The Foundation's mission is achieved through programs of psychoanalytic treatment, research education, and outreach.
Central to the Foundation's mission is its treatment/research program.
Summary
Since 1993, the program has provided psychoanalysis to help creative individuals live without limitations and inhibitions
that constrict and stereotype their personal lives and creative work. The Foundation's Treatment and Research program is
currently not recruiting creative people to receive treatment grants. By systematizing what it learns in treatment and
using advanced research methods to examine the data from that treatment, the Foundation continues to share its work with
the scientific, therapeutic, and creative communities. While treatment grants are no longer being made, The Lucy Daniels
Foundation has in the past provided grants for outpatient psychoanalytic treatment to individuals engaged in creative
endeavors and simultaneously built a longitudinal study of the lives and work of creative people. Not only is empirical
research in this field rare, but support for such research has diminished severely in the last decade. Therefore, the
Foundation chose to invest a portion of its resources in developing a treatment and research program that would bring an
integrated multi-method perspective to the relationship between creativity and psychoanalysis.
The treatment and research program was designed to work with individuals representing diverse aspects of creative work.
The Foundation focused on writers living in the greater Triangle area of North Carolina. Starting in 1993, in consultation
with prominent psychoanalysts and clinical researchers, the Foundation staff carefully designed a program of treatment and
data collection for this initial cohort.
The Program
The program design allows for the longitudinal study of creative people in psychoanalytic treatment (4 sessions per week).
The Foundation subsidized a large portion of the treatment costs in the form of grants. For comparison, a research group
comprises creative people who are not in psychoanalytic treatment but are studied longitudinally with a focus on their creative
and personal development.
The information gathered in the program is exceptionally rich in content and amount. At the outset, candidates were screened
for their need and suitability for psychoanalytic treatment, creative productivity and promise, and their fit with the research
interests of the Foundation. From that point, screening included artistic samples and short autobiographical statements, interviews
with the clinical coordinator, evaluating psychoanalyst, other staff members, and a psychological test battery. This information
formed a baseline for understanding the relation between psychoanalysis and creativity as it evolved over the course of long-term
treatment. The program grantees were creative persons who received treatment from Foundation-approved analysts, who also are members
of a study group that meets monthly. The creative persons receiving treatment agreed to have all of their analytic sessions audiotaped.
Every six months, they contributed a sample of their creative work, ratings regarding their feelings about the process of their
therapy, a battery of self-report psychological measures, and a videotaped discussion of their current creative work. The analysts
provided an in-depth evaluation of each session, and every six months, they evaluated the progress of treatment as well. A
significant individual in the creative person's life also provides an evaluation of their relationship with the creative person
every six months.
Through this rich array of materials gathered from multiple sources, the research staff explored changes occurring during
psychoanalytic treatment, in the creative process over time, and in the creative person's intimate relationships. Most importantly,
the relationships among psychoanalytic treatment, the creative process, and interpersonal relationships outside of treatment
have been a focus of the research efforts.
In collaboration with our affiliated research consultants in Europe, Canada, and the United States, the Foundation is attempting
to integrate empirical and qualitative approaches to studying these processes in unique and creative ways. In order to have the
broadest impact possible, the Foundation also considers requests from other investigators to make use of the data gathered by the
Foundation.