The Creative SelfMari Ruti Gail M. NewmanLabel: Columbia University PressDescription: Winner 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title“Be the best you can be! Practically from the moment we are born we are taught to optimize our lives—to devote ourselves to increasing our productivity and efficiency which we are told will make us happier and more successful. The imperative of constant self-improvement however drains us dry even as it promises to build us up.The Creative Self delves into the hegemony of neoliberal self-optimization and turns to psychoanalysis in search of an alternative. In paired chapters Mari Ruti and Gail M. Newman examine the works of the psychoanalysts Marion Milner and Donald W. Winnicott. They provide deeply personal accounts of how these thinkers resonate with day-to-day life exploring modes of selfhood that subtly but profoundly resist the lure and escape the trap of competitive individualism. Milner urges us to relinquish the ego in the face of loss and lack and Winnicott asks us to accept the paradoxes of the self instead of demanding their resolution. Together their insights help us flourish where neoliberal self-improvement would stifle us. Combining the intellectual the personal and the political from two perspectives that converge and diverge in striking ways this book offers an antidote to transactional individualism and envisions forms of creative living beyond its confines.
"The Creative Self is a perfect fit for individuals who are inspired by self-help and personal development books while also finding value in art-related or creative topics."
