Escaping to the angels: a note on the passing of the manic defence

This essay examines how some psychologically adroit individuals use creativity as a manic defence against the affects that they cannot bear to experience directly. Conceived within the perspectives of Jungian psychoanalysis, manic creativity is shown to effect a defence against the subjective distress of personal complexes by means of an identification with the archetypal cores of the complexes. This defensive use of creativity, however, may ultimately play a decisive role in healing. Indeed, when considered from a prospective or teleological point of view, manic creativity, for all its insensitivity to the suffering that has inspired it, can also be understood as gradually creating a container in which affects formerly defended against may be received and suffered, felt and grieved. It is in this way that manic creativity, though clearly a defence (and at times a very costly one), participates in the reparative initiative of the self.