New Books in Psychology Mari Ruti and Gail N. Newman, "The Creative Self: Beyond Individualism" (Columbia UP, 2025)
Feb 25, 2026
Gail N. Newman, Harold J. Henry Professor of German and Comparative Literature at Williams College, is a scholar of subjectivity and psychoanalytic readings of literature. She discusses how neoliberal pressure erodes solitude and creativity. Short, sharp conversations explore Winnicott and Milner, the value of emptiness, friendship as holding, and small acts of resistance against perpetual productivity.
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How Gail Met Mari And Began The Collaboration
- Gail Newman met Mari Ruti after a Lacan panel where Mari's clarifying question cut through jargon and sparked a friendship.
- They dined, visited one another (Nova Scotia, Woods Hole), collaborated on the book while Mari was ill and spent six weeks together in Vienna before writing separately.
Neoliberal Performance Steals Transcendence
- Neoliberal self-optimization manifests as constant performance pressure and loss of worldly transcendence, which Mari Ruti finds toxic.
- Gail adds that political polarization produces zero-sum thinking, compounding the problem by eroding nuanced relational life.
Creativity Lives In Winnicott's Between Space
- Winnicott's intermediate area shows creativity arises between me and not-me, where transitional objects must feel autonomous rather than hallucinated.
- Newman stresses false selves can be adaptive play when they emerge from the true self's impulse to engage the world.
