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The Alchemy
of Art
by Douglas Eby
Creative expression can
transform painful reactions and situations, providing strength and
understanding to change how we feel and interact with the world. Works
of art made by others can remodel our inner realities.
Some think art needs to have that kind of impact to be worthwhile.
Franz Kafka wrote, “I think we ought to read only the kind of books
that wound and stab us.. that affect us like a disaster... A book must
be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.”
Clinical and forensic psychologist Dr. Stephen Diamond says creativity
“is one of humankind's healthiest inclinations, one of our greatest
attributes,” and explains in his book, "Anger,
Madness, and the Daimonic: The Psychological Genesis of Violence,
Evil, and Creativity," that our impulse to be creative "can be
understood to some degree as the subjective struggle to give form,
structure and constructive expression to inner and outer chaos and
conflict... for meeting and redeeming one's devils and demons."
A number of actors have talked about this kind of “constructive
expression.” Sally Field was 17 when she won an audition for Gidget and
later said, "Before, I had always felt so trapped. Acting saved my
life."
Meryl Streep has said acting “has to do with working out private
passions that are almost inscrutable to me.. I just get to work out all
my murderous thoughts and my weaknesses and my failures and things I
don't want to do as a parent or work out on the family. I need [acting]
as an outlet. I love it. It feeds my imagination. It connects me to
understanding.”
Charlize Theron as a teen saw her mother shoot her father in self
defense, and says work has helped her deal with it: "I think acting has
healed me. I get to let it out. I get to say it and feel it in my work
and I think that's why I don't go through my life walking with this
thing, and suffering."
Like a number of other powerful actors, Charles Dutton has prison
experience, in jail at 17 for murder. He developed an interest in
theater, and after his release was accepted at the Yale School of Drama.
Speaking of prison, in her book Gifted
Grownups: The Mixed Blessings of
Extraordinary Potential, Marylou Kelly Streznewski says that gifted
people “form a disproportionately larger portion of the prison
population, perhaps as much as 20%... in contrast to the 3 to 5% of the
general public. Is the conflict created by being ‘different’ connected
to antisocial attitudes and behaviors? Do they get into trouble because
it is fun? Or interesting? Or a clever game? Does crime have its roots
in deep hurts?”
Those “deep hurts” can also fuel creative projects. Director Allison
Anders made her film "Things Behind the Sun" as a way to deal with her
rape. Native American painter Roxanne Chinook says her art helps
healing from the traumas of her past: “The process of creating
strengthens and restores my spirit.”
Rosanne Cash deals with the recent deaths of both her mother and
father, Johnny, in her new album "Black
Cadillac," and noted in a Los
Angeles Times interview: "I'm not the first person to make an album
about death; I'm not even the first person in my family. My dad made
music about his own death coming. He was an artist, and he could use
his own life in an unsentimental way to make art. He was unafraid. For
the rest of us that could be hard. But I understand it. And I learned
from it."
The book Emotional
Alchemy by Tara Bennet-Goleman is about dealing wtih
negative thoughts and emotions that “disturb our inner equilibrium,”
as the Dalai Lama writes in the foreword. Psychologist Bennet-Goleman
says the antidote for such disturbance "is mindfulness, which involves
being aware of our emotions without being ruled by them."
Creative expression, like psychotherapy and spiritual development, can
be a way to become more aware, and also deal with high sensitivity.
Among other experts, Linda Kreger Silverman, PhD, director of the
Gifted Development Center in Denver, says gifted and creative people
tend to be emotionally sensitive throughout life.
That kind of intensity and sensitivity can lead to strong passions like
anger. Dr. Diamond says there is "a very strong correlation between
anger, rage and creativity. Most of us tend to view anger or rage
negatively, associating it almost exclusively with destructiveness and
violence. Certainly this correlation exists. But anger can also
motivate constructive and creative behavior."
He continues, "The more conflict, the more rage, the more anxiety there
is, the more the inner necessity to create. We must also bear in mind
that gifted individuals.. feel this inner necessity even more
intensely, and in some respects experience and give voice not only to
their own demons but the collective daimonic as well."
In his book, Diamond writes about painter and sculptor Niki de St.
Phalle, who was able to find "a fertile outlet for her ferocious rage
toward men - and the dominant masculine art establishment” - in the
creative expression of violence in her work: "Her famous 'shooting
paintings' resulted from firing live ammunition at paint-filled,
white-washed balloons mounted on a blank, virginal canvas.
"Thus, rather than becoming a crazed killer or vengeful victimizer of
men,” Dr. Diamond explains, “de St. Phalle's fury -- some of which
stemmed from having been sexually abused by her father -- fostered a
fecund creativity, that served her well throughout her prolific career."
Judith Orloff M.D. in her book Positive
Energy, says creativity is “the
mother of all energies, nurturer of your most alive self. It charges up
every part of you. This energy rises from your own life force and from
a larger spiritual flow.”
Even if you aren’t an “artist” - or don’t even want to be identified
that way - you can help improve your emotional health through creative
expression: perform in a community theater play, write a memoir, take a
watercolor class, or do something else to express your demons in
positive ways.
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related pages :
abuse &
creative
expression
healing
& art.articles sites
books
memoir /
journaling
books
nurturing
mental health : acting......
nurturing
mental health :
films/filmmaking......
nurturing
mental health : sites / programs......
nurturing
mental health : writing
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