Click Here to Read: The Creative Monopoly By David Brooks in the New York Times on April 23, 2012.
Creativity and Competition: What can we learn? Nathan Szajnberg, MD Managing Editor
David Brooks writes about the tension between competition and creativity. This has implications for psychoanalytic institutes. Briefly, he refers to Peter Thiel’s Stanford course on line. Click Here to Read: Notes Essays on Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup: Stanford, Spring 2012 on Blake Master’s website. Thiel founded Paypal after he missed the competition for a Supreme Court clerkship. He writes about how we are geared up for competition (with its solid attributes of discipline, rigor and reliability), but perhaps less so
geared to creative invention (with complementary attributes of “alertness, independence and the ability to reclaim forgotten traditions.” (Brooks).
Thiel argues that it may be preferable to establish a “distinct market, niche and identity.”
Let’s read Brooks and think in terms of our psychoanalytic discipline and institutes. How can we (return to) psychoanalysis as an innovative, contrarian, exciting exploration of the unknown that also repairs one’s ailments in order to live a better life. That is, we best compete by being creative and independent.
Nathan Szajnberg, MD Managing Editor