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| Category: Art Therapy |
Date published: October 20, 2004 |
Creativity and Mental Illness - A Double Edged Sword
by Gloria L. Sarasin
(Email: sara689@yahoo.com)
The artist walks to a different drummer. A misfit toy in a world of normalcy. He or she thinks differently, feels differently, and in most cases, IS different.
Bipolar illness/manic depression, schizophrenia, clinical depression, these are all forms of mental illness, and yet, what kind of a world would we have if there weren't those who suffer from these walking among us? We'd be absent of our, writers, poets, painters, musicians and sculptors...in one word, a world without the ARTIST.
My oldest son falls into this category, an artist with a God-given talent for sculpting and drawing; inborn and flowing from his soul. What we didn't know until later was that this talent had come with a price for he is one who suffers from bipolar illness, common in one creative. He often times refers to his God-given gift, and the illness that accompanies it, as a two edged sword, one that lifts him to the heights of ecstasy one moment,then sinks him into the bowels of hell the next. Art, in its many forms, can sometime seem like an elusive dream, one that only a crazy person would pursue, like trying to catch a falling star, or attempting to touch a rainbow.
Years of chasing a dream...and then the physical and mental breakdown came. As an observer, it was like watching my son sink into that deep black hole and I was helpless to do anything about it...helpless because I didn't realize at the time it was happening. He had always suffered bouts of depression, and these episodes were most severe in the wintertime. But this time was different, the sun was still shining and the days were still long. I watched his weight drop and saw his increasingly odd behavior. A diagnosis of bipolar illness hadn't yet been given, and I didn't know of the link between creativity and mental illness, about the theory that existed. A friend of the family sent us an article that had appeared in the New York Times, An article on that very subject. "The gene a person inherits that predisposes them to mental illness is the very gene that causes creativity," the article said in part. I have to say that we felt a little better after reading that article. It explained a lot to us and to our son. He had been blessed with a God given gift, but along with that gift had come a cross to bare, the cross of bipolar illness ( manic depressive).
After my son recovered, he plunged headfirst back into his sculpting. It was as though he needed to create just as certain as he needed to breathe. He taught himself the Lost Wax Method of bronzing. The tedious steps to transforming his works of clay into prized bronzed pieces was done out of necessity. The cost to cast them at a foundry was beyond his reach. My son built his own melting furnace, taught himself the art of mold making and Petina. With the help of family, he poured and finished his prized creations...valued by family, purchased by others (at cost), and admired by all.
The roller coaster ride this dream of success takes you on, is one that's traveled through the manic and lows of the artist's mind. During the highs, there is no dream too great or mountain too high, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow is in sight. But then comes the crash and you,re laid lower than a bum at the bottom of a cold dark well.
Below are a few links, and some excerpts from those links. As I read, I thought of myself and of my own mental health. It wasn't until I was in the depths of depression that I began to write poetry...and lots of it. Though never diagnosed as bipolar myself, it wouldn't surprise me to hear such a diagnosis. Some of my best poetry, although sad, has come during these dark moments. As I read Sylvia Platt, Edgar Allen Poe and many others, I know that I, like my son, am in very good company.
In Touched With Fire, Jamison marshal writes that a tremendous amount of evidence exists for the proposition that most artistic geniuses were (and are) manic depressives.
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro99/web3/Gosselink.html
To quote in part from the article linked above:
"Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night" - Edgar Allen Poe
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Albert Einstein
Is creative genius somehow woven together with "madness"? According to the dictionary, "to create" is "to bring into being or form out of nothing." Such a powerful, mysterious, and seemingly impossible act must surely be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry. No wonder creativity has for so long been "explained" as the expression of an irrational, intuitive psychic "underground" teaming with forces (perhaps divine) that are unknown and unknowable (at least to the "sane," rational mind). The ancient Greeks believed creative inspiration was achieved through altered states of mind such as "divine madness." Socrates said: "If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the inspired madman" (8). Creative inspiration - particularly artistic inspiration -- has often been thought to require the sampling of dark "depths" of irrationality while maintaining at least some connection to everyday reality. This dive into underground forces "reminds one of a skin-diver with a breathing tube" wrote Arthur Koestler in his influential book, The act of creation (9).According to Koestler, "the creative act always involves a regression to earlier, more primitive levels on the mental hierarchy, while other processes continue simultaneously on the rational surface." Using similar themes, the chemist, Kekule described a visionary moment leading to his groundbreaking discovery that the benzene molecule is a ring. His creative break with the prevailing assumption that all molecules were based on two-ended strings of atoms came in a blazing flash of insight:
How can emotional turmoil enhance creativity? ... his raptures were, All air, and fire, which made his verses clear, For that fine madness still he did retain, Which rightly should posses a poet's brain -- Michael Drayton
It is widely accepted that insight gained through intense, extreme, even painful experiences can add depth and meaning to creative work. Poet Anne Sexton explained how she used pain in her work: "I, myself, alternate between hiding behind my own hands, protecting myself anyway possible, and this other, this seeing ouching other. I guess I mean that creative people must not avoid the pain that they get dealt.... Hurt must be examined like a plague." (8). An honest encounter with pain can result in healing and growth. The healing properties of art are widely acknowledged across many cultures. Creative people can use their personal pain to help others find wholeness.
"I want to keep those sufferings," said expressionist artist Edvard Munch. When told he could end his cycle of psychiatric hospitalizations with available treatment, he replied that emotional torments "are part of me and my art. They are indistinguishable from me, and it would destroy my art." (11). As Jamison points out, many creative people are reluctant to be transformed by psychiatric treatment into "normal, well-adjusted, dampened, and bloodless souls" no longer moved to create. And their fears may not be unfounded. Current psychotropic drug therapies can offer some relief from the painful, destructive features of mania and depression. But according to Jamison, there is a price to pay -- these drugs can "dampen a person's general intellect and limit his or her emotional and perceptual range." (8). As a result, many people with mood disorders stop taking these medications. The tragic consequences include emotional extremes that intensify over time and can lead to psychosis or death. These consequences should not be romanticized.
End of quote.
http://www.namiscc.org/Research/2002/Creativity.htm
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/10.23/01-creativity.html
http://www.newyorkcityvoices.org/2004aprjun/20040629.html
http://www.english.iup.edu/eaware/ArtTherapy/index.htm
http://www.nami.org/Template.cfm?Section=Helpline1&template=/ContentManagement/ContentDisplay.cfm&ContentID=4858
The next time you hear of a person who has been diagnosed with bipolar illness, or one of the other many forms of mental illness, just stop a minute and think. These are just a few of the names of people who have also suffered. Picasso, Mozart, Abraham Lincoln, Virginia Woolf, John Keats, Vincent Van Gogh, Isaac Newton, Ernest Hemingway, Michelangelo, Winston Churchill, Charles Dickens, Sylvia Plath. What a colorless world we would have without people such as these living among us.
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