What drives the artist to create masterpieces and the scientist to forge breakthrough theories? This is the fundamental question that British psychiatrist Anthony Storr sets out to answer in The Dynamics of Creation.

Storr begins by debunking the popular notion that creative people are necessarily motivated by neurosis. Although creativity can spring from a desire for power, wealth, prestige or sexual conquest, at its deepest level it is an integrative impulse that both nourishes and consoles the human soul. In probing the origins and the consequences of creativity, Storr paints brief, stunningly insightful portraits of an astonishing range of gifted individuals, including Leonardo da Vinci, Darwin, Mozart, Einstein, Kafka, Newton, Balzac and Wagner. Like his bestselling Solitude, The Dynamics of Creation is a brilliantly compelling synthesis of psychology, biography, cultural analysis and artistic appreciation.