BRAIN STORMS: Everyday and Extraordinary From Fits of Convulsion to Fits of Creation

Dr. Barker presents a compendium of his thoughts on the nature of what might be broadly looked upon as the creative and coping processes. His basic thesis seems to be that the process of integrating conflicting information and impulses results in an individual's presenting a spectrum of behaviors which the author describes as ""fits,"" and that these may range in extent and intensity from mere pauses in speech to grand mal epileptic seizures. He further emphasizes the qualitative similarity of these responses, and he contends that they differ only in severity. The reader is called upon to accept many of Dr. Barker's conceptions at face value with little evidence to corroborate what seem at times to be intuitive assumptions he makes. This is a fairly difficult book to read with a great deal of technical terminology. A significant amount of background is presupposed on the reader's part. In his emphasis on the work of Hughlings Jackson and Freud, the author ignores some of the more recent studies which could further elucidate the issue. One would think particularly of dreams, and the studies by Phyllis Greenacre and others on the anxiety of creativity. The author's ideas are provocative. Would that he had offered them with greater simplicity and clarity.