Simpson’s Contemporary Quotations, compiled by James B. Simpson. 1988.
NUMBER:
3016
AUTHOR:
Dr Barry M Panter, Associate Professor of Psychiatry, UCLA, and director of annual conference on creativity and madness
QUOTATION:
The material artists use for their art comes from the primitive levels of their inner lives—aggression, sexual fantasy, polymorphous sexuality…. As we mature and are “civilized,” we suppress [these drives]. But the artist stays in touch with and struggles to understand them. And to remain so in touch with that primitive self is to be on the fine line between sanity and madness.
