NOTE: This article was published in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology in 2008:
Vol. 48: Issue No. 1; pp. 61-88: http://jhp.sagepub.com/content/48/1/61
Summary
This article presents a psychological study of the “successful
creative artist” and the relationship between art and mental disturbance.
To elaborate, this article emphasizes what the author considers
to be “natural” (i.e., self-motivated) creative self-expression in
comparison to “normal” (i.e., socially approved) patterns of behavior.
Although what is natural may overlap with what is considered normal
in society, rarely are the two placed on equal footing. To illustrate
this problem, the author introduces a new theory, “the artistic
theory of psychology,” that casts a new light on the “successful” creative
artist. Along the lines of Thomas Szasz and R. D. Laing, that
which is referred to as “mental illness” is viewed from a nonjudgmental
perspective but with the distinctive feature of suggesting
that some people who are considered to be mentally ill may have
significant creative artistic potential that can be highly therapeutic,
both for them and for society at large.
Keywords:
creativity; spirituality; humanistic education; artistic;
self-actualization
THE ARTISTIC THEORY OF PSYCHOLOGY
Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Vol. 48 No. 1, January 2008 61-88
DOI: 10.1177/0022167807299464
© 2008 Sage Publications
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Art and Mental Disturbance
There has been much historical speculation upholding the linkage
between art and mental disturbance, and in recent years
there has been much research that supports the speculation (in
particular, see the investigations of Andreasen, 2005; Jamison,
1993; Runco & Richards, 1997). But to truly compare the artist to
the mentally disturbed person, we need to first understand the
psychology of the artistic person. In this article, I will explore the
psychology of the artistic person and relate that understanding to
that which has been conventionally termed “mental illness.” I will
not use the terminology of mental illness, however, and will opt
for the more neutral, less stigmatizing “mental disturbance”
throughout this article.
Ayn Rand (1943, 1957, 1964) describes art with exceptional
clarity and beauty in her books.
1 She writes about a human
being’s “sense of life” and describes art as the reproduction in the
universe of one’s innermost being. To Rand, art is nothing less
than the rejuvenation of one’s very soul. This description of art is
not very different from the meaning that many people find in
authentic spirituality, serving a similar function to that of God
and religion (Benjamin, 2005b; Cameron, 1992; Kandinsky, 1914;
Rank, 1932). In my own experience, when I play the piano and
various melodies and songs play through my fingers without my
conscious awareness of what I am doing, this is a communication
from a deeper part of me about what is going on within the
depths of my being. And my experience of engaging in my mathematical
world in the early mornings in bed, that is, exploring
various mathematical ideas and theories as part of my ongoing
research in the pure mathematics field of algebraic number
theory, is my way of experiencing one of life’s true but little
understood art forms. How similarly must fully engaged musicians,
painters, poets, and scientists feel when they are immersed
in their own creative endeavors. One can say that an artistic
nature represents the qualities in a person that prioritize the
quest for truth and creative expression over the more earthly
material decrees of comfort and security (Barron, 1969, 1972;
Barron, Montuori, & Barron, 1997; Rank, 1932; Schachtel, 1959), and
I shall include idealistic beneficial social and ethical innovations here
as well. Working musicians, successful painters, celebrated poets,
famous writers, popular scientists, and pure mathematicians with
mathematics professor jobs—these are the artistic natures that are
renowned and respected in our society and are admired for their glorious
achievements.
But what about individuals with artistic natures who seem to
be fated to nonexistence in terms of public approval and respect?
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Elliot Benjamin
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Is it because they are not as talented as their happier fellows?
Perhaps it is because they are not as lucky or do not work as hard
as their happier fellows. Perhaps it is a combination of factors.
I believe that for some of these individuals, their artistic
natures are no less real to them than they are to their more successful
counterparts—and yet they end up experiencing the
harsh consequences of a seemingly unfeeling society toward their
predicament of not being able to express their fundamental artistic
needs and potentials in the world. Could it be that some of
these individuals with artistic natures give up the struggle to
allow their real selves, that is, their intrinsic artistic talents and
deep inclinations, to emerge and consequently wind up in mental
hospitals—being classified as mentally ill? There is a popular
myth that all artists are a bit “crazy”—accorded weight by a number
of unfortunate cases of alcoholism, severe depression, abusive behavior,
mental hospitalization, and suicide by some of our most wellknown
creative geniuses, such as Van Gogh, Nietzche, Piccasso,
Richard Wagner, Jackson Pollock, Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allen
Poe, Lord Byron, Robert Schumann, and others, many of whom
are quite vividly described in the books
Creativity & Madness
(Panter, Panter, Virshup, & Virshup, 1995) and
Touched With Fire
(Jamison, 1993). But my interest is as much with the unsuccessful
creative artist as it is with the successful creative artist. It is
largely the focus on the psychology of experience, as one finds in
existential, humanistic, transpersonal, and integral psychology
(Houston, 1982; Jung, 1936; Maslow, 1962; May, 1969; Rogers,
1961; Schneider, 2004; Wilber, 2000), where the paradigms converge
on the inner world of the person, that enables us to truly
understand the deeper experience of a human being. And how
often would we be amazed at the depth of human feeling and creative
potential that could emerge out of our “psychotic” mental
patient (Jamison, 1993; Laing, 1967; Milner, 1957; Szasz, 1974).
I am not suggesting that our society should reward lesser ability
in an art form for the sake of a person’s mental health. This
would not be fair to the successful creative artist or to our more
ordinary citizen. But along the lines of Thomas Szasz (1974)
and R. D. Laing (1967), I am strongly advocating that our
society stop superficially labeling our mental patients and begin
to develop an appreciation of the artistic creative potential that
many of our mental patients may possess in the depths of their
being.
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Art and Mental Disturbance
Thus, I am proposing a new theory of psychology, not one to
replace what we already have but one to add to our storehouse of
psychological knowledge. I am proposing the establishment of the
“artistic theory of psychology.” The artistic theory of psychology
stresses a different focal point of comparison for our criteria of
mental health and normality. I shall define the successful creative
artist to be a person who has received the respect and
acknowledgement for his or her work by a community of his or
her peers or society at large and also who is considered both psychologically
and ethically to be a “well-adjusted” member of his or
her society and the greater world. For a reasonable method of
determining a criteria for being psychologically and ethically well
adjusted, we may utilize some of the writings of philosopher Ken
Wilber (2000, 2006), in particular his books
Integral Psychology
and
Integral Spirituality, and scales of morality, ego development,
and self-actualization, as described by Lawrence Kohlberg
(1981), Jane Loevinger (1977), and Abraham Maslow (1962). For
example, Kohlberg describes “universal ethical” and “universal spiritual”
highest moral stages, Loevinger describes “individualistic,”
“autonomous,” and “integrated” highest ego stages, Maslow describes
“self-esteem,” “self-actualization,” and “self-transcendence” in his
highest stages of human functioning, and Wilber describes
“universal-global,” “parenhenic” (yogic), “panentheistic” (saintly),
and “always already” (sage or siddha) for his highest moral or
spiritual stages (Wilber, 2000). I shall take my definition of the
successful creative artist as an ideal of what is “natural” (as previously
defined) and healthy in my own society (i.e., the United
States in 2006). I shall use the term
creative artist to include various
creative disciplines, such as music, writing, painting, dance,
mathematics, science, and so on, and socially creative innovations
that are beneficial to humankind, such as represented by the life
and work of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Mother
Teresa. I will follow in the footsteps of Maslow (1962, 1971) in his
study of self-actualized successful people and his reliance on
mental health rather than mental illness.
I can think of quite a few well-known creative artists who have been
widely acclaimed in terms of public respect and acknowledgement for
their work, including Einstein, Beethoven, Hermann Hesse, Jung,
Freud, Picasso, Rand, Nietzche, Dostoevsky, Bach, Mozart, Goethe,
Rubens, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Rumi, Shakespeare, Newton, Gauss,
Wilber,Van Gogh, Gershwin, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, and others. In all
these cases, a human life was lived, and a creative process unfolded.
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Elliot Benjamin
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However, it is a more difficult question to determine the “welladjusted”
part of my definition of successful creative artist,
although this criteria seems to me to be of the utmost importance
if we want to formulate artistic creation as a model of human
excellence.
If our educational system were more humanistically oriented,
I believe there would be notably more creative artists successfully
practicing their art in my full definition of successful creative
artist (Kubie, 1958; Rogers, 1969). It appears that the
personal sensitivity and understanding available in a supportive
educational environment toward a person who is artistically
inclined can have a significant effect on a person developing his
or her artistic potential in life (Barron, 1972). But for our present
purposes, I will concentrate on the “possible” psychology of the
human, the God-like epitome of what a human being is capable of
achieving in life (Houston, 1982; Schachtel, 1959; Wilber, 1995).
In my more extended definition of art, I consider the religious
personages of Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tsu, and others to also be creative
artists, as in all likelihood they lived their lives in the experience
of their innermost beings, and they all were highly creative
and productive in their own lifetimes (Rank, 1932).
Creative artists know their mission in life; it is to be who they
truly are in the depths of their being and to express their natural
creativity through their chosen artistic mediums (Mendelowitz,
2006). With hope, creative artists will have enough nurturing
support from people to get them through their necessary battle
with society and “Reality,” the forces of our mundane, everyday
life,
2 and to emerge with a creative product valued by others and
a relatively healthy and balanced personality that satisfies the
“well-adjusted” part of my definition of the successful creative
artist (Adams, 2006). An illustrative description is given of the
states of mind of various young student artists in supportive educational
environments by Frank Barron (1972), which lends support
to my contention that earning one’s living through practicing
one’s art is a common obstacle for the potential young artist (see
the Reality Argument section).
Thus, I usher in a new “normal” human being, more accurately,
a new “natural” human being, in the sense that I have earlier distinguished
between “normal” and “natural.” Based on an impressive
array of recent research studies as described in the collection
of articles in the book
Eminent Creativity, Everyday Creativity,
and Health
, edited by Runco and Richards (1997), there appears
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Art and Mental Disturbance
to be an enticing relationship between art and mental disturbance.
Focusing on the possibility that there are a number of
people designated as mentally ill who have significant artistic
creative potential within them, I believe that incorporating an
artistic theory of psychology into our present framework of psychological
theory and therapy could be an effective means of
humanistically nurturing constructive and therapeutic creative
artistic potential in a number of people who are considered to be
mentally disturbed.
MENTAL DISTURBANCE VIEWED FROM
AN ARTISTIC PERSPECTIVE
To summarize, the artistic theory of psychology emphasizes
three main points:
1. The successful creative artist resonates with the highest levels
of Maslow’s hierarchy of human potential.
2. There are some people labeled as mentally ill who have the
potential of becoming successful creative artists.
3. A sensitive, understanding, and supportive educational environment
may be conducive to enabling a mentally disturbed
person with creative artistic potential to significantly develop
and actualize this potential in life.
A number of studies have demonstrated a strong relationship
between the personal characteristics of the creative artist and
bipolar or manic-depressive “illness” (Andreasen, 2005; Jamison,
1993; Runco & Richards, 1997). But if we take the artistic theory of
psychology as a temporary assumption, then our whole view of
what it means to be mentally ill must be drastically altered. Think
of the meaning of the typical characterizations of persons labeled
schizophrenic—“alienated from reality,” “inappropriate affect,” “in
his own world,” and so on (see the most recent
Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
criteria for a full listing of
the characteristics that are designated to fall under the schizophrenic
classification; American Psychiatric Association, 2000). I
contend that each of these phrases could characterize the common,
day-to-day experiences of the creative artist.
To begin with, what does it mean to be “alienated from reality”?
From the artistic model, this phrase may have some positive
and constructive meanings. For one, it could mean to not be
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unconsciously tied to a mediocre and soul-destroying day-to-day
existence, where people are earning their living by doing tasks for
which they have little or no interest while ignoring their true
desires and passions in life. This point is emphasized in the work
of Ernest Schachtel (1959), who was strongly influenced by the
work of Eric Fromm (1955, 1956). Schachtel distinguishes
between “embeddedness-affect” and “activity-affect.” He describes
embeddedness-affect as “completely accepting the closed pattern
institutionalized in the particular culture or cultural subgroup in
which the individual is born and in which he is living” (p. 83) and
activity-affect as “active coping with a tension or active relating
to the environment” (p. 29). Schachtel also distinguishes between
“autocentric” and “allocentric” perceptions. He describes autocentric
perception as involving “a close relation, amounting to a
fusion, between sensory quality and pleasure-unpleasure feelings”
(p. 83) and allocentric perception as
one of profound interest in the object, and complete openness and
receptivity toward it, a full turning toward the object which makes
possible the direct encounter with it and not merely a quick registration
of its familiar features according to ready labels. (pp. 220-221)
Furthermore, Schachtel describes the concept of “secondary autocentricity”
as being “in a closed pattern of life, by which man
seeks to re-establish something akin to the security of the womb
after
the object world has emerged for him in the exploratory play
and learning of childhood” (p. 176). It is thus apparent that
Schachtel is emphasizing what I have alluded to about the commonly
experienced mediocrity of day-to-day existence and our
economic necessity of animal survival, that I refer to as “Reality”
(cf. Note 1 and the Reality Argument section).
In the context of my definition, Reality is primarily concerned
with money, that is, accumulating the necessary means to buy
one’s food and shelter one’s body. Although these requirements
are absolutely essential for any kind of life at all, along with
Schachtel (1959), I believe that based on the dire economic conditions
that beset much of our world, the majority of humankind
feed themselves and shelter their bodies at the expense of their
very souls. The exception to this tendency is the successful creative
artist. For the successful creative artist, as I have defined
him or her, feeds both his or her body and his or her soul. He or
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Art and Mental Disturbance
she earns a living but does it while developing his or her own creativity.
The successful creative artist is well integrated into his or
her society, but he or she is also a fully functioning human being.
This experience of earning a living while developing one’s deepest
creative potential is the highest mode of human existence from my
present perspective; it can also represent the “self-actualized”
human being in Maslow’s (1962, 1971) terminology, the vision logic
and higher states of consciousness in Wilber’s (1980,
3 1995, 2000,
2006) terminology, the artist who achieves a balanced and “renunciate”
view of life in Otto Rank’s (1932) terminology, and the second
and third tiers in spiral dynamics terminology (Beck & Cowan,
1996). But if we look at the vast majority of human beings, we find
the self-actualized person to be a very rare phenomenon (Beck &
Cowan, 1996). Rather, we find most people living under the rule of
“Reality” and a few people “alienated” from Reality. This can also
be interpreted in the language of Wilber’s integral philosophy and
the related ideas of spiral dynamics, as the transition into higher
levels of consciousness from the lower prerational level of consciousness
(Beck & Cowan, 1996; Wilber, 1980, 1995, 2000, 2006).
This brings us into another classic schizophrenic personality
description: inappropriate affect.
How often in my own life have I had to suffer the experience of
being perceived to possess “inappropriate affect.” I think back to
the various social situations with which I have engaged: parties,
potluck dinners, weddings, social get-togethers, holiday celebrations,
and so on, and I think about all the feelings I have had that
were “different” from the seemingly jolly, fun-loving people surrounding
me. I believe that the way of handling this experience of
feeling “different” in social situations is very critical in regard to
whether or not someone gets labeled as being sensitive, as being
creative, or as having “inappropriate affect.”
It is possible to come from a perspective of having self-confidence
in your abilities and your feelings, knowing that you cannot
relate to this particular social situation because you are “you” and
that it is OK to feel this way. I have gradually learned how to
respond to uncomfortable social situations more in this way as I
have entered my middle-age years, as I have started to feel more
successful in life. I am generally labeled as being sensitive and
creative, and not as mentally ill. But many foreigners to the
social graces are not as fortunate as I have become and may not
have any kind of loving support when they come home from their
social get-togethers. They may begin to see themselves as “below”
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Elliot Benjamin
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other people, as unable to have fun and make friends, and they
may internalize the messages they sense about themselves from
other people—that they are “different,” that they are “abnormal.”
This is very convincingly portrayed in the descriptions of the
introverted personality and of the “loner” in the books
Party of
One
by Anneli Rufus (2003) and The Introvert Advantage by Marti
Olsen Laney (2002). Once a person believes he or she is abnormal, it
may be only a matter of time before he or she does indeed exhibit
abnormal behavior. The premise that our experiences follow from
our beliefs is quite dominant in a variety of current new age circles,
ranging from those of Wayne Dyer (1997) to Neale Donald Walsch
(1995, 1997, 1998), author of the Conversations With God book series
and founder of the Conversations With God spiritual organization
(Benjamin, 2005b),
4 to Harry Palmer (1994a, 1994b), founder of
Avatar (Benjamin, 2005b). Perhaps this form of the self-fulfilling
prophesy contributes to the at-risk potential creative artist’s alienation
from the social graces becoming increasingly bizarre and
extensive, until he or she is no longer able to function in society and
must be put in a mental institution and labeled as having “inappropriate
affect” (Szasz, 1974, 1998, 2004).
Of course, this picture is not meant to describe all patients in
mental institutions, but I do believe that this scenario does accurately
describe the essential difficulties of some of our creative
artists who end up in mental institutions, especially those involved
in the creative arts of poetry, fiction, play writing, and composing
music (Andreasen, 2005; Jamison, 1993; Runco & Richards, 1997).
Often, the alienated person will indeed exhibit emotions that have
nothing to do with the external situation—such as laughing at sad
events and crying at happy events. But I contend that by this point,
he or she is likely to be already past the stage where his or her feelings
could be accepted as different from others yet still legitimate.
He or she may then become a potentially creative and artistic
person not possessing enough self-confidence in himself or herself to
accept who he or she is and to live with or her his differences from
his or her fellows in society.
Last, we must examine the most common of all the descriptions
of the psychotic person, which is that the psychotic lives
“in his or her own world.” Again, we may look at the successful
creative artist for a justifiable comparison. We could choose the
novelist, the musician, the painter, the pure mathematician, and
many other examples. Let’s take the novelist—as almost everybody
has at least at one time in their life been so caught up in a
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Art and Mental Disturbance
good novel that they lost track of their own life until they finished
reading the story. If you have ever had this experience of being so
lost in a novel that the characters became as real to you as the
characters in your own life, then try to think of what it must have
been like for the writer of this novel. Try to think of how lost this
writer must have been in his or her own novel, in all those fascinating
and magnificent characters whom he or she has created
for your reading pleasure. Think about how he or she must have
been living with these characters day and night—for years. Can
you conclude otherwise than that your admired novelist lived in
his or her own very private world? Certainly you will not disagree
that the creative artist has a whole world that is very real and
special to him or her, that he or she keeps all to himself herself—
until he or she is ready to share it with others (Barron et al.,
1997; Jamison, 1993; Milner, 1957). But now this private world is
labeled by our American society as a good thing, as something
artistic and creative. Although in the case of our unfortunate psychotic,
living in one’s own world is labeled by our American
society as “sick” and “bad.” I believe that a crucial difference is the
creative and artistic expression and communication of one’s private
world to others, plus the ability to move in and out of one’s
private world into the world of external reality (Jamison, 1993;
Kubie, 1958; Runco & Richards, 1997; Rank, 1932). This can also
be described in terms of “ego strength” (Barron, 1969; Eysenck,
1994) and “resilience” (Flach, 1988), which generally relates to
possessing an ability to successfully deal with the stresses in life
that commonly trigger emotional and behavioral disorders.
Another comparison which we can make between the mentally
disturbed person and the creative artist involves the area of religion.
It has been frequently noted that people in mental hospitals
often seem to be preoccupied with the meaning of life and with
God—in a different kind of way from the more “normal” people
(see my previous distinction between “natural” and “normal”) in
the bulk of our society (Rank, 1932). Many “normal” people go to
church every Sunday morning, but they are not necessarily experiencing
the kind of authentic spirituality that I believe has been
the basis of the widespread interest in exploring new age spiritual
organizations and Eastern religions during the past three or four
decades (Benjamin, 2005b; Needleman, 1970; Robbins & Anthony,
1981). This authentic spirituality comprises a deep sense of oneness
with the universe, described by Maslow (1962) as a “peak
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experience” (Carkhuff, 1981) and by Wilber (1980, 1995, 2000,
2006) as a trans-rational level of consciousness.
How does one attain this kind of peak experience or transrational
level of consciousness? And how does one extend this
kind of peak experience over time into a more lasting “plateau
experience” that is actually the meaning behind Wilber’s (1980,
1995, 2000, 2006) distinction between “states” and “stages” (Beck
& Cowan, 1996). Although there is no exact formula, the only way
I know of is to be very true to your own deepest Self for a long
time and then essentially to leave it to the fate of the universe.
5
In other words, there is a delicate balance between putting intention
into actualizing your creative abilities and “going with the
flow,” knowing when it is time to flexibly respond to the events
and circumstances taking place in your life.
And who is it in life who is being true to his or her deepest Self
in this way? To my mind, a wonderful illustration of being true to
one’s deepest Self is given by the successful creative artist, the
person who loves life too dearly to ever compromise the precious
natural talents and abilities that are in him or her and who has
received significant respect and acknowledgement from others
for his or her artistic creations while he or she is considered to be
a well-adjusted member of his or her society and world.
I believe that in a number of cases, the mentally disturbed
person may develop from the unsuccessful creative artist who is
stuck at a job he or she does not feel fulfilled at to support himself
or herself in day-to-day reality. The feeling of not doing what
one loves to do and what one feels compelled to do could very well
lead to a severe depression and inability to function in life. So
perhaps some of these unfortunate victims of their own unactualized
artistic potential have destroyed their Selves rather than
allowed their Selves to work for the maintenance of their alienated
society. There are a number of poignant descriptions of this
in Jamison’s (1993)
Touched With Fire, which resulted in a
number of highly creative people having been committed to
mental hospitals before (and after) they achieved public acknowledgment
for their artistic creations and also some who committed
suicide. In these cases, I see a bona fide sacrifice of the deepest
Self, a courageous refusal to be what their deepest Self knows it
must never be. I believe that part of the role of the psychotherapist
should be to discover where a person fits the above description
and to work on unleashing this person’s artistic potential,
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Art and Mental Disturbance
helping the person to understand that he or she can spend much
time developing his or her art and that it is worth it to preserve
his or her life through working in society while he or she strives
to combine his or her work and art (Mendelowitz, 2006).
The therapeutic value of art is well known to all art therapists
and is movingly illustrated in the free style drawings of Elizabeth
Layton (Panter et al., 1995) and Marion Milner (1957). Lawrence
Kubie strongly argues against the notion that “madness” in the
form of unconscious conflicts is a necessary ingredient for artistic
creation, as he focuses instead on the natural creative associations
in “pre-conscious” mental activity (Kubie, 1958). However, I
believe that many people have traded materialistic comfort and
security for the experience of their deepest Selves and that this is
a very serious violation of real life (Mendelowitz, 2006). For this
violation, he or she is rewarded with the comforts of material
security, but he or she all too often spends his or her life in nonawareness
of his or her real Self, as Schachtel (1959) describes
through his concept of secondary autocenticity.
And we thus see from the perspective of the artistic model of
mental disturbance that the foundation of the traditional medical
model of mental illness is severely lacking, as has been consistently
described for the past 30 years by Szasz (1974, 1998, 2004).
The artistic model of mental disturbance is one that has severe
philosophical and psychological opposition to the traditional medical
model and to the status quo of society. For if one does not
accept what is considered to be normal in society as any kind of
ideal, then how can one accept what is considered to be “abnormal”
in society as breaking from this false ideal (Fromm, 1955;
Laing, 1967)? In regard to our potential creative artists who no
longer seem able to work their way through the many obstacles
they have encountered in life, I am not saying that everybody in
a mental hospital is a frustrated creative artist. What I am saying
is that some people in mental hospitals may very well be
superficially diagnosed as psychotic and schizophrenic and may
have a depth of untapped creative artistic potential inside of
them (Laing, 1967; Szasz, 1974;Vice, 1992). Recent research studies
by Runco and Richards (1997) lend support to the theory that
significant creative potential may occur in people with bipolar
(manic-depressive) tendencies. The creative artistic potential of
some of these people with bipolar tendencies may be far more
than that of the more ordinary “normal” person who is visiting
them and of the hospital staff member who is giving them their
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medications. I believe that this creative artistic potential in
many cases could still be actualized in the world if the necessary
self-discipline, self-confidence, and self-understanding could
be developed in the context of a nurturing and supportive social
atmosphere. And what form of education is best suited to tutor
these potential creative artists?
I see humanistic education, based on the psychological foundations
of Carl Rogers (1961, 1969), as the middle ground that can
potentially transform the mentally disturbed person into the successful
creative artist. To give a personal example, I have recently
facilitated an artists’ support group that met monthly during a
9-month period, and it has been gratifying to me to see how some of
the artistically creative but frustrated people who attended my
meetings became motivated to take steps to actualize their deepest
artistic dreams in the concrete world. If my assumption that inside
many mentally disturbed human beings is a dormant creative artistic
potential is correct, then what is needed is some kind of authentic
stimulation to help unleash this potential. I believe that the realness,
openness, and joyfulness of intrinsically motivated humanistic education,
which can be utilized either separately or in conjunction with
an appropriate psychotherapy, is something that is capable of helping
someone discover his or her true nature and desires. However, it is
very important to find teachers and facilitators who are both creative
artists in their own fields and talented and sensitive humanistic
educators.
Artistic people need to go through a journey of “finding themselves.”
They must go through an experience where they come to
terms with their real- or deepest-level Selves and learn what their
desires, ambitions, and connections to life truly are. Milner (1957)
offers a revealing and in-depth portrayal of examining her artistic
and therapeutic personal process in her “free drawings”; this can also
be seen from the self-reflective drawings of Layton (Panter et al.,
1995). Indeed, much of the beautiful and personal deepest artistic
disclosures in poetry, painting, and other artistic mediums have had
this very same therapeutic value to the creative artist (Jamison,
1993). There has been widespread interest in using the more
common forms of art, music, and dance therapy in various hospital
and mental health settings (e.g., http://www.healthletter.tufts.edu).
There is no easy way to stimulate the creative artistic potential
in people who have become mentally disturbed for any
number of reasons, but I believe that a necessary requirement for
this to happen is space, lack of external pressures, and gentle
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encouragement. These conditions are all well provided for in a
“Rogerian” teaching atmosphere (Rogers, 1969). I think that if
we were to combine Rogers’s (1961, 1969) humanistic teaching
and counseling philosophy with Laing’s (1967) open space and
freedom philosophy and Stanislav Grof’s (1985, 1989) spiritual
emergence philosophy, we would get a wonderful educational
environment to nurture the artistic potential in our mental
health clients. To focus on a positive developing learning atmosphere
where people are developing their creative talents and abilities
is, in my opinion, a prime ingredient of fostering mental
health for anyone.
THE REALITY ARGUMENT
Rank (1932) discusses the universal conflict of the artist between
his or her art and his or her life (Mendelowitz, 2006), Schachtel
(1959) focuses on his concept of secondary autocentricity to signify
the mundane growth impeding security temptation that occurs in
the midst of ordinary adult life, and Barron (1972) illustrates how
in many young student artists in supportive artistic educational
environments there is already a strong awareness of the impending
difficulties and obstacles the artist will need to face to make his or
her living in the world through practicing his or her art. It seems to
me that nearly every successful creative artist has at one time or
another in his or her life had to face up to my version of these ideas
from Rank, Schachtel, and Barron, which I refer to as “the reality
argument.” It goes something like this.
Life is hard knocks. You need food, clothing, and a roof over your
head. You can’t go fighting the system. You go where the jobs are—
where you can make the most money. Get yourself a good secure
job and save up for a down payment on a house. Money in the bank,
a second car, saving up to put the kids through college, planning
your retirement; these are the things you have to start thinking
about. Knowing you’re covered in case of injury, sickness, death;
these necessities cannot be avoided either. Emergencies spring up
all around us, and we must be prepared. Sure there is much wrong
with the world—but you’re not going to change it, so you might as
well accept reality. Cut your hair, buy a suit, and polish up your
résumé. Say the right things, act enthusiastic but not too enthusiastic,
and don’t dare question your employer’s authenticity—no
matter what you might think. For remember that your family is
depending upon you; you are the breadwinner, and if you decide to
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go on some lark like “finding yourself,” what will become of them?
Surely you have a sense of responsibility towards those you love.
So do your duty, my friend, and take your place in the world of
work. Practice your art in your own spare time; it can be a nice
relaxing hobby. But stop trying to make your living out of selling
your own paintings. It just is not feasible in today’s world. I gave
up my dream 30 years ago, and it wasn’t easy—but I did it just like
everyone else did it. And now it is your turn to do it.
The above description I have given of the reality argument is
painfully familiar to me personally from my own young adulthood.
In a more general sense, I believe the reality argument is, in effect,
a social psychological principle that represents the tremendous
odds stacked against the phenomenon of the successful creative
artist. The young painter, writer, musician, with the glimpse of fire
and intensity in his or her eyes all too often turns into the lackadaisical
middle-aged person of society with his or her “comfortable”
suburban home complete with briefcase, pot belly, and secretary.
Just what is it that I am trying to say here? In my mid-20s, I
promised myself that I would learn new things every day, developing
my innate abilities in mathematics, music, and philosophy. And
how extremely difficult it has been for me to retain my ambitious
plan of life, for the reality argument has often challenged me to my
very limits of endurance.
But I have been fortunate to have within me an entity that I call
“the math teacher” that has enabled me to acquire my share of ego
strength (Barron, 1969). The math teacher can go into his society,
take out his PhD, show off an attractive résumé when needed, cite
his 20-plus years of being a mathematics professor, and gain the
respect and admiration of the “normal” segments of his society. And
the “math teacher” can even introduce some innovative mathematics
teaching practices into the institution, such as recreational
number theory via
Numberama (Benjamin, 1993) and self-paced,
competency-based mathematics education. Then the math teacher
can go home and transcend his role and once again immerse himself
in his art. And the reality argument has thereby been fed, without
seriously injuring either the artist or society, in spite of the unpleasantness
and stress of having to work through the pressures of the
teaching and supervision parts of the job that come with the math
teacher territory. But all things considered, thank goodness for the
“math teacher.” However, all too few of our potential creative
artists have a “math teacher” in them. I fear that for the vast
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majority of our potential creative artists, the reality argument
has killed off their deeper potential creative artist selves long
before they turned 30. Once again, I look inside our mental institutions
for some of the victims of destruction of the reality argument.
I look for the victims who were either unable or unwilling
to take their places in the world that I believe is all too full of
requirements, compromise, and mediocrity. I look with wide open
eyes for pure human feeling and beauty. As an artist, I want to
reach out to other potential artists and teach them how to cultivate
a “math teacher” in themselves so that they too can confront
the reality argument.
But to try on a different point of view, now that we have examined
the intensely destructive effects that the reality argument
could have on the potential successful creative artist, let us view
reality from another perspective. Is reality necessarily all that bad?
According to Rank (1932), the successful creative artist finds
himself or herself in the rather surprising situation of living on
the outskirts of society for quite some time, only to eventually be
responsible for ushering in a whole new perspective or movement
that becomes a dominant mode in the society in which he or she
lives (we are here using Rank’s perspective of the successful creative
artist). This viewpoint of the successful creative artist is
masterfully portrayed by Rand (1943, 1957) in her novels, most
especially in
The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged.Will Adams
(2006) describes how William Blake was supported and nourished
in his intense visionary and artistic experiences by his
mother in his childhood and his wife for virtually his entire adult
life. At any rate, we see that the reality argument can be viewed
from different perspectives, but I believe that virtually every creative
artist does need to confront the reality argument in one way
or another to preserve his or her art and real Self and to eventually
become a successful creative artist.
SELF-ACTUALIZATION AND THE SUCCESSFUL
CREATIVE ARTIST
“Self-actualization” is a term that became prominent in humanistic
and existential psychology in the 1960s, largely through the
work of Rogers (1961, 1969) and Maslow (1962, 1971). Maslow
describes both his visions and his research in regard to what he
views as the nature of the highest-level-possible human being.
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Wilber (1980, 1995, 2000, 2006) develops these ideas even further
in many of his books, brilliantly combining both Eastern spirituality
and Western psychology to formulate a series of developmental
stages from the lowest to the highest realms of the
potential of a human being. But in Maslow’s initial work, the
crisscrosses with religion and mystical experience are evident in
people whom he refers to as “self-actualizers.”
The people whom I am admiring and labeling to be successful
creative artists are essentially the same people whom Maslow
and Wilber have been studying and analyzing. These are also the
same people who Rank (1932) was writing about in the context of
the “modern artist,” Schachtel (1959) was focusing on in his concepts
of “activity-affect” and “allocentric perception,” Kubie (1958)
was claiming are truly creative by allowing their “pre-conscious”
mental processes to emerge, and Barron (1972) has studied in the
context of young student artists. I believe that we are all studying
the same phenomenon: human excellence in terms of artistic,
creative, and spiritual potential. The basic framework I am offering
for the phenomenon of the successful creative artist can be
traced back at least as far as Carl Jung (1936, 1961) and his
theory of individuation. In more recent times, there has been
much overlap between creative artistic potential and the multiple
intelligences theory of Howard Gardner (1983).
In Gardner’s 1983 groundbreaking book,
Frames Of Mind, he
posits a number of self-contained “intelligences,” in addition to
the dominant cognitive intelligence on which our society generally
focuses. These intelligences include linguistic, musical, logical–
mathematical, spatial, bodily–kinesthetic, introspective, and
social. The major point of Gardner’s work is that the term
intelligence
is a far broader concept than the narrowly defined verbal
and analytical limitations generally assigned to it. Intelligence is
expressed through the domains of creative writing, musical ability,
artistic talent, athletic giftedness, inner awareness, and social
awareness. The theory of multiple intelligences directly reinforces
the emphasis I have been placing on the creative arts.
Through society’s ignoring of the rich array of multiple intelligences
inherent in human beings, the natural artistic talents of
individuals may also very well be ignored. It would be a fascinating
area of research to explore mental disturbance from the perspective
of these multiple intelligences. In other words, what
kinds of undeveloped intelligences potential did people have
before they took on the label of being “mentally ill”? Or even more
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Art and Mental Disturbance
importantly, what kinds of undeveloped intelligences potential do
people have who are currently designated as “mentally ill”? The
continuous and ongoing impact of Szasz (1974, 1998, 2004) since
his radically influential book
The Myth Of Mental Illness came
out in 1974 emphasizes that society may very well be labeling
people as mentally ill in many cases without justification.
Along the lines of multiple intelligences, the phenomenon
known as “indigo children” has recently been gaining public
attention and recognition, though there is certainly a divergence
of views held in regard to the alleged gifted nature of these
children.
6 The term indigo children was coined in the 1980s in the
context of parapsychology and the discovery of children who
appeared to have highly developed psychic abilities but who often
were labeled as “autistic” (Day & Gale, 2004). These children
were generally highly creative and extremely sensitive to feelings
and “vibrations,” both in their immediate environment and in faraway
places, sometimes thousands of miles away. This phenomenon
quite recently appeared in a movie entitled
Indigo Children,
starring the Conversations With God founder Neale Donald
Walsch (1995, 1997, 1998). But what I find especially interesting
and relevant to my theory of art and mental disturbance is that
these indigo children appear to be simultaneously living in the
world of artistic creativity and in the world of mental disturbance.
Their exceptional artistic and creative and psychic abilities
have been well documented, and their social challenges and
difficulties are common knowledge (Carroll & Tober, 1999; Day &
Gale, 2004). A number of alternative schools and summer camps
have been recently established to nurture the artistic potential of
these children while helping them to develop the necessary social
skills to effectively function in their societies (Day & Gale, 2004).
It leaves one to speculate how many children who have been
diagnosed as autistic may be actually indigo children in disguise,
having the potential to fully blossom in an optimal learning environment
for them. This kind of relationship between artistic creativity
and intrapsychic processes can be seen in particular detail
in Milner’s (1957) self-revealing book,
On Not Being Able to Paint,
describing her “free drawings,” and from the diverse illustrations
of the lives and artistic creative processes of a number of wellknown
creative artists portrayed in the books
Creators on
Creating
(Barron et al., 1997), Creativity and Madness (Panter
et al., 1995), and
Touched with Fire (Jamison, 1993). Once again,
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there appears to be an important but delicate relationship
between the worlds of art and mental disturbance.
Perhaps the most concrete illustration of the world of the
potential creative artist, which goes hand in hand with the world
of the self-actualized person, is given by Julia Cameron (1992) in
her book
The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity.
In this book, Cameron describes the nuts and bolts of the creative
artistic process, offering much inspiration and advice to anyone
who wants to embark on the path of the creative artist. A constant
theme of the book is that problems in life, both mental and
physical, often develop when a person is not living out his or her
artistic potential. This theme is at the cornerstone of my whole
philosophy of art and mental disturbance (Benjamin, 2005a)
7 and
is at the base of my artistic theory of psychology (Benjamin,
2006a, 2006b). Cameron (1992) describes the close connection
between artistic creativity and authentic spirituality, as she very
much associates artistic creativity with a spiritual force that goes
beyond our conscious awareness, a theme that I have discussed in
this article and that was discussed nearly a hundred years ago by
the innovative artist Wassily Kandinsky (1914). The connection
between artistic creativity and spirituality and religion had been
studied from an extensive historical perspective earlier in the
century by Rank (1932). One can also find an art form in spirituality
in the context of love and sexuality, in particular from the
writings of John Welwood (1996) and David Deida (2002) and
from Fromm’s (1956) highly influential book in the 1950s,
The Art
of Loving
.
Perhaps the world’s most currently active and successful
spokesperson for the enhancement of artistic creative abilities in
all kinds of people, helping to move people onto the path of selfactualization,
is Jean Houston (1982, 1996). Houston has personally
worked with hundreds of thousands of people all over the
world in a diversity of cultures, teaching people to incorporate
myths into their own personal lives. In her extensive workshops,
she shows people how they can significantly extend all their
artistic “intelligences,” from kinesthetic to linguistic to musical to
spatial to cognitive and so on (Houston, 1982, 1996). Houston is
certainly a larger-than-life human being, and I consider her to be
a successful creative artist in the context of artistic philosophy, as
she not only is widely acknowledged as an innovator and leader
in her art form but also appears to be extremely well-adjusted to
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both her society and her extended world. Houston has made it
her life’s mission to awaken and kindle the dormant artistic
potential of as many people in the world as she is able to reach.
Although her general focus is on the highest spectrum of human
possibilities, her workshops are open to the public and may very
well be attended by people with significant mental health challenges.
Her work is an exemplary model of the potential that an
artistic human being can achieve in life, and along with Cameron
she is serving as a catalyst for the emergence of the successful
creative artist in the context of the self-actualized person.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, there appears to be an enticing relationship
between the worlds of art and mental disturbance, although in
spite of the large amount of recent research in this area, we still do
not know the exact nature of this relationship. Focusing on the possibility
that there are a number of people designated as mentally
ill who have significant artistic creative potential within them, I
believe that incorporating an artistic theory of psychology into our
present storehouse of psychological theory and therapy, as I have
suggested in this article, could be an effective means of humanistically
encouraging this creative artistic potential to emerge. The
artistic theory of psychology places the successful creative artist
(as I have defined him or her) at the highest levels of Maslow’s
hierarchy and suggests that some people who are mentally disturbed
may have significant creative artistic potential within them
that could be actualized through the nurturance of a sensitive, supportive,
and understanding educational environment.
PERSONAL POSTSCRIPT
In 1980 I attempted to transform my idealistic community learning
center, Natural Dimension Teaching Agency, in Northampton,
Massachusetts, into a part-time community mental health center, in
response to the release of a large number of mental patients from
Northampton State Hospital into the Northampton community.
Having worked as a mental health attendant on the psychiatric
wards of Northampton State Hospital on the overnight shift for
six months, I was eager to offer both the philosophy and learning
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enrichment activities of my community learning center to the exmental
patients who were suddenly out in the community with
very little preparation for all they would encounter. Following, I
give a description of the two most eccentric, unusual, and brilliant
Northampton State Hospital ex-mental patients whom I
met in conjunction with the above program. The first ex-patient I
will describe was also a street actor, poet, and ex-history teacher;
I will refer to him by the fictitious name of Patrick O’Brian.
I first came into contact with Patrick while I was still working
at Northampton State Hospital as a night attendant. I had been
attending a weekly sensitivity group at the hospital, and our
group decided to show a film to the hospital staff made by a group
of radical ex-mental patients; the group’s name was “On Our
Own,” and the film was being promoted by a political mental
health advocate (and ex-California State Senator) named John
Vasconcellos. The film accurately depicted the boring monotony of
everyday hospital life and starred Patrick O’Brian, the veteran
Northampton State Hospital ex-patient who described his experience
of trying to practice his art of street theatre and of being
unjustifiably locked up in Northampton State Hospital, where he
was forced to take medication against his will, given shock treatments,
etc., and which all very much reminded me of one of my
favorite films—
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.8 I knew right
then and there that something was going through me—some
spark of life and of cause, and I spoke to the film producer John
Vasconcellos after the film was over. I suppose if I had to pinpoint
when I first decided to make my community learning center into
a part-time community mental health center, this was it. Over
the next year I unsuccessfully played the game set forth by the
Massachusetts Department Of Mental Health, which eventually
led to my decision to close down Natural Dimension Teaching
Agency and begin my career as a mathematics professor. But in
this whole process I had learned much about what to do and what
not to do when working with mental health clients, for I had
attended a number of sessions of the “On Our Own” group and
had been working very closely with one of its leading members:
Al Daly (another fictitious name).
If my mental health program had been funded by the
Department of Mental Health, Al was going to be one of the first
staff members of Natural Dimension Teaching Agency, working
as an outreach worker in charge of coordinating activities at the
agency for mental health clients. Through Al, I eventually met
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Art and Mental Disturbance
the controversial personality of Patrick O’Brian, and this was an
experience I shall never forget. For after inviting Al, Patrick, and a
few other “On Our Own” members over to my agency to sit on my
pillows on the floor and “rap,” I ended up reading one of my favorite
personal essays. In this essay I talked about my self-realization
after reading “Demian” by Hermann Hesse (1925, 1965) and of my
feeling that I could become a potential leader in the movement of
humanistic psychology. Patrick took exception to the term
“leader,” and I asked him if he could wait until I finished reading
my essay before we discussed this, as reading an essay was
always somewhat of an emotional experience for me (and still is),
and I considered this particular essay to be one of my deepest.
Patrick obliged me and respectfully waited for me to finish reading.
When I finished reading my essay, I tried to explain to him
and the others how I did not mean anything condescending by
the term “leader.” Al tried to help me out by confirming how I
never told anyone what to do or pressured anyone but that I was
only interested in giving people space and room to grow. I tried to
explain to Patrick that I also saw him as a “leader” and that leadership
could be used in a positive, constructive way. But Patrick
did not buy this, as he said that he was merely being himself and
that he was no more a leader than anyone else in the room. I still
did not agree with him, as I believed that I saw through his qualities
that he did not want to consciously admit to himself. But
then I made the cardinal sin. I invoked my guide and hero of psychology
at that time, Carl Rogers (1961, 1969), to explain how one
could be a leader through being a “facilitator.”
Well, I never would have believed that such a good, innocent
word could evoke the storm that it did, for Patrick O’Brian
revealed to me all his inner turmoil and fury. All of a sudden I
heard the screams and shouts of a wild maniac; I saw the deep
green eyes of an ageless, long-haired, bearded man who had gone
wild—peering face-to-face into my own eyes. “Facilitator!” he
screamed at me. “You dare to use this word that has destroyed so
much in this world. All that has been done to me in the name of
‘facilitator’ and you say this word to me!” If ever I had wished I
could take back a word that I had said, this was the time. I saw
my hopeful establishment of my innovative mental health center
fading before my eyes, but what was even scarier to me, as
Patrick’s intensity and anger grew and grew, I began to see even
my own life potentially fading before my eyes. Patrick continued
his mounting monologue: “I ate shit in the hospital! Do you hear
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that—I ate shit! And you dare to tell me you are a facilitator! Well
fuck you, man.You’re like all the rest of them—and I’ll have nothing
to do with you or your fucking program.” And as Patrick’s face
and eyes were half an inch away from my own, I began to remember
back to my prior karate lessons in case I should happen to
need them. But out of the corner of my eye, I could see my pictures
of Einstein, Beethoven, and Hermann Hesse looking at me,
and somehow I knew that what was happening was fully necessary.
Out of the corner of my other eye, I could see the members
of “On Our Own” staring at our contest, watching it like a movie,
wondering if I were going to come out of it alive. I knew Al was
there, and I believed he would help me if it came down to a fight,
and this gave me some courage. I returned Patrick’s silent stare
with all the TRs (Training Routines) from Scientology
9 I had
learned, and this seemed to calm him down a little. I instinctively
understood how people were murdered on impulse, and I knew I
had to be extra careful with the tone and meaning of every word
I uttered from then on.
I communicated with Patrick; I reached him. I calmly acknowledged
the piercing sorrow of his experiences with psychologists
who called themselves facilitators, and I apologized for using a
term that upset him so much. Finally, to my utter relief and
thankfulness, Patrick seemed to back down from me. He asked
someone else to read something, and we all listened to some
poetry from another member of the group
A few years earlier I had seen a film called
Asylum which portrayed
an experimental therapeutic community formed by R.D.
Laing which consisted of schizophrenic patients and a staff of
doctors and attendants. But everyone lived in their own apartments
in the community, wore ordinary street clothes, and one
could not tell who were patients and who were doctors, as there
were no labels put on anyone in the community—neither patients
nor doctors. Laing believed that these “patients” needed to live
out their schizophrenic experiences and that it could lead to subsequent
personal growth and awareness (1967). Laing profoundly
respected people’s experiences, and he viewed what is referred to
as mental illness to be a mode of experience that we do not know
enough about to label—either as completely bad or as good. As I
have described throughout this article, I am in essential agreement
with Laing, for I believe that in a fair number of cases one
can view mental illness as being the artistic potential of a creative
process but an artistic potential that has been driven to
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destructive rather than constructive modes of expression. I think
back again to Al Daly as an example of this radical conception of
mental illness as the artistic potential of a creative process, driven
to destructive modes of expression. At the time that I knew
him, Al was a 30-year-old man who had tried to kill himself over
fifteen times in his life. He was considered such a suicide risk
that no mental health agency even wanted to take him when he
was released from Northampton State Hospital a year before I
met him. But by the time that I first discovered “On Our Own,”
Al was one of the leading spokespersons for ex-patients from the
hospital, attended conferences on mental health in all parts of the
country, and was sought after by the local newspaper reporters in
our Northampton community. Al had been attending weekly support
group meetings at my agency for seven months, and had said
that he felt more comfortable at my agency than anywhere else
he went.
10 Al was fascinated by religion and mystical experiences
and especially by extra-sensory perception and psychic phenomena,
and I was fascinated by these same things. I saw Al as an
unfortunate combination of beauty, intelligence, and creative
artistic potential following destructive rather than constructive
paths. And Al knew that Natural Dimension Teaching Agency
was a place where all of his creative energy and artistic potential
were accepted, encouraged, and reinforced.
As it turned out, there was a satisfying end to my initial
encounter with Patrick O’Brian, which occurred five months
later, during which time I had no contact with him. One day, out
of the clear blue sky, Patrick popped into my office—bare-chested
with a flower in his mouth and a book of poetry. I was working
with a math student at the time, and Patrick sincerely asked me
to continue doing what I was doing, politely asking me if it would
be alright if he played the piano. This did not seem like the same
Patrick O‘Brian I had devastatingly remembered; he seemed
much calmer and more respectful of my position. I felt both comfortable
and excited by his presence, and I sincerely appreciated
his invitation to me to just be myself. And so, I tutored my math
client (who did not seem to mind Patrick’s presence), Patrick
played the piano, composing spacey music to accompany his book
of poetry, and it felt like some kind of a freaky open education
school to me. After my math client left, I braced myself for anything,
and Patrick and I rapped as he told me how he had been in
a very intensive place five months ago when he erupted about the
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word “facilitator,” and I told him that he had made me think a lot
about my ideas. He now seemed to both respect and like me, and
I found myself beginning to both respect and like him as well. He
asked if he could come again sometime, and I said he was always
welcome to drop by, but hanging out depended upon who I was
working with at the time.We discussed the hospital, art, community
college teaching, and some common people we knew. I told
him about my child soon being born, and somehow I actually
ended up feeling like Patrick O’Brian could be a personal friend
to me. A few weeks later I came to the Social Club, which was the
club sponsored by the Department of Mental Health that Patrick
and Al attended and had good feelings about. Sure enough,
Patrick was there, and he continued to be friendly to me and
made me feel comfortable and welcome. I had explained to him
how I see myself as a philosopher but that not many people
viewed me as one. He remembered about my brother having been
in a mental hospital, and I felt like I was with people with whom
I could relate. He introduced me to one of the ex-patients from the
State hospital who he said was a talented poet and proceeded to
give me a pamphlet of some newly finished pages of her poetry.
As I began to read it I felt quite the impact from the depth and
genuineness of her writing. Her work seemed similar to me to one
of the poets in the creative writing class I had taken at my own
community learning center the past spring. When we left, I told
her how much I had enjoyed her poetry and that it was very
“real.” She seemed genuinely appreciative of my compliment, and
she asked me if I were a mental patient. I replied, “No, I’m a
philosopher.” And Patrick O’Brian laughed good-heartedly as we
said good-bye, and they all asked me to come again some time.
NOTES
1. Although I find Ayn Rand’s novels to be wonderfully inspiring, I do
have some strongly conflicting ideas from her when she describes her
philosophy of objectivism in her nonfiction books, such as in her book
The
Virtue Of Selfishness
(Rand, 1964).
2. I use the term
reality in its negative, harsh, real-world context, and
this is described in more detail in the Reality Argument section of this
article and in my book,
Art and Mental Illness (Benjamin, 2005a).
3. See in particular Wilber’s (1980) chapter “Schizophrenia and
Mysticism.”
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4. See the Conversations With God Web site at http://www.cwg.org for
information regarding Neale Donald Walsch’s books from 1998 through 2006.
5. I use the term
Self with a capital S to refer to the description of
big self
and higher self that is commonly found in Eastern philosophy.
See the writings of Ken Wilber (1980, 1995, 2000, 2006) for a description
of the higher levels of consciousness that correspond to the notion of Self.
6. See my article “Integral Psychology and an Artistic View of Mental
Disturbance” (Benjamin, 2006b) for an association of the controversy of
indigo children with Wilber’s theory of the pretrans fallacy, which
describes how prerational and transrational stages of consciousness can
be mistaken for each other.
7. My book
Art and Mental Illness includes excerpts from my unpublished
semiautobiographical novel,
The Maturation of Walter Goldman, and
excerpts from my unpublished book of personal and philosophical essays,
Natural Dimension
. It also includes a description of my preliminary mental
health program in Massachusetts in 1980 through my community learning
center, Natural Dimension Teaching Agency (subsequently renamed Natural
Dimension Learning Center).
8. For Ken Kesey’s book upon which the movie was based, see
One Flew
Over The Cuckoo’s Nest
(Kesey, 1962).
9. See the Scientology essays in my
Modern Religions book (Benjamin,
2005a).
10. See Al Daly’s letter of support for my community mental health
program in Chapter 17 of my
Art And Mental Illness book (Benjamin, 2005b).
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