Creativity and Disease: How Illness Affects Literature, Art, and Music (Philip Sandblom)Mental illness exerts a profound influence on artistic activity. In fully developed cases the creative force is weakened or totally bewitched. Works of the insane have provided fundamental insight into certain manifestations of mental disorder, and in certain cases can even help us to reach a diagnosis. Moreover, creativity often has an excellent therapeutic effect. There are, for instance, distressing conditions where, as a result of mental disease, the patient is apathetic and withdrawn, and lacks the ability to communicate with other people. If the patient can be induced to write, paint or play, the barrier may be removed so that he reestablishes contact with the environment, a change that he often perceives as an intense feeling of relief. Here is one of the links between psychiatric art and normal art. It is a fact that here, too, one of the most important inducements is a desire of the artist to communicate with his fellow men, to obtain a sense of close personal contact, and to deliver himself from suffering by creating.
To give a case history as an example: An apathetic woman stayed isolated, with no contact at all with her surroundings. When given a pencil and paper she made a drawing which is somewhat difficult to understand. According to the specialist's interpretation, the patient has drawn a picture of herself, torn by some peculiar figures that she sees in her hallucinations. She continued to draw and in this way opened up her mind still more, so that it became easier to understand what she experienced.
« Last Edit: 31 Jan, 2010, 17:54:10 by spiros »