Mixed-media and glass artist Ginny Ruffner recovered from a near fatal car accident and a coma for five weeks and was confined to a hospital for five months.

A description on her site ginnyruffner.com about the documentary about her: A Not So Still Life says, “Doctors were convinced that she would never walk or talk again, but true to her indomitable spirit, she transformed a potentially tragic accident into a career of even more imaginative creations.

“From pop-up books, to room-sized installation pieces, to public works, Ruffner’s art has blossomed and continues to expand.”

Here is a clip from the movie.

Video: Artist Ginny Ruffner: a not so still life

In her review – ‘A Not So Still Life’: Ginny Ruffner documentary draws you in – Moira Macdonald says it is “an inspiring tale of rehabilitation and recovery. About 20 years ago, Ruffner suffered a severe head injury in a car accident; family members, in the documentary, tearfully recall that she was near death, and that the idea of her walking and talking again seemed an impossible dream.

“‘My mind was like a big empty house that you know you used to live in,’ reminisces Ruffner in the film, in a slurred but quite intelligible voice, of the weeks and months following her accident, as she struggled to remember what and who she was. Characteristically, she transformed her struggle into art: As she slowly learned to walk again with the help of a cane, she created a series of playful animal sculptures with ‘balance’ as their theme.”

In her article Ginny Ruffner’s art blooms at Bellevue Arts Museum and on film, Gayle Clemans notes “Ruffner’s determination and her humorous, philosophical approach to life served her well during her lowest point. She is reluctant to dwell on ‘the big, bad time’ of the early 1990s, when she was in a nearly fatal car accident that left her in a coma for five weeks and then unable to walk or talk.

“Now, almost 20 years after her remarkable recovery, Ruffner is mobile, vocal and very active despite some lingering limitations. She says that the experience ‘has made me more creative. There are some things that I can’t do physically, so I have to find ways to find solutions, to be more creative.’

“Her work has gotten increasingly large and complex. Like many contemporary artists, she hires specialists to help her realize her artistic goals, saying, ‘When I can’t make something, I find people who can. It’s the smart thing to do.’”

Book: The Imagination Cycle, by Ginny Ruffner.

The documentary “A Not So Still Life” and many other inspirational movies for personal growth are available to members of the Spiritual Cinema Circle.

This image of Ruffner at work in her studio is from The GLASS Quarterly Hot Sheet post: 3 Questions For … Ginny Ruffner.

Beliefs and thinking and our creative lives

The parts of her story I particularly appreciate are Ruffner’s “philosophical approach to life” and her willful rejection of opinions that she would never walk or talk again.

How many people in vulnerable physical or mental conditions get authoritative opinions from medical experts that are incomplete or downright wrong about the person’s capacity to deal with the condition? How many people just accept what “the doctor” says as the most valid truth?

People like Ruffner don’t just accept, they stay actively in charge of their own lives and health as much as possible, demonstrating how much impact thoughts and beliefs can have on our physical being.

Psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) is a growing field that looks at how that works. It is “the study of the interaction between psychological processes and the nervous and immune systems of the human body. PNI takes an interdisciplinary approach, incorporating psychology, neuroscience, immunology, physiology, pharmacology, molecular biology, psychiatry, behavioral medicine, infectious diseases, endocrinology, and rheumatology.” [Wikipedia]

The placebo effect is not to be dismissed as “only mental” – it is another experience in which beliefs and emotions can have profound impacts on our body and health.

Here are a couple of related books:

The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions, by Esther M. Sternberg, MD.

Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine, by Candace B. Pert, PhD.

The Biology of Belief, by Bruce Lipton, MD.

Also see articles by Morty Lefkoe. A profile by the Institute of Noetic Sciences notes that he “made a series of discoveries that allowed him to help people make permanent changes in their emotions and behavior” through his Lefkoe Belief Process.

You can try his belief change process free at ReCreate Your Life.

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As Dr. Gary  Small, Direc­tor of UCLA’s Mem­ory Clinic and Cen­ter on Aging, said in an interview, “Our study ‘Your brain on Google: Pat­terns of cere­bral acti­va­tion dur­ing Inter­net search­ing’ (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Geri­atric Psy­chi­a­try 2009;17:116–126) showed that Inter­net savvy older adults had sig­nif­i­cantly greater neural activ­ity search­ing online com­pared with inter­net naive con­trols.

“Our fol­low up of this study showed that after one week of search­ing, there were sig­nif­i­cant increases in brain activ­ity in the pre­vi­ously naive subjects.”

From Transcript: Dr. Gary Small on Enhancing Memory and the Brain By: SharpBrains, Nov 1, 2011.

Gary Small is author of The Memory Bible: An Innovative Strategy For Keeping Your Brain Young.

Related book: The Sharp Brains Guide to Brain Fitness: 18 Interviews with Scientists, Practical Advice, and Product Reviews, to Keep Your Brain Sharp, by Alvaro Fernandez, Elkhonon Goldberg.

But cognitive health and ability is vital at any age, and crucial for life success and creative thinking.

Using the web may be helpful, but it is a relatively unstructured activity compared with brain training games or cognitive fitness training, such as the programs from Posit Science and Lumosity described below.

Although there are plenty of dubious programs online, these two companies seem to have some of the best scientific confirmation and user testimonials, at least from my research.

Combating decline

A review article on brain training technology in a 2009 issue of Scientific American Mind quoted Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, about how the article author’s cognitive abilities will change (along with the rest of us):

“You’re going to slowly decline in operating speed. Your brain will become noisier and noisier in its processing.”

“Age-related cognitive decline, Merzenich says, is a combination of physical changes and negative brain plasticity. A way to combat that is “to train regularly using any of an increasingly wide range of software products designed expressly for the purpose, says Merzenich, who founded Posit Science, which makes one such package.”

From article: Brain Trainers: A Workout for the Mind, by Kaspar Mossman.

n her Health Section article in the Los Angeles Times (“Healthy holidays, with our gift ideas“  December 12, 2011), Melissa Healy writes:

“Research tells us that for brains as for muscles, it’s either ‘use it or lose it’ — those who are intellectually engaged are less likely to show signs of dementia.

“One of the most affordable, engaging and demonstrably effective sources of brain-training games is Lumosity, produced by the San Francisco-based Lumos Labs. Lumosity’s online games exercise a variety of cognitive skills, including working memory, spatial perception, attention, speed and mental agility.

“They have great graphics and give subscribers excellent feedback to ensure progress. Plus, these games really are undergirded by strong research…

“Other games can be purchased on CD-ROMs, including brain-fitness programs from Posit Science that focus on auditory and visual processing — cognitive skills that directly affect reaction time and working memory.”

Posit Science

The Posit Science site lists research studies in the Journal of the American Medical Association, The Journals of Gerontology and other academic publications. The site also has free brain performance tests.

Testimonials include these two:

Sueann Mark, PhD, found out that she had breast cancer. Chemotherapy saved her life, but it also took a toll on her mental abilities. She was suffering the effects of “chemobrain,” a condition associated with chemotherapy that results in decreased mental function. “I had the attention span of a 2-year-old,” says Dr Mark. “I couldn’t remember appointments, where I put things and I had trouble finding the right word.” Dr. Mark says she started to notice changes just a couple of weeks into the Posit Science training. “My attention span was getting longer. I could read through entire articles that a couple of weeks ago I couldn’t get through. Knowing that I was exercising my mind and reactivating it was really comforting to me.”

As a physician by training, Dr. Greg Robinson, 53, could always count on a sharp mind and keen memory. So when HIV-associated cognitive impairments first developed in his early forties, the contrast was pronounced. “I had short term memory problems so that I couldn’t remember lists of things beyond two or three,” recalls Robinson. “I had difficulty remembering names and getting a hold of common words.” At the end of the training, Robinson was amazed by “the tremendous positive benefits.” His memory returned, his dexterity, his faculty with numbers—all of the cognitive impairments he experienced before were gone or greatly reduced.

The article mentioned above: Brain Trainers: A Workout for the Mind, by Kaspar Mossman, also mentions a Mayo Clinic study of the Brain Fitness Program by Posit Science.

“Encour­agingly, the researchers found that the software boosted the brain in ways unrelated to the training. Rather than simply learning to parrot back what they had practiced, participants improved their test scores across a range of brain functions, says clinical neuropsychologist Glenn Smith, who led the study.

“People who used the program bolstered their working memory—the system that holds information in mind momentarily in tasks such as dialing phone numbers—and processing speed, two assets that deteriorate with age.”

Posit Science site

Posit Science Brain Fitness Program [at Amazon.com]

Lumosity

A recent Fast Company article notes “over 14 million people in 180 countries either subscribe to Lumosity’s website or have downloaded one of its iPhone apps.”

[From Why "Brain Gyms" May Be The Next Big Business, BY E.B. Boyd, Jun 16, 2011.]

“Your brain, in some ways, is like a muscle,” says Tim Chang, a partner at Norwest Venture Partners, which invested in Lumos Labs. “It needs to be kept in shape.” Lumosity doesn’t feel like mindless, monotonous work. It’s a game, and it’s captivating, Chang says.

“The part that’s very compelling is the more you play, the more you learn about yourself,” he says. “It’s even more compelling in some ways than the gym.”

From Brain-training games are new exercise craze, By Rachel Roubein, USA TODAY 8/24/2011.

The Lumosity site lists a number of testimonials, including:

“Lumosity’s daily training doesn’t take much time. It’s fun, and I can really see an improvement in my ability to think through and quickly understand new processes in my job.” -Alison B., 20

“I do a Lumosity training session daily and feel the BPI gains at work all the time. I’m much more organized, focused and I maintain better attention because of the work I do on Lumosity. I find this site so incredible that I recommend it to everyone.” -Angela B., 32

Lumosity site

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Molière: “No matter what Aristotle and the Philosophers say, nothing is equal to tobacco; it’s the passion of the well-bred, and he who lives without tobacco lives a life not worth living.”

“While I was doing Eraserhead I had 40 coffees every day and I smoked 40 cigarettes.” – David Lynch

Filmmaker, musician and visual artist David Lynch has also said, “Cigarettes are pretty much my worst vice, and I even stopped smoking for 20 years. I spend most of my free time with my family and working on art.”

But he is apparently still a chain smoker – a nicotine addict – like many other artists have been.

“It is no coincidence that one of the most prominent pro-smokers in Britain is David Hockney; and he is just one of many artists who can’t do without nicotine…consider a group photograph called The Irascibles, portraying the New York school of painters at the moment of their breakthrough in 1950.

“While Jackson Pollock manages to conceal any booze he may have about his person, Mark Rothko nervously holds a cigarette. In fact, almost every photo of Rothko shows this unhappy man smoking, without a trace of pleasure.”

Continued: Smoking and Creativity.
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“The Creative Adult is the Child Who Survived” – From the facebook page of Artizen Magazine

A couple of related posts:

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

Healing and art: SARK and others on abuse and creativity

3 Things To Learn From The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo – A Gifted Trauma Survivor, By Lisa Erickson, MS, LMHC

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That is a quote by Christina Ricci from a 1998 Rolling Stone interview.

Studies typically find that about 6-8 percent of adolescents and young adults report current, chronic self-injury. Most self-injure for emotional regulation.

Continued: » Mental Health Day: Self-Injury – The Creative Mind
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Dr. Cheryl Arutt

Topics in our audio interview include high sensitivity, regulating disruptive feelings, destructiveness vs creativity, pain and creativity, being unconventional vs rebellion against the self, the fight-or-flight response, and other issues which can impact creative artists and other people as well.

Listen to the interview: Psychologist Cheryl Arutt on Creative Artist Issues.

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Video from World Science Festival: ‘Genius’ Dark Cousin’ – “When talking about geniuses, the conversation inevitably strays towards topics of eccentricity, or even madness. One needs only to look at the lives of artists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Mark Rothko, or to mathematician John Nash (pictured)—whose battle with paranoid schizophrenia was made famous in the film A Beautiful Mind—as examples of the thin line between brilliance and insanity.

“But is there really anything to this idea of the “tortured genius”? Or is it just a romanticized notion exaggerated by film and literature? Philip Glass and Julie Taymor respond to striking data presented by Dean Keith Simonton, a psychologist who has studied the nature of genius for decades.”

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Here is a brief video interview with Shelley Carson, Ph.D. of Harvard University, who teaches and conducts research on creativity, psychopathology, and resilience.

Also listen to my podcast interview: Shelley Carson on enhancing our creative brain

Her book: Your Creative Brain: Seven Steps to Maximize Imagination, Productivity, and Innovation in Your Life.

But how valid is the research, and do these notions imply we are more likely to be creative if we have mental health challenges, if we’re unusually neurotic or a bit crazy?

Director Tim Burton may be acclaimed for his films, including “Alice in Wonderland,” but has also been called ‘crazy’ (at least in part for his appearance) or at least ‘eccentric’ – perhaps a polite cover label for ‘mad.’

He has even exploited that sort of reaction, he says: “If you want people to leave you alone then appearing to be crazy is a good thing. If you’re walking down the street talking to yourself people tend to give you a wide berth! But I’ve always been blessed with being easily ignored or avoided. I think maybe it’s because people think I look a little crazy.”

He added, “I have always been an outsider. As a kid I identified with the monsters in the old horror films, like the ‘Creature from the Blue Lagoon’ and ‘Frankenstein’.” [From post 'Crazy' Tim Burton, emusic.tv]

Photo from post Tim Burton on nurturing his unique creative vision

Psychosis

Cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman, Ph.D., addresses this topic in a new post of his.

“I do believe that If the mental processes associated with psychosis were evaporated entirely from this world, art would suck. But so would a lot of other things that require imagination.

He notes that psychosis is on a continuum: “Too much psychosis and one is at high risk of going mad. But everyone engages in psychosis-related thought any time they use their imagination. This type of thought activates particular regions of the brain and is especially prominent while day-dreaming and night-dreaming.”

He thinks that without the “ability to transcend immediate reality, art would lose its creativity. Far from insulting artists, I think it makes us appreciate artists even more, and their ability to show us worlds that many not exist yet, but are possible.”

He asks, “So is extreme, debilitating psychosis a prerequisite for art? Absolutely not. Severe mental illness is nothing to take lightly, and can make it very difficult to produce art.”

In a response to a comment, he explains further: “I do not think a ‘psychotic episode’ is necessary for art, but mental processes such as a reduced latent inhibition can be very useful for art. The continuum aspect is key. Extreme psychosis can lead to a psychotic episode, completely detached from reality. That isn’t very adaptive. But there is a sweet spot in which you still use your imagination but have a healthy foot in reality. That sweet spot is one which is heavily conducive to flow, a state that many artists (and other creative people) seek.”

From his post Is Psychosis a Prerequisite for Art?

Madness

“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence.” Edgar Allan Poe

That quote comes from my post Our continuing fascination with creativity and madness which links to the article Creativity, the Arts, and Madness, by Maureen Neihart, Psy.D., who writes:

“The notion that  inspiration requires  regression and dipping into irrationality in order to access unconscious symbols and thought has been popular across disciplines for hundreds of years. Plato said that creativity is a “divine madness…a gift from the gods”.

She adds a quote attributed to Aristotle: “No great genius was without a mixture of insanity.”

But is that really true?

One consequence of accepting this sort of mythology is you may think you have to be ‘crazier’ than you are in order to be a ‘real artist.’

Or, that you should suffer with depression or other mental health challenges, rather than treat them and ‘lose your creative edge.’

Nonsense.

As musician Sting comments, “Do I have to be in pain to write? I thought so, as most of my contemporaries did; you had to be the struggling artist, the tortured, painful, poetic wreck.

“I tried that for a while, and to a certain extent that was successful. I was ‘The King of Pain’ after all. I only know that people who are getting into this archetype of the tortured poet end up really torturing themselves to death.”

From post Pain and suffering and developing creativity

Pathology and creative ability

In his PowerPoint presentation Creativity and Psychopathology [html] [PPT] creativity researcher Dean Keith Simonton, PhD notes, “Few creative individuals can be considered truly mentally ill. Indeed, outright disorder usually inhibits rather than helps creative expression. Furthermore, a large proportion of creators exhibit no symptoms, at least not to any measurable degree.”

But he also notes that “because some psychopathological symptoms correlate with several of the characteristics making up the creativity cluster, moderate amounts of these symptoms will be positively associated with creative behavior.”

He explains further that “psychopathology is not the only possible source for the creativity cluster. The environment can also nurture creative development. Although some of these developmental influences are also associated with psychopathology, others are not.”

He concludes, “Psychopathology and creativity are closely related, sharing many traits and antecedents, but they are not identical, and outright psychopathology is negatively associated with creativity.

“This fits what Dryden said about the “thin partition” separating “great wits” and “madness. Or, as the highly creative but not truly crazy Surrealist painter Salvador Dali once expressed the distinction: “The only difference between me and a madman is that I’m not mad.”

One of Dean Keith Simonton’s books is Origins of Genius: Darwinian Perspectives on Creativity

Crazy is hard-wired. Oh, really?

In her article The Continuing Adventures of the Mad Musician and the Bipolar Genius, Dr. Judith Schlesinger covered a lot about this topic, and writes:

“Great talent always comes at a great price. To be a genius means to suffer—if not the chronic paralysis of depression, then surely the emotional whiplash of bipolar disorder. The exquisite sensitivity of creative artists is hard-wired with their pathology; moreover, their willingness to brave the treacherous rapids of the unconscious for inspiration makes them even more vulnerable to psychotic collapse.

“This is the heart of the ‘mad genius’ myth that has been integral to Western culture for centuries.

“It is also hogwash.

“The fact is that, despite the efforts of numerous investigators and decades of confident pronouncements by a few, there’s still no concrete, empirical proof that highly creative people are any more likely to be mood-disordered than any other group.”

don’t agree with that opinion, at least in such an extreme form. In her article, she did raise some valid-sounding criticisms of research, such as that of leading authors like psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison, whom I have quoted a number of times over the years.

In the articles linked above, and below, there are many examples of studies linking depression, neuroticism, even psychotic cognition with creative people.

But it isn’t a causal link – being “crazy” does not make you creative. It may mean you should help yourself gain better emotional health so you can be even more productive and creative.

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Related posts and articles:

Creativity, the Arts, and Madness, By Maureen Neihart, Psy.D.

Our continuing fascination with creativity and madness

Creativity and madness: High ability and schizophrenia

On creativity and intelligence, By Dean Keith Simonton, PhD

Highly sensitive people: latent inhibition and creativity – Reduced latent inhibition has been associated with schizophrenia, and creativity.

creativity and mood, creativity and pathology, creativity and depression, artists and depression, artists and mental health, artists and mental illness, madness and creativity

In our podcast interview, Dr. Diamond talks about actors who have shown a dark and violent side, such as Christian Bale (“Batman”), and how therapy helps people navigate the ‘benevolent possession’ of creativity and the challenges of being closer to its source in the daimonic side of our psyche.

[Photo of Bale from my post: Creative potential – Anger and creativity.]

In his guest article on this topic, Morty Lefkoe writes about getting in touch with his own anger:

“The first time I really allowed myself to experience my anger I fainted. I was about 36 and had successfully suppressed my anger since childhood.

“And there I was in a group therapy session, hitting a mat with a stick with foam wrapped around it, screaming: ‘Mom, I’m really angry at you.’

“When I started the exercise I was only mouthing empty words, but then at some point the words became real and the anger surfaced. It terrified me so much that I literally passed out on the mat.”

Lefkoe notes, “In addition to the fact that suppressing your anger is suppressing a part of yourself—in other words, having a part of you be unknown to you—suppressed anger has been implicated in serious illnesses, especially heart diseases.”

He goes on to write about how beliefs fuel anger, and when those related beliefs can be eliminated, “a large part of one’s anger would be dissipated.”

Continued in his article How to Control Your Anger.

Although it is somewhat of a media-influenced stereotype, the cultural image of the “mad genius” has stayed with us, and that’s because many of the qualities attributed to highly successful people (i.e. that they are crazy or insane) are quite true.

Especially for those of us who are creative and active people, we shouldn’t be ashamed if we struggle with problems of a personal nature.

Here are a few people who made it big, but who cope with the same difficulties that many of us creatives sometimes face.

Continued in her article: Method in the Madness: 5 Successful People Who’ve Struggled with Psychiatric Disorders

Also see more Mental health & fitness articles, and a number of posts on mental health.

Darold Treffert, M.D. notes, “Savant syndrome is a rare but remarkable condition in which people with developmental disabilities, including autism or other central nervous system disorders, have some remarkable islands of genius that stand in stark contrast to their overall handicap.”

He refers to three levels of savant syndrome: “splinter skills…youngsters, or adults, who memorize sports trivia or birthdays or may even do some calendar-calculating…Then there’s a second level of savants that I call talented savants…Generally, they are more highly honed into one particular skill, such as music or art, for example.

“And then there’s a third level, which I call prodigious savants. These are people whose skills are so spectacular that, if they were not disabled, they would be at a genius level.”

Neurologist Oliver Sacks relates the story of a physician who was struck by a bolt of lightning, and then experienced an obsession with learning to play classical piano music, something that had never interested him.

Continued: Brain Differences and Creativity

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