title: Churchill's Black Dog: And Other Phenomena of the Human Mind
author:  Anthony Storr 
description: 'Extremely engaging! A book full of good moments and humane insights.' Alan Ryan, Observer This book collects the essays of one of England's best-known and most distinguished psychiatrists. Its theme is creativity. What internal dynamic forces artists, scientists and politicians to devote so much time and energy to creative invention? Anthony Storr weighs and tests Freud's theory that creativity is the result of dissatisfaction by examining the impulses which drove such figures as Churchill, Kafka and Newton. Whether he is exploring the 'divine discontent' that motivates creativity, analysing Jung's mid-life crisis, assessing the psychology of jealousy in Othello or denouncing the abuses of psychiatry, Storr brings wisdom, erudition and compassion to all his subjects in this highly readable and human collection, which is accessible to those who know nothing about psychoanalysis as well as to those who know a great deal.
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  # Kavanagh
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Munsey's.
  
  
  http://www.munseys.com
  
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  XXX.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
      
  
  
  The flighty purpose never is o'ertook,
  
  
  Unless the deed go with it.
  
  
  — Shakspeare
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ### I.
  
  
  
  
  
    
  Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God, and secret
  
  
  passages running deep beneath external nature give their thoughts
  
  
  intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles
  
  
  them, and of which the laborers on the surface do not even dream!
  
  
    
  Some such thought as this was floating vaguely through the brain of
  
  
  Mr. Churchill, as he closed his school-house door behind him; and if in
  
  
  any degree he applied it to himself, it may perhaps be pardoned in a
  