Avances en Salud Mental Relacional / Advances in relational mental health
Vol. 6, núm.1 - Marzo 2007
Órgano Oficial de expresión de la Fundación OMIE
Revista Internacional On-line / An International On-line Journal
José Guimón, Art and Madness
(Contemporary European Cultural Studies)
Art and Madness offers a critical review of current theories on the relationship
between artistic creativity and the psychiatric disturbances that can favor this
creativity, the psychodynamic mechanisms proposed by psychoanalysts to
explain creativity, and the psychosociological factors that play a role in
creativity.
Using a series of vignettes throughout that incorporate brief biographical
outlines and psychopathological portraits of artists like De Kooning, Virginia
Woolff, Frida Kahlo, Oscar Wilde, Verlaine, Rimbaud and others, the author
serves up a rich offering of conditions ranging from psychotic states, to
physical defects, to sadomasochism, to exhibitionism, and includes a
discussion on the limits between obscenity, pornography and progressive
political action.
He concludes with a summary and some conclusions concerning many of the
aspects in which the psycho-biographies presented can reinforce consideration
of the respective importance of the processes of homeostasis that regulate
psychic equilibrium in artists.
The book is divided into three parts. Part I reviews the mechanisms involved in
artistic creativity and the psychiatric disturbances that can favor this creativity.
In Part II the author summarizes the psychodynamic mechanisms proposed by
psychoanalysts to explain creativity. Part III looks at psychosociological
factors that play a role in creativity through an examination of different
modernist and postmodern movements in the arts.
Brief biographical outlines are included throughout the text, some quite
extensive, of selected modern artists, writers and painters from various
countries. The author has contributed psychopathological portraits about some
aspects of their lives and works that serve to illustrate some of the proposed
neuropsychological mechanisms reviewed in Parts I and II.
The author concludes with a summary and some conclusions concerning many
of the aspects in which the psycho-biographies presented can reinforce
consideration of the respective importance of the processes of homeostasis that
regulate psychic equilibrium in artists.
Abbreviated Table of Contents
Preface xi
Part I Disinhibition and Creativity
ASMR Revista Internacional On-line - Dep. Leg. BI-2824-01 - ISSN 1579-3516
CORE Academic, Instituto de Psicoterapia, Manuel Allende 19, 48010 Bilbao (España)
Copyright © 2007
Avances en Salud Mental Relacional / Advances in relational mental health
Vol. 6, núm.1 - Marzo 2007
Órgano Oficial de expresión de la Fundación OMIE
Revista Internacional On-line / An International On-line Journal
Chapter 1. Is there a hereditary disposition to creativity?
Chapter 2. The disinhibition of cortical control
Chapter 3. Psychological characteristics
Chapter 4. Creativity and drugs
Chapter 5. Anxiety and depersonalisation
Chapter 6. Psychotic experiences
Chapter 7. Affective disorders
Part II Psychodynamic Mechanisms
Chapter 8. The emergence of the unconscious
Chapter 9. Perversion and artistic creativity
Chapter 10. The uncanny
Chapter 11. Narcissistic traumas
Chapter 12. Alterations of the image of the body
Chapter 13. Grief
Part III Psychosociological Factors Assisting Creativity
Chapter 14. Non-conformism, dandyism and decadentism
Chapter 15. Avant-garde
Chapter 16. Postmodernism
Chapter 17. Obscenity and pornography
Chapter 18. Art As Therapy
Conclusion: Creativity and homeostasis
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Preface to the book
In ancient times and in the Middle Ages the mentally ill benefited
(occasionally, and to a very limited extent) from an aura of `prestige',
which led to a certain `positive discrimination'. It was considered, for
example, that they should be given special consideration because they
were the only human beings who always told the truth, or because they
were objects of divine possession (particularly in the case of epileptics).
However, this allegedly positive bias does not appear to correspond to a
historical reality. Foucault (1972), for example, contends that the only
reason mad people were subjected at times to certain "holy" rites (for
instance clipping their hair in the shape of a cross) was to make them
easily identifiable (just like other undesirable elements in society) as
objects of state charity and public welfare.
ASMR Revista Internacional On-line - Dep. Leg. BI-2824-01 - ISSN 1579-3516
CORE Academic, Instituto de Psicoterapia, Manuel Allende 19, 48010 Bilbao (España)
Copyright © 2007
Avances en Salud Mental Relacional / Advances in relational mental health
Vol. 6, núm.1 - Marzo 2007
Órgano Oficial de expresión de la Fundación OMIE
Revista Internacional On-line / An International On-line Journal
In the Age of Enlightenment the idea that the madman, like the socalled genius, sees reality more accurately than the ordinary person
would, was frequently expressed in Western literature. Madness was
viewed in a positive light as an alternative to constricting `reason', as can
be seen from the popularity of the character of Don Quixote. But we
should recall that the hidalgo ended up systematically humiliated and
beaten in the same way madness has led, over the ages, to ruin.
During the twentieth century, theories that mental patients were more
creative than other human beings were not foreign to psychoanalysis. A
certain confusion arose in the different terms used when speaking of the
relationship between creativity and psychiatric patients. These ideologies
have evolved towards the belief that mental patients are more creative
than the general population and the prevailing myth of the mad genius.
This book reviews current theories on the relationship between
creativity and psychopathology and the psychoanalytical and sociological
interpretations of creativity. The eighteen chapters are grouped into three
sections referring successively to biological, psychodynamic and social
factors. Clinical and biographical vignettes illustrate the text.
I tried to adopt a critical attitude towards attempts to establish a
simple correlation between certain artistic characteristics and different
types of madness. I will try to show that, in contemporary studies, artistic
genius appears to us to be the result of an exceptional creative ability,
which is present in unconventional, highly motivated people who are
professionally ambitious and have a high level of intelligence. Reliable
studies show that artists and various members of their families have a
higher incidence of psychiatric disorders than does the general
population. However, when mental disorder truly emerges, creativity
decreases.
The Author
José Guimón, M.D., PhD, is Professor and Chair of the Department of
Psychiatry, University of Bilbao, Adjunct Clinical Professor at New York
University, and a member of the International Psychoanalytical Association.
He is the author of more than one hundred and fifty research articles in various
international journals, and the source of more than thirty books for which he
served as author or, in some cases, editor.
ASMR Revista Internacional On-line - Dep. Leg. BI-2824-01 - ISSN 1579-3516
CORE Academic, Instituto de Psicoterapia, Manuel Allende 19, 48010 Bilbao (España)
Copyright © 2007
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