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Call to Create : Celebrating Acts of Imagination
Linda Schierse Leonard, a renowned Jungian analyst and the best-selling author of The Wounded Woman and Meeting the Madwoman, shows how we can use our energies to live more creatively in all areas of our lives.
In the decades Linda Schierse Leonard has spent as a Jungian analyst and teacher, she has seen that nature and creativity are healing--even necessary--tools for her clients, readers, and students. In The Call to Create, she explores the many parallels between the cycles, moods, and landscapes of nature that foster inspiration, renewal, and hope. Leonard shows how understanding these parallels helps us move through dark times so we can be ready to receive and actualize creativity in our lives.
Many people do not think of themselves as creative. Yet their everyday discoveries, work, and appreciation of families, relationships, and personal lives are creative acts. In The Call to Create, Leonard helps us identify the characters and archetypal patterns that rise up inside us as we go about imagining a better life. These characters can be hinderers--such as the Perfectionist, the Cynic, or the Escape Artist--or they can be helpers, such as the Sower, the Adventurer, or the Celebrant. The Call to Create helps us recognize these characters within ourselves, enabling us to turn our everyday struggles into creative acts.
Leonard encourages readers by showing that the obstacles preventing them from creating a better life are like those that artists confront, and that imagination can be born of frustration. By understanding how to cultivate the helpers within us--and by following the examples of well-known artists--we can develop and appreciate creativity in everything from our search for meaning to family and love relationships, from communications and business ventures to artistic endeavors.
In the decades Linda Schierse Leonard has spent as a Jungian analyst and teacher, she has seen that nature and creativity are healing--even necessary--tools for her clients, readers, and students. In The Call to Create, she explores the many parallels between the cycles, moods, and landscapes of nature that foster inspiration, renewal, and hope. Leonard shows how understanding these parallels helps us move through dark times so we can be ready to receive and actualize creativity in our lives.
Many people do not think of themselves as creative. Yet their everyday discoveries, work, and appreciation of families, relationships, and personal lives are creative acts. In The Call to Create, Leonard helps us identify the characters and archetypal patterns that rise up inside us as we go about imagining a better life. These characters can be hinderers--such as the Perfectionist, the Cynic, or the Escape Artist--or they can be helpers, such as the Sower, the Adventurer, or the Celebrant. The Call to Create helps us recognize these characters within ourselves, enabling us to turn our everyday struggles into creative acts.
Leonard encourages readers by showing that the obstacles preventing them from creating a better life are like those that artists confront, and that imagination can be born of frustration. By understanding how to cultivate the helpers within us--and by following the examples of well-known artists--we can develop and appreciate creativity in everything from our search for meaning to family and love relationships, from communications and business ventures to artistic endeavors.
304 pages, Hardcover
First published March 28, 2000
3 people are currently reading
125 people want to read
About the author
Linda Schierse Leonard
23 books46 followersLinda Schierse Leonard, PhD, is a philosopher who trained as a Jungian analyst at the C.G. Jung Institute in Zurich. She is the author of many bestselling books, which have been translated into 12 languages.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 22, 2025
what a gift this book was! the alchemical process of creative transformation that feeds us all
May 28, 2024
THE CALL TO CREATE: CELEBRATING ACTS OF IMAGINATION (2000) by Linda Schierse Leonard, PhD:
THE CALL TO CREATE was a recommendation from my amazing therapist who has a background in art therapy and has basically become my creativity coach. This book has been my companion for almost a year. I lingered, I savored, I slowly digested. Author Linda Schierse Leonard is a trained Jungian analyst and here she explores creativity as a sacred process, identifying key archetypes (e.g., the Muse, the Sower, the Cynic, the Artisan vs. the Star, etc.) who help and/or hinder the artist. I found this book very helpful to my practice. Morning pages to dump the brain, followed by one chapter or section of this book, followed by lighting a candle when I felt especially woo-woo, and then just a blank page, a sharpened pencil, and a hand moving. Highly recommend.
THE CALL TO CREATE was a recommendation from my amazing therapist who has a background in art therapy and has basically become my creativity coach. This book has been my companion for almost a year. I lingered, I savored, I slowly digested. Author Linda Schierse Leonard is a trained Jungian analyst and here she explores creativity as a sacred process, identifying key archetypes (e.g., the Muse, the Sower, the Cynic, the Artisan vs. the Star, etc.) who help and/or hinder the artist. I found this book very helpful to my practice. Morning pages to dump the brain, followed by one chapter or section of this book, followed by lighting a candle when I felt especially woo-woo, and then just a blank page, a sharpened pencil, and a hand moving. Highly recommend.
October 16, 2014
Linda Leonard has done it again - not quite as well as she did in Wounded Woman, but quite near. She refers to many books and movies which I noted and will read or watch. Most of all is the spirit of hopefulness that pours forth from the stories of those who have been faithful to the call of creativity - that spirit offers encouragement when life takes on a bleak hue or traumas are triggered. Creativity = the cure.
December 30, 2018
This is a book I expect to draw wisdom from for a long time. The creative mind can be challenging. How do you heed the call to create when so many things pull us in different directions? Even when you have answered the call, how do you keep responding in positive ways to the possibilities presented? I found answers to these questions within the pages of this book. While the creative journey is one that is always in process, I feel I have a good guide through the psychology of creativity.
May 30, 2010
Is reading a book about creativity the same as finding a muse?
October 15, 2012
A good reminder of the lows and highs in the cycle of creating. I would refer back to the book again during my "low" periods to remind myself that ideas require time to develop.
November 25, 2013
started to see the many archetypal roles i and others play in daily life while reading this book, very cool lens to see the world through, learned a lot.
August 11, 2016
diep en psychologiserend, inspirerend boek om de processen van creativiteit te leren begrijpen.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews