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mental health perspectives : page 2........
.. .. Bob freaks out, gets upset -- because he thinks creatively that art should be the last thing to get lost. But five minutes later, he'll find a solution and something else that's great to replace it and make it work business-wise. |
.. .. Because there's always going to be things that spin you around and change your plans -- it happens all the time. Neve Campbell..-
referring to Robert Altman, director of
|
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......
...The World According to Mister Rogers - by Fred Rogers "The world needs a sense of worth, and it will achieve it only by its people feeling that they are worthwhile."
"The older I get, the more convinced I am that the space between communicating human beings can be hallowed ground."
"It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outside of life that ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is firm." Fred Rogers
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The media blitz, the paparazzi and frenzy [following the success of "Good Will Hunting"]... all that insanity really freaked me out. I looked deep inside myself to see if I wanted to continue doing this. The most important thing I had to learn is that there is another way to live, if I want it.
My goals have changed. Years of trying to get into the business gave me a healthy perspective on it. I don't count on Hollywood for anything. I don't look for friends there.
Matt Damon.......[Parade, Nov 30 2003] / photo by Danny Clinch for Parade
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.. .. They say that mental illness is caused by severe emotional distress, often combined with lack of socialization, and they decry the pervasive treatment with prescription drugs, sales of which have nearly doubled since 1998. Four of the 10 leading causes of disability worldwide are neuro-psychiatric disorders, according to a 2001 World Health Organization study. .... |
Only
about one in five Americans with major depression receives adequate care,
according to a recent Journal of the American Medical Assn. study.
More than 30,000 Americans committed suicide in 2001, 10,000 more than those killed in homicides that year. "The system is broken," says Robert Whitaker [photo], author of "Mad in America..." "The so-called triumph of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical model has produced the horrible outcomes we have today." from article : Losing the Mind - David Oaks and Others in the 'Mad Pride' Movement Believe Drugs Are Being Overused in Treating Mental Illness, and They Want the Abuse to Stop. By David Davis, LA Times, Oct 26, 2003 ...Mad
in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, |
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| Of
the three graduate programs at Fuller [Theological Seminary in Pasadena,
CA] -- Theology, Psychology and Intercultural Studies (formerly called
World Mission)... the theologians are the eggheads. The world missionaries
are the zealots.
A few years back, a mentally ill man wandered on campus from the streets of Pasadena, touching off an interdisciplinary turf war that sounds like legend but is fact. The School of Psychology wanted to arrange for professional counseling; two faculty in the School of World Mission attempted an exorcism; and the School of Theology, mortified, tried to debrief him. Exorcism, they declared, really wasn't scriptural. The World Missionaries stood firm. In fact, they were moving to produce, in the manner of Caltech's map of earthquake faults, a district census of L.A.'s demonic strongholds, identifying mid-level demons reporting to a Demon Prince who reigned above them. |
.. .. from article: Jesus With a Genius Grant, by Alan Rifkin, LA Times Nov 23 2003 Rifkin is author of book Signal Hill: Stories image from The Exorcist - based on the book |
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"As for me, I am rather often uneasy in my mind, because I think that my life has not been calm enough; all those bitter disappointments, adversities, changes keep me from developing fully and naturally in my artistic career." Vincent van Gogh - 1889 / photo and quote from vangoghgallery.com
The material artists use for their art comes from the primitive levels of their inner lives. As we mature and are "civilized," we suppress. But the artist stays in touch with and struggles to understand them. And to remain so in touch with that primitive self is to be on the fine line between sanity and madness. Barry M. Panter, MD, PhD ... [quoted on eyesofchaos.com]
....author of Creativity & Madness: Psychological Studies of Art & Artists
"Eighteen Mental Health Professionals explore the psychological and emotional issues behind the creativity of 16 famous artists, writers, and composers. Discover how depression, drug and alcohol abuse, sexuality, aggression, and other components of the human condition led to great works of art by Van Gogh, Rossini, Michelangelo, Kahlo, Virginia Woolf, Wagner, Plath, Picasso, Magritte, and others." [from book page on American Institute of Medical Education site]
And the vicissitudes of her last few years - could those have fueled the creative streak she's on? "I don't know," [Meg Ryan] considers. "I don't think you want to cultivate dramatic and traumatic experiences in your life in order to be an artist. I think that's all wrong. But you can use them.
"I also think there's a redemptive power in your own life when you go through hardships. We all have a story of personal transformation that involves trauma and drama. And I just choose to look at it like, 'It served something.'"
[from Cut to darkness - Meg Ryan, survivor, pushes beyond "America's sweetheart"
in a raw new film. By Fred Schruers, LA Times, Oct 5 2003]...bio: Meg Ryan Story
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 .. .. There was no language in it, because people couldn't hear me, but I was kissing the window and putting my breasts up there. I was fully clothed... it was supposed to be a joke -- the woman as sex object. And then I took all these bananas and I put my head up to the window and I was mushing them in my mouth... Someone called the police and said there was this woman who's on drugs, insane, and nude, let loose in this J.C. Penney window... And these two officers came and dragged me off and put me in squad car, and what I decided to do was to continue my performance.. kissing all the windows. |
I think that was sort of funny, that I continued the show and I never broke the energy. ...
The curator came up and he said to the police.. this was art.. he had asked me to perform there. What struck me was that this was art and it was okay, I could go. ... What if I was a person who didn't go to art school and wasn't given the educational privilege? I would have been arrested, if I was just a person expressing myself that way, and didn't have a curator. I thought what about if I was on drugs, or insane? It made me start thinking of things in a different way, that art is a shelter. Karen Finley from chapter "License for Madness" in book: Creators on Creating: Awakening and Cultivating the Imaginative Mind originally from book Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of |
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 .. .. "A therapist once told me that there are bad neurotics and good neurotics," Mr. [Richard] Lewis said. "Larry is neurotic, but in a really good way." from article: Larry David, a Rough-Edged Cultural Touchstone |
What I find very funny is when people just generally question the odd things Larry does.
"Why did Larry insist on folding that sweater in the store? That's just crazy!" Well, folks, it's a comedy and if Larry didn't fold the sweater and instead behaved like a normal person, there'd be no show. Maybe this is a frightening statement about myself, but I find very little of Larry's behavior outrageous. Yes, it's all amplified for comic effect, but there's little that he does on the show that I can't relate to and few opinions he expresses that I don't agree with. There--I've said it! Robert B. Weide, Co-executive producer and director of |
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I didn't come by that moniker I'm known by, "Prince of Pain," just because I spent most of my life doing charity work and helping good-natured Amish people build barns. ... I'm just your basic bad-postured, guilt-ridden ball of confusion with a trace of paranoia, self-loathing, and a little faith thrown in for some good taste. ...
I'm still a lunatic, but I'm a recovering lunatic. My life is crazier, yet happier and more productive than ever before. Sh*t happens all the time but what a pleasure that I don't create most of it anymore. What a pleasure it is to just try to do the right thing and see what happens.
What a joy to feel free of the prison of alcohol abuse! ... It's so much easier now to let the universe take care of itself without thinking like I used to, that I had something to do with it.
Richard Lewis - from his book The Other Great Depression
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When people talk about my family, they talk so much about their ability and their skill and how great they are, but then they always have to throw in, "But they were just so screwed up, and they were so crazy." I think to be really great and interesting, you have to be a little crazy. I just don't think one comes without the other. If you're too organized and methodical, you're not going to get to that insane, passionate place.
Drew Barrymore... [Inside the Actors Studio, June 2003]
..related page: ......dysfunction / disorder.........related articles:**..Common Misconceptions About the Gifted // Moods and the muse
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I.take my medicine. I never miss taking my medicine. That doesn't mean I don't still have demon thoughts about my inadequacies. It's just that I have now reached a point where I know that if I just keep moving on, those little thoughts will go their way. Patty Duke... [Lifetime / Intimate Portrait Feb 2003]
...A Brilliant Madness : Living With Manic-Depressive Illness .......
.. .. I come by my information from one Dr. Adrian Raine, a professor of psychology at USC, who published a study on the subject in the Schizophrenia Bulletin, which is a journal about, not necessarily for, those who are a little off, as my mother used to say. |
Raine, a smart,
good-natured Brit, and research assistant Todd Lencz studied 69 temporary
workers in L.A., 27 of whom were as normal as you and me (well, me, anyhow),
26 who suffered from psychiatric disorders and 16 who were really over
the edge.
I'm simplifying, of course, but then I'm a simple man. ... Raine utilized MRI, push-button responses and cards coded by colors and symbols to isolate a personality disorder he calls schizotypy, and a class of people who are schizotypals. He sees the condition as a "lite" version of schizophrenia and believes that 3% to 5% of our people suffer from it. The category includes both native Angelenos and those who move to L.A. from, say, Omaha or Idaho because of our anything-goes reputation. Raine speculated in a phone conversation that "people like that may well come here believing that if they are a bit eccentric they'll be adored or admired and not beaten by thugs with bicycle chains." Al Martinez - in his column: Los Angeles Times, Feb 17 2003 |
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Louise Bourgeois, 91, drew from both surrealism and abstract expressionism to create a style that is defiantly her own. Mining memories of a traumatic childhood, she explores themes of sexuality and family drama in room-size installations she calls "cells." With her adventurous use of latex, fabric, and other materials, she has rewritten the rules of sculpture. Recognition came late for Bourgeois, who didn't have a major public commission until 1978. She recently completed one for London's new Tate Modern.
"Art is a guarantee of sanity," Bourgeois once declared. "That is the most important thing I have said." ..
[AARP Magazine, Mar/Ap 2003]
**Destruction of the Father / Reconstruction of the Father: Writings and Interviews, 1923-1997 by Louise Bourgeois et al
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I used to be afraid of pain, until I discovered that it is intrinsic to pleasure. Pleasure is woven through with pain, in a marvelous tapestry. We live with the weavings, and in between darkness and light. If we are motivated by fear, we prefer pleasure. When we are motivated by love, we can contain both pain and pleasure. I would like to evolve into a being who lives naturally and spontaneously with both. I write and draw to discover what I know, and what I'm still learning. I'm still learning how to find pleasure during difficult times.
.... Sark.... [Science of Mind, July 2002]
from her book: Eat Mangoes Naked: Finding Pleasure Everywhere and Dancing With the Pits / her site: Camp Sark
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I am not a mechanism, an assembly of various sections. And it is not because the mechanism is working wrongly, that I am ill. I am ill because of wounds to the soul, to the deep emotional self, and the wounds to the soul take a long, long time, only time can help and patience, and a certain difficult repentance long, difficult repentance, realization of life's mistake, and the freeing oneself from the endless repetition of the mistake which mankind at large has chosen to sanctify.* ****D. H. Lawrence
*one of his books: Selected Short Stories by D. H. Lawrence
Most gifted adults have never been identified as such, and therefore tend to live an existence of borrowed identity. Many mistake their different ways of experiencing the world as signs of immaturity or character flaws. Some even misinterpret their panoramic mental processes and intensities as craziness. **Mary-Elaine Jacobsen***[Advanced Development, Volume 8, 1999]
***....The Gifted Adult: A Revolutionary Guide for Liberating Everyday Genius
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It's well known among researchers of the gifted, talented and creative that these individuals exhibit greater intensity and increased levels of emotional, imaginational, intellectual, sensual and psychomotor excitability and that this is a normal pattern of development. It is because these gifted children and adults have a finely tuned psychological structure and an organized awareness that they experience all of life differently and more Intensely than those around them.
These characteristics, however, are frequently perceived by psychotherapists and others as evidence of a mental disturbance because most of the population lacks accurate information about the special characteristics of gifted individuals, couples and families.
from article:**Misdiagnosis of the Gifted by Lynne Azpeitia, M.A. and Mary Rocamora, M.A.
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A lot of what people call mental illness and disease.. are kinds of rebellions against what's around them... if you really pay attention to these people and get to know what they're all about, they're angry, resentful... What a lot of people have done over the ages, and you see this both politically and psychologically, is [have] their rebellion without wisdom. Their rebellion becomes self-destructive.
clinical psychologist Bruce E. Levine, Ph.D.
from article: A Mad, Mad Nation - Mental Illness & the Drugging of Rebellion, interview by Silja Talvi, lipmagazine.org
*Commonsense Rebellion: Debunking Psychiatry, Confronting Society by Bruce E. Levine
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Edward Norton takes issue with the idea that the entertainment business has a disproportionate number of people who hail from dysfunctional families. "I don't think the balance is any worse in the entertainment business, I just think that there's a spotlight on that business."***[Toronto Sun, July 8, 2001]
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I don't use other people's lives or salaries as a measuring stick for my own life, and quite frankly I would be just as happy to make the same salary over and over again. This business is so evanescent that you have to be really appreciative of good fortune when it comes your way. At some point things will change for you. Even if you are at the highest high, you are going to experience some lows so it is important to have something normal to go home to.
***Reese Witherspoon*** [Reuters, Sep 24, 2002]
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| Making
the changes needed to grow spiritually and emotionally "can be painful,
but I wanted to get through to people, and I thought humor [in the book]
would be an unusual way to do it," says therapist Paula Prober.
Her advice is based on the principles of psychiatrist Carl Jung and others, and the goal is to help women tune in to their "authentic, creative, nearly enlightened selves," which she calls "our goddessness." "I've focused on women," she writes, "because I know us better." But much of her advice applies to both genders: Tip No. 1. Confront your inner critic. In Prober's case, that creature is named Godzilla. "I can't get on with changing the world when Godzilla is telling me I'm incompetent and intellectually malfunctioning," she writes. To disarm the beast, she recommends initiating a dialogue with it, in writing. |
.. .. Paula ProberM.S.,
M.Ed. - specializing in gifted children and adults
*Ten Tips for Women Who Want to Change the World Without Losing their Friends, Shirts, or Minds -- by Paula Prober *****photo from her site psychevolution.com |
related pages:**books: nurturing mental health***the shadow self***counseling
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.. .. How
has going through that [the death of her lover
Well, it certainly sent me into a pretty dark place for a while, but I think I have emerged from it a much stronger person. |
River
really embraced life in a beautiful way, obviously in another way that
ended up not so well. He was incredibly open to experiences and to life,
and I keep that with me.
I think I've also just really figured out what's important to me in my life and what isn't worth wasting time on. ... My friends, my family, the simple things in life have become very important to me. ... I became really introspective for a while, and really thought about what it is I'm doing, what's important to me, and how I want to live my life. ... And just to be really conscious of how I choose to spend my time. If I don't want to do something, I won't do it just because I feel I have to. To take care of myself. Samantha Mathis... [Detour, December 1995] |
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| Rothenberg
hypothesizes that this line is crossed, from creativity to madness, when
the creative expression is used primarily to control hostility rather than
to create.
"Just as a need to control interferes with turning destructiveness into creation in art, so it interferes with turning self-destructive feelings into a process of self-creation in life." ... There do appear to be psychological risks associated with creative giftedness and with the pursuit of exceptional creative achievement. Teachers and counselors should be aware of the vulnerability that can be associated with creative talent. They can help students and parents guard against a too ready acceptance of the popular notion that deviant or destructive behaviors are the sine qua non of outstanding creative achievement. |
.. .. from article: Creativity, the Arts, and Madness by Maureen Neihart
|
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...Albert
Rothenberg.