does every creative genius need a bitter rival (jung)

7/23/2019 Does Every Creative Genius Need a Bitter Rival (Jung)

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Michelangelo and Raphael; Leibniz and Newton; Constable and Turner. Does every creative genius need a bitter rival?

Jacob Burak is the founder of Alaxon, a digital magazine about culture, art andpopular science, where he writes regularly. His latest book is How to Find a Black Cat in a Dark Room (2013). He lives in Tel Aviv.

2,900 words

On 25 May 1832, John Constable was busy adding the final touches to his masterpiece, The Opening of Waterloo Bridge. One of Englands greatest 19th-century landscape artists, he had been working on the painting for more than 10 years and wasfinally set to reveal it to the world the next day, at the opening of the RoyalAcademy of Arts64th annual exhibition. Next to his piece hung Helvoetsluys by JM W Turner, an artistic genius in his own right. Watching Constables last-minuteefforts, Turner decided to add an extra brushstroke of his own: a red buoy floating on the water.

That single daub of red paint against a background of grey sky and sea was so arresting that visitors couldnt take their eyes off it, certainly not to look at Constables painting. It was yet another landmark in the bitter rivalry between thetwo artists. A year earlier, Constable had used his position in an exhibition committee to have a Turner painting taken down and hung in a side room, replacingit with a painting of his own.

Turner and Constable are not alone in the pantheon of epic rivalries between creative giants. Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz, two of the most brilliant mathematicians and thinkers of the 17th century, laid claim to the development of calculus, the mathematical study of change. Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla both invented electrical systems in the 1880s. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates went head-to-head as pioneers of the computer age. If you Google almost any famous figure along with rivalry, youll find some interesting results.

Think of rivalry as a type of ber competition driven by mutual obsession, with the rivals propelling each other to spiralling achievement, and investing more mental and emotional resources in each other than circumstances would ever dictateon their own. In 2014, across two sets of studies involving undergraduate studen

ts and runners, Gavin Kilduff, a psychologist at New York University, found thatrivals tend to be the same age, gender and social status. True rivals know eachother and, indeed, often have long, enmeshed histories. Rivals are, by definition, evenly matched but the higher the level of their attainment, the more they propel each other on.

Rivalry can be double-edged: it motivates not just heightened accomplishment but, sometimes, unethical behaviour such as lying, cheating or stealing. In a series of studies, Kilduff found that those primed for rivalry were more open to Machiavellian acts and more likely to exaggerate positive results in a cognitive task. Rivalry could account for scandals and malfeasance at the highest levels of industry, and might even explain some of the risky behaviour behind the economiccollapses of the recent past.

The social drama of rivalry, with its hostility and aggression, masks a deeper subconscious dynamic. We might think of our nemesis as the polar opposite of ourselves, but as Kilduffs research suggests, our rivals are much more like us than we dare admit. While this might seem counter-intuitive, it follows that rivalry can actually be good for us: acknowledging that our rivals share our most essential traits, good and bad, can help us up our game and gain some of the insight weneed for greater success.

Orson Welles summed up this idea in his movie The Third Man (1949): In Italy, for


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30 years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed butthey produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock.

Although this might seem cynical, art historians tend to agree: the birth of theRenaissance is attributed to the rivalry between two artists over who would design the bronze doors of the Florence Baptistery. In 1401, the cloth importersguild declared a competition to design a set of doors for this building one of theoldest in Florence, where the poet Dante and members of the prominent Medici family were baptised. Lorenzo Ghiberti, aged 23, won the commission, ousting his more established opponent, Filippo Brunelleschi. Ghibertis victorious design ushered in a new style of art, more naturalistic and with greater emphasis on perspective and idealisation of the subject. While it took him another 21 years to complete the assignment, the episode began a competitive frenzy that became a trademark of the Renaissance.

In fact, the most important artistic achievements of the Renaissance occurred inthe small area between Rome, Florence and Venice, home to just a couple of hundred thousand people at the time. One of the largest cathedral domes in the Christian world, the Duomo in Florence; the realistic representation of the human body; and linear perspective in painting all came into existence thanks to the rivalry between Renaissance giants such as Brunelleschi (1377-1446), Da Vinci (1452-1519), Michelangelo (1475-1564), and Raphael (1483-1520).

Raphaels results were applauded by all all, that is, except Michelangelo

According to their contemporary, the art historian Giorgio Vasari, rivalry was common among elite artists of the period. Renaissance Rome was home to any skilled artist aspiring to work for the Vatican the biggest and almost single employerof the time. The natural intensity of competition in such a restricted settingyielded works of art that still hang in the worlds elite museums. The practice ofexhibiting paintings by different artists side by side in order to compare technique and style naturally heightened the pressure on each artist. Raphael achieved new heights in his work when he designed 10 tapestries, commissioned by PopeLeo X to hang in the Sistine Chapel under Michelangelos divine ceiling. The results were applauded by all all, that is, except Michelangelo.

That should come as no surprise. The famous sculptor and painter was also renowned for his temper. When the handsome young Raphael first arrived on the Rome scene and was quickly commissioned by Pope Julius II, Michelangelo labelled him a bitter rival and proceeded to repeatedly accuse him of plagiarism. At one point,Michelangelo worked on his ceiling masterpiece behind a partition in order to hide it from Raphael. The latter, no shrinking wallflower himself, managed to arrange a view of it and later, in his fresco The School of Athens, incorporated a seated figure taken straight from Michelangelos work. Thanks to these machinations, the rivalry between the two giants became one of the most famous in the annalsof art.

It wasnt until the establishment of science societies in the late 16th century th

at major scientific rivalries reared their head. Perhaps the most notable earlyoutbreak was the fierce war between Newton and Leibniz, each of whom claimed tobe the first to invent calculus today widely considered to have been developed independently by each of them. The feud caused such a rift between the English and European mathematics communities that, for more than a century, almost no scientific knowledge was exchanged between them.

In the early 18th century, Newton balked at nothing in his campaign for priorityover the invention of calculus: in 1712, the Royal Society of London publisheda document granting Newton ownership of the invention and discrediting Leibniz.


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The paper, however, should be taken with an exceptionally large grain of salt, since Newton, who was president of the society at the time, personally appointedall the committee members and even wrote large parts of the document himself. The two colossi of mathematics never met in person and it is not clear that Leibniz was ever exposed to Newtons work. One can only imagine how a productive exchange of their ideas, disputed over a public platform, could have enhanced the introduction of calculus and the scientific developments that followed.

The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory but progress,said the French 19th-century essayist Joseph Joubert. Once the new societies and theirpublications made information more accessible, rivalry between scientists, research institutes and even states began to drive new discoveries. Journalistic interest in the drama enabled more public exposure to science. In one notable case,the dispute between Thomas Huxley and Richard Owen, two of the leading biologists in 19th-century Britain, shined an important spotlight on Charles Darwins theory of evolution, little-known to the general public at the time.

One of the stormiest scientific rivalries of recent years raged between the paleoanthropologists Donald Johanson and Richard Leakey over the discovery of some of the oldest fossils from pre-human species. Johanson discovered the skeleton Lucy, thought to be around 3.2 million years old, while Leakey discovered the Turkanaboy, believed to be more than 1.5 million years younger than Lucy each cited byits discoverer as the proverbial missing linkbetween humans and apes. Their public falling-out was remarkable even for science. The researchers had refused to sh

are a platform since 1981, but finally met on stage in May 2011, explaining their positions and giving interviews at a highly publicised event at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, where their vocal discord first erupted 30years before.

Thirty years later, older and wiser, they expressed a genuine desire to integrate their findings with many of the dramatic discoveries that took place since their feud first erupted. It also became clear how those two men complemented eachother: while Leakey generated an abundance of fossils, it was Johanson who was better at interpreting his findings.

The qualities in our rival that arouse our hostility are exactly the ones we prefer to repress in ourselves: weakness, anxiety, greed, aggression, lust

Entire societies and social groups can rival each other, too. Cruel is the snow that sweeps Glencoe and covers the graves oDonald,begins a ballad by Jim McLean about one of the most brutal events in the bloody history of Scotland. The massacre of Glencoe took place one early morning in February 1692, conceived by the British authorities as a punishment for the failing of the MacDonald clan of Glencoe to swear allegiance to William and Mary, the new co-regents over England, Scotland and Ireland. Thirty-eight men were killed by British soldiers who lived among them, and 40 women and children were killed when their homes were torched ordied later from starvation. The mass murder was presented to the MacDonald clanas a revenge spree by the Campbell clan a claim that fell on willing ears giventhe long history of clashes between the two groups. This bitter tribal rivalry,which began in the 14th century, continues in different forms to this day.

The rivalry between Sunnis and Shiites started after the prophet Muhammad died in 632, when both groups vied to succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. The ancient divide between these major denominations of Islam is a major source of unrest in the Middle East to this day. In other cases, tribes have fallen outmuch more recently: the divide between Hutu and Tutsi that resulted in the Rwandan genocide of the 1990s was less than 100 years old and partially created undercolonial rule in the 1920s.

Competitive sport is rife with rivalry. Glaswegian football fans can back either


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the Rangers or Celtic, a late sublimation of the warring Scottish clans mentioned above, and there is an endless array of favourites from boxers to racing cardrivers. Nothing can match the fervour that caused El Salvador to declare war onHonduras following the Football Warof 1969. While the true causes were economic,emotions first flared when fans of both teams clashed violently at a FIFA WorldCup qualifier. The third, decisive game was held in Mexico City on 26 June 1969. El Salvador won 3-2 after extra time. The same day, El Salvador dissolved alldiplomatic ties with Honduras and the two countries were at war less than threeweeks later.

When people get so worked up over a rival, isnt something deeper going on? The fiercest rivals are often firstborn, says the American science historian Frank Sulloway in Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (1996).Sulloway cites evolution as the basis for his claim that the finite resource ofparental attention is a source of sibling rivalry. Firstborn children use theirsize and strength advantage to uphold their status, and are more likely to compete over physical or intellectual territory. Younger siblings tend to underminethe status quo and develop a rebellious personality. In a particularly meticulous study, Sulloway analysed the biographies of almost 4,000 researchers and scientists from the 18th and 19th centuries, including 83 pairs of siblings. He founda younger sibling was 7.3 times more likely than a firstborn to support an innovative theory. But a firstborns chances of engaging in rivalry were 3.2 times greater than those of younger siblings. You guessed it: Newton and Leibniz were theeldest sons in their families. Turner was an older brother, and Constables older

brother was intellectually disabled, so the onus of success fell on him as if he were the eldest.

Related video13 MINUTESIn a tiny couture shop, two bickering 90-something sisters reveal tantalising glimpses of colourful past livesThe prototype, of course, is Cain, who committed the first envy-driven murder inthe Bible. A comprehensive study of sibling relations by the Dublin Institute of Technology in 2012 found that, although most people support their siblings, some exhibit signs of rivalry verging on outright hostility. Given our achievement-oriented culture, it should come as no surprise that a third of siblings reportrivalry and emotional distance, with 15 per cent not even talking to each other

. Sibling rivalry is greater when there is a small age gap, no gender difference, or when one sibling is intellectually gifted.

An especially profound exploration of rivalry comes from the psychologist Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, who said that we have more in commonwith our rivals than we would like to admit. The qualities in our rival that arouse our hostility are exactly the ones we prefer to repress in ourselves: weakness, anxiety, greed, aggression, lust and rudeness are a few common examples. Jung called this panoply of traits the shadow.

In Freudian theory, we defend ourselves from urges we dont want to acknowledge bydenying their existence and projectingthem onto others. This makes us attributequalities, intentions and desires to others that are actually our own. According

to Jung, such urges are buried deep within the shadowpart of our mind. The lesscognisant we are of the shadow inside us, the darker and denser it becomes.

If we project qualities from our own shadowonto a potential rival, we can easilyfind ourselves spiralling into a heated conflict when our rival behaves like us.Even worse, without our rival, we might feel that we lack an independent existence and wallow in the darkness of our shadowwith no one to project it upon.

Look to your shadow to identify your lifelong rival the source of your creativity and, perhaps, your rage


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Jungs notion of the shadowadds dimension to the relationship between our rival andourself. Jung calls that conscious self the ego. The shadow, meanwhile, is the darpart of our personality hiding behind our social mask the persona. As soon as weare old enough to comprehend the cultural mores around us, we select those partsof the self that are socially acceptable and classify them as ego, while repressing socially undesirable traits transporting them to the shadow, where they continue to exist unbeknown to us. Jung claimed that the egoand the shadowhave the samorigin and maintain a perfect balance: the clearer the conscious part of our personality, the more well-defined our shadowself. The opposite is true, too: a shadowthat is not contained can wreak mental havoc.

Look to your shadow to identify your lifelong rival the source of your creativity and, perhaps, your rage. If you have a particularly strong negative response to someone and think he or she is a real jerk, think again. That might be a reflection of your shadowin action.

Edward Bennett, a friend of Jungs, elaborates on this in What Jung Really Said (1967). He describes the phenomenon as a gut reaction that projects the source ofour emotion onto another, usually by means of sharp criticism or outright accusation. When we hate someone, we hate something in them that is part of us; if wedo not subconsciously recognise our own traits in the other person, then we willnot be too bothered by them.

Projecting our shadow onto someone else is always easier than acknowledging andcontaining it. When someone else projects their shadow onto us, it encourages usto project our shadow back onto them, unless we are aware of what is happening.But withstanding that dynamic takes an unusual level of self-awareness even forbrilliant minds. And why would we want to resist? The shadow is the seat of creativity, as far as Jung was concerned. In Owning Your Own Shadow (1991), RobertJohnson, a popular American Jungian author and analyst, explains why rivalries tend to erupt between especially creative people: Narrow creativity always bringsa narrow shadow with it, while broader talents call up a greater portion of thedark.The more creative you are, the greater your chances for rivalry. And the fiercer your rivalry the higher your chances of remarkable progress.

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Observe Reason - 3 days agoIt is a melodrama, scandal obsessed public that needs conflict. True Creative genius needs no rivalry; genius is only concerned with the object or concept of its fascination.1 - Reply - Share Avatardb - 3 days ago"...we have more in common with our rivals than we would like to admit. The qualities in our rival that arouse our hostility are exactly the ones we prefer to repress in ourselves: weakness, anxiety, greed, aggression, lust and rudeness area few common examples. Jung called this panoply of traits the shadow."

Is 'lying' a quality? If another lies to me, and I get upset, or hostile, does that mean I really want to be, or am, or should be, more of a liar than I am?1 - Reply - Share AvatarDonPhil - 4 days agoThe feud between Newton and Leibnitz "caused such a rift between the English andEuropean mathematics communities that, for more than a century, almost no scientific knowledge was exchanged between them." --"For more than a century, almostno knowledge . . ." ? You would think that by now some historian of science might have noticed.


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1 - Reply - Share AvatarMaggiemay - 4 days ago"Does every creative genius need a bitter rival?"

No. But every narrative does.

If there's no conflict about something, it's too boring to write or read about.

But if you got two guys who disagree AND hate each other? Well you can rewrite that story over and over forever.1 - Reply - Share Avatarmoondog - 5 days agoThe central thesis of the article that creative rivalry is inevitable is quite silly. We just need to look at all the creative efforts that did not give rise toany rivalry, and which instead gave rise to cooperation and mutual respect. Allthe scientists that work in Cern, people who come together to make internet possible, Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace, Euler and the Bernoullis. Surely thereis a healthy competition, but rivalry no. The focus is lopsided because the acrimonious ones always steal the limelight.1 - Reply - Share Avatarobsrvdiscord - 5 days ago

Some individuals could defy, if not at least severely test this: "we hate someone, we hate something in them that is part of us." Argue that the thou-protests-too-loudly is universal in application. Could not one see and loathe attributes one wishes to avoid, not ones that are shared? Creative rivalry could more simplyenhance creative effort through added challenge.1 - Reply - Share AvatarG Singh - 2 hours agoThere are many false statements in this article, which wouldn't be troubling ifthey didn't form part of the argument; for one, Newton and Leibniz developed calculus independent of one another, without knowledge of the other working on it.What can be termed their rivalry, was actually just a lot of bitching about precedence and trademarking work which had already been produced - the rivalry didn'

t actually lead to the work. Secondly, the Michaelangelo/ Raphael stuff is all jotted down in Vasari who wasn't reliable as a historical source.

I'm sure rivalries can be good for us, but I wish the author didn't make that point with recourse to such lazy thinking and ill-thought out examples. - Reply - Share AvatarDavid Wilson - 2 days agoMany eyebrows must have twitched at your reference to The Third Man as an OrsonWelles movie. But this is no worse than calling Casablanca a Humphrey Bogart movie, I suppose. Far more heinous was using the ugly word "shined" rather than theeuphonious "shone." - Reply - Share

Avatarj. p. ward - 4 days agoAs an undergraduate in the early 1950's I was disconcerted to find that a physics lecturer in Scotland (himself an Englishman) used Newton's dot method in differentiation in calculus, while we at school only months earlier had used Leibnitz's method dy/dx etc, and the long s for integration.

I thought for a long time that the dot was the lecturer's own shorthand and I didn't like it at all. - Reply - Share


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AvatarJohnB - 4 days agoYou can see a replica of the Florentine doors at the Grace Cathedral, San Francisco - Reply - ShareAvatarMartin Lindenberg - 4 days agoActually, this is fascinating and one thing the author didn't point out was therivalry between Freud and Jung! - Reply - ShareAvatarboonteetan - 4 days agoRivals do not like each other generally. But rivalry is the hidden driving forcethat often propels rivals to greater height of achievement. - Reply - ShareAvatarJackKraven - 4 days agoI have many bitter rivals...Thumbnail

does every creative genius need a bitter rival (jung)

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