Book Reviews

Review of: The Index of Scientific Writings on Creativity: Creative Men and Women, by Albert Rothenberg and Bette Greenberg. Fokestone, Wm Dawson, 1975

Notes & Queries, October 1976

THE authors are the Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and the Librarian of the Medical Library at Yale University. They have extracted bibliographic details of those studies of and writings about creative persons which had already been indexed in eighteen medical, psychological, psychi­atric and psychoanalytic indexing publica­tions. The creative people referred to, 394 in number, are in the main writers; but there are also composers, painters, sculptors and a sprinkling of others. They range in time from the ancient Greeks to living contemporaries. The 3,145 writings in­dexed are for the greater part articles in psychoanalytic journals, which seem to have been comprehensively covered. The cover­age of psychological, psychiatric and medical articles, which date back to 1780, is less complete. Some books and disser­tations are also included; here the cover must be very incomplete. Many of the articles relate to the works of creators, rather than to the creators themselves. The 353 Shakespeare references for the most part relate to individual works (116 to Hamlet). Principal entries for authors are shown under the true name, rather than the pen‑name, as a rule; but identifications are not given for a number (e.g. Joseph Conrad, Anatole France, Jack London). Holmes, Sherlock, is entered as the pseudonym of Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan, 1859‑1930. There are errors in the cross-­referencing and in the indexing. At least one major study of creative artists and writers, that of Adele Juda, has escaped notice.