poems.

Identity with Jesus Christ: the case of Leon Gabor.

From July 1, 1959 to August 15, 1961, Milton Rokeach studied three male patients at Ypsilanti State Hospital who believed that they were Jesus Christ. They met regularly together with Rokeach and his research staff, a procedure designed to challenge their delusional systems. He believed that Leon Gabor, the youngest of the three, would be the most likely to abandon his delusional beliefs. Instead, Leon met the challenges that the procedure posed by creative elaborations of his delusional system, especially through the adoption of a new name that gave the initial appearance of the abandonment of his Christ identity but in fact drew on aspects of the real Jesus Christ's identity that were missing from his earlier self-representation.

Relaxed bodies, emancipated minds, and dominant calm.

William James presented "The Gospel of Relaxation" (James in W. James, Writings 1878-1899, 1992) to the 1896 graduating class of Boston Normal School of Gymnastics and a decade later he delivered his presidential address "The Energies of Men" (James in W. James, Writings 1902-1910, 1987) to the American Philosophical Association. Both lectures focus on the body's influence on emotions and on the liberating effects of live ideas on the body's natural energies. They also reflect his use of the popular spiritual hygiene literature of his day to support his arguments. The first address draws on Hannah Whitall Smith's views on disregarding our negative emotions and on Annie Payson Call's writings, specifically her views on relaxation; the second on Horace Fletcher's writings, specifically his views on anger and worry. I use these original sources to expand on key ideas in the two addresses, i.e., the role of imitation in altering unhealthy physiological habits and the energy-releasing role of suggestive ideas.

Norman Vincent Peale, Smiley Blanton and the hidden energies of the mind.

This article on Norman Vincent Peale and Smiley Blanton, who cofounded the American Foundation of Religion and Psychiatry in 1937, focuses on books that they wrote in the 1950s: Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking (1952) and Blanton's Love or Perish (1956). Similarities between Peale's problem-solving techniques and Milton E. Erickson's psychotherapeutic methods are demonstrated, and Blanton's indebtedness to psychoanalytic theories and methods is also shown. The Peale-Blanton collaboration suggests that pastoral counselors may legitimately employ these very different therapeutic approaches depending on the needs of the individual counselee. On the other hand, the fact that they subscribed to very different therapeutic approaches raises the question as to whether the two men shared anything in common as far as their professional work with individuals was concerned. The answer is that both believed that we humans possess an enormous reservoir of untapped energies that, when released and appropriately directed, are capable of effecting fundamental changes in an individual's life.

Coming to terms with our regrets.

This article focuses on the personal experience of regret and the importance of coming to terms with our regrets. It begins with a sermon preached by the first author in which the issue of regret is explored by means of a summary of the film The Big Kahuna, continues with a discussion of recent articles (Tomer and Eliason, Existential and spiritual issues in death attitudes, 2008; Mannarino et al., Existential and spiritual issues in death attitudes, 2008) on the concept of regret formulated by Landman (Landman, Regret: A theoretical and conceptual analysis, 1987; Regret: The persistence of the possible, 1993), and on regret therapy, and concludes with a pastoral care case in which a dying woman expresses both future-related and past-related regrets. The case is interpreted in light of regret therapy's emphasis on parabolic experiences and reframing techniques.

Pastoral images: the Good Samaritan and the Unjust Judge.

Noting the continuing popularity among pastoral theologians of the Good Samaritan as an image of the pastoral caregiver, the author argues that the parable is not really about the obligation of the pastor to offer care but about accepting help from one toward whom one has deeply-engrained prejudicial attitudes and/or hostility. Thus, if the parable is used for insight into the role of function of the pastor, the negative models of the Priest and the Levite are instructive; but if one is looking for a positive pastoral image from among the parables of Jesus, one might consider the image of the Unjust Judge.

The mother relationship and artistic inhibition in the lives of Leonardo da Vinci and Erik H. Erikson.

In four earlier articles, I focused on the theme of the relationship of melancholia and the mother, and suggested that the melancholic self may experience humor (Capps, 2007a), play (Capps, 2007b), dreams (Capps, 2008a), and art (Capps, 2008b) as restorative resources. I argued that Erik H. Erikson found these resources to be valuable remedies for his own melancholic condition, which had its origins in the fact that he was illegitimate and was raised solely by his mother until he was three years old, when she remarried. In this article, I focus on two themes in Freud's Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his childhood (1964): Leonardo's relationship with his mother in early childhood and his inhibitions as an artist. I relate these two themes to Erikson's own early childhood and his failure to achieve his goal as an aspiring artist in his early twenties. The article concludes with a discussion of Erikson's frustrated aspirations to become an artist and his emphasis, in his psychoanalytic work, on children's play.

Mother, melancholia, and dreams in Erik H. Erikson's Insight and Responsibility.

In an earlier article (Capps, 2007a) on Erik H. Erikson's earliest writings (1930-1931) I focused on the relationship between the child's melancholia and conflict with maternal authority, and drew attention to the restorative role of humor. In a subsequent article (Capps, 2007b) on Erikson's Childhood and Society (1950) I explored the same theme of the relationship of melancholia and the mother, but focused on the restorative role of play. In this article drawing from his Insight and Responsibility (1964) I continue this exploration of the relationship of melancholia and the mother, but focus on the restorative role of dreams. In support of this understanding of dreams, I focus on Erikson's interpretation of one of Sigmund Freud's dreams in light of the first two stages of the life cycle, and his view that the dream itself is inherently maternal.

Mother, melancholia, and humor in Erik H. Erikson's earliest writings.

Erik H. Erikson wrote three articles when he was in his late-twenties and an up-and-coming member of the psychoanalytic community in Vienna. At the time he wrote these articles, he was in a training psychoanalysis with Anna Freud, teaching at the Heitzing School in Vienna, and learning the Montessori method of teaching. These articles focus on the loss of primary narcissism and the development of the superego (or punitive conscience) in early childhood, especially through the child's conflict with maternal authority. They support the idea that melancholia, with its internalized rage against the mother, is the inevitable outcome of the loss of primary narcissism. I note, however, that the third of these articles makes a case for the restorative role of humor, especially when Freud's view that humor is a function of the superego is taken into account.

Alzheimer's disease and the loss of self.

This article focuses on the fact that persons (including the author) who are entering the later stages of life are confronted with the real possibility that they may become afflicted with Alzheimer's disease. It proposes an alternative to speculating about one's own chances of becoming afflicted, which is to enter imaginatively into the world of the Alzheimer's patient, and uses contemporary poems to assist in this regard. It notes that the author's attempt to "join the patient" led to the realization that Alzheimer's disease does not, as is commonly believed, completely obliterate the self. Recognizing the inevitable limits of one's ability to imagine what it is like to suffer from Alzheimer's disease, it advocates the embracing of forgetfulness as an integral part of the self.

Youthful visitors and hospitable hosts: exercises in misunderstanding.

This article explores Gordon W. Allport's account of his visit with Sigmund Freud and Milton J. Nauss's account of his visit with Albert Einstein when they were young men. The analysis focuses on how the visitors' preconceptions of their hosts influenced the conversation; on their hosts' use of humor to spare themselves more painful emotions and their visitors the painful consequences of such emotions; and on the fact that both men's subsequent accounts misunderstand their hosts' attitudes and behaviors, thus indicating that they had not learned as much as they might have learned about themselves from the encounter.