The author argues that, similar to the individual success in love, the writer’s or artist’s success with the public can be a stimulus for creative work. He demonstrates with figures in hand that creative work (like poetry) is a kind of self-portrait, a sincere expression of the poet’s psychology, and that the reader perceives it accordingly. He also offers a “formula of success” based on the idea of a compromise between the partners’ overlapping areas of interests and their different preferred patterns of meaning. This relates to a scientist or artist, on the one side, and society, on the other: they are involved in social games with each other similar to love games played by individuals. In these terms, creative work and love can be described identically.