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The main difficulties in the way of accepting conclusions about the creative process in art are that artists differ so much from one another in their creative processes that no generalizations can be arrived at that are both true and interesting or of any significance, and that in psychology and neurology not enough is known about the creative process—it is surely the most staggeringly complex of all the mental processes in human beings, and even simpler human mental processes are shrouded in mystery. In every arena hypotheses are rife, none of them substantiated sufficiently to compel assent over other and conflicting hypotheses. Some have said—for example, Graham Wallas in his book The Art of Thought (1926)—that in the creation of every work of art there are four successive stages: preparation, incubation, inspiration, and elaboration; others have said that these stages are not successive at all but are going on throughout the entire creative process, while still others have produced a different list of stages. Some say that the artist begins with a state of mental confusion, with a few fragments of words or melody gradually becoming clear and the rest starting from there, working gradually toward clarity and articulation, whereas others hold that the artist begins with a problem, which is gradually worked out during the process of creation, but the artist’s vision of the whole guides the creative process from its inception. The first view would be a surprise to the dramatist who set out to write a drama in five acts about the life and assassination of Julius Caesar, and the second would be a surprise to artists like the 20th-century English artist Henry Moore, who said he sometimes began a drawing with no conscious aim but only the wish to use pencil on paper and make tones, lines, and shapes. Again, as to psychological theories about the unconscious motivations of artists during creation, an early Freudian view is that in creating the artist works out unconscious wish fulfillments; a later Freudian view is that the artist is engaged in working out defenses against the dictates of the superego. Views based on the ideas of the 20th-century Swiss psychologist Carl Jung reject both these alternatives, substituting an account of the unconscious symbol-making process.
