Età cronologica e creatività: Federico Fellini prima e dopo "Otto e mezzo"
Abstract
En
Mid-life is a period of conflict and transition as the individual is torn between past and future identities. The changes which accompany mid-life conservation-transformation identity crisis can last many years, from approximately the age of forty to sixty. Subjectively, this process is perceived as a feeling of progressive and potential modifications. In particular, bodily changes are foregrounded in the restructuring of self bodily image. Other crucial events coincide with the death or senility of the individual’s parents, with brings about more acute awareness of the possibility of one’s own death, the growth and independence of one’s time perspective. The metaphorical concept of limitation with its various implications at a personal and existential leve1 becomes all the more pertinent and subjectively centra1 and cogent. This is accompanied by a sense of loss of one’s possibilities to manipulate and dominate the external world. On the other hand, some authors (Erikson, 1950; Canestrari & Picardi, 1975; Gutmann, 1981; Caneatrari & Magri, 1988, 1992) have highlightened how, next to these losses, a new lease of life can also be experienced originating from new creative potentials. These creative potentials are in a way an expression of a desire for individual accomplishment as that which was put aside in the early part of adulthood due to other social pressures or personal ambitions can now be retrieved and fully implemented and experienced. With regard to creativity in mid-life transition, the hypotheses put forward by Elliot Jacques (1963) concerning the nature of changes in creativity resulting from the different solutions to the mid-life crisis afford, in our opinion, a particularly valid account of the outcome of this process. According to Elliot Jacques, in fact, three possible outcomes can be expected, namely the cessation of al1 creative activity or its onset, or changes affecting both the contents and expressive mode of such activity. As psychologists and keen film enthusiasts, the authors of the present paper, taking advantage of their personal acquaintance with Federico Fellini and of their close knowledge of his work, have attempted to verify, on the basis of methods which will be described elsewhere, both the existence, nature and contents of eventual modifications in the film-maker’s artistic creativity and modes of expression, in the course of mid-life transition.
Mid-life is a period of conflict and transition as the individual is torn between past and future identities. The changes which accompany mid-life conservation-transformation identity crisis can last many years, from approximately the age of forty to sixty. Subjectively, this process is perceived as a feeling of progressive and potential modifications. In particular, bodily changes are foregrounded in the restructuring of self bodily image. Other crucial events coincide with the death or senility of the individual’s parents, with brings about more acute awareness of the possibility of one’s own death, the growth and independence of one’s time perspective. The metaphorical concept of limitation with its various implications at a personal and existential leve1 becomes all the more pertinent and subjectively centra1 and cogent. This is accompanied by a sense of loss of one’s possibilities to manipulate and dominate the external world. On the other hand, some authors (Erikson, 1950; Canestrari & Picardi, 1975; Gutmann, 1981; Caneatrari & Magri, 1988, 1992) have highlightened how, next to these losses, a new lease of life can also be experienced originating from new creative potentials. These creative potentials are in a way an expression of a desire for individual accomplishment as that which was put aside in the early part of adulthood due to other social pressures or personal ambitions can now be retrieved and fully implemented and experienced. With regard to creativity in mid-life transition, the hypotheses put forward by Elliot Jacques (1963) concerning the nature of changes in creativity resulting from the different solutions to the mid-life crisis afford, in our opinion, a particularly valid account of the outcome of this process. According to Elliot Jacques, in fact, three possible outcomes can be expected, namely the cessation of al1 creative activity or its onset, or changes affecting both the contents and expressive mode of such activity. As psychologists and keen film enthusiasts, the authors of the present paper, taking advantage of their personal acquaintance with Federico Fellini and of their close knowledge of his work, have attempted to verify, on the basis of methods which will be described elsewhere, both the existence, nature and contents of eventual modifications in the film-maker’s artistic creativity and modes of expression, in the course of mid-life transition.
DOI Code:
10.1285/i17201632vIn1p31
Full Text: PDF
