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Artistic creativity: Giftedness or sickness
A;t
Psychotherapy,
Vol. 2 pp. 173-175,
ARTISTIC
Pergamon
Press. 1975.
CREATIVITY: EMANUEL
Graduate
Printed
in the U.S.A.
GIFTEDNESS
OR SICKNESS*
F. HAMMER, PH. D
School of Arts and Science, New York University
mer, 1967), subjects judged “truly creative” show, on the psychological techniques, greater inner distress and agonies than do the control group of subjects judged “merely facile.” The creative youngsters also suffer from a sense of emotional disequilibrium within. Although we have just begun to scratch the surface in understanding the complex process of creativity, it can safely be assumed that, among the many variables, emotional conflict$ is a frequent one. 5 Thomas Mann, for one, in reporting his subjective experience as a creative individual, celebrated the role of disease in the making of art. Freud in his insightful essays on both Leonardo Da Vinci and Dostoevski made a number of persuasive correlations between the neurotic pattern of the lives of these creative men and their works. Lionel Trilling reports that Zola, in the interests of science, submitted himself to examination by fifteen psychiatrists and agreed with their conclusions that his genius had its source in the neurotic elements of his temperament. The Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test, and projective drawing data of the subjects judged “truly creative” were all consistent in showing a frank and open flooding of inner feelings and problems onto the test stimuli. But the projective tech-
MAN has always had an interest in what manner of creature the creative artist is, in what makes him tick. Almost from the beginning of the development of the arts, a double image of the artist took shape in the eyes of his fellow men. The creative man was believed to be mad, or at least obsessed, while at the same time he was thought to have some unusual @ft or wisdom not available to others. We are reminded of the “sacred awe” with which epileptics, lunatics, poets, and painters were all similarly regarded in ancient days, and to some degree are still viewed in the present. At times, the artist has been regarded as a first cousin to the madman, at times as the only true prophet, and at other times as embodying the idea that madness and wisdom go hand-in-hand. The controversy dates back over the centuries. For Plato, the creative artist - whether poet, writer, painter, or musician - was an inspired neurotic. For Aristotle, he was closer to an exquisitely introspective psycho1ogist.t This apparent contradiction has not, as yet, been resolved. What may we expect in a generic way, as an answer to the question: Is the.creative person a first cousin to the madman? It is hard to give a categorical yes or no answer to this question. In a study of the writer’s (Ham-
*Requests for reprints should be sent to Emanuel F. Hammer, 381 West End Ave., New York, N.Y. 10024. tPerhaps a Henry James, who has been called the writer who wrote like a psychologist, and a William James, regarded as the psychologist who wrote like a writer, are closer together than even these labels imply. $Not to be equated with mental illness, which is defined more by the manner of handling emotional conflicts than by their uresence. $Another study has appeared which is related to the question. Lawrence ffinkle’s extensive studies on healthy vs. unhealthy individuals (in R. H. Ojemann (Ed.), Recent Contributions of Biolonical and Psvchosocial Investizations to Preventive fiychiatr.y, Iowa City: State University of Iowa, 1959) found- that the mentally -healthy persons were less creative and productive. whereas the “unhealthy” were more creative. This supports the implications of the present writer than emotional tensions may actually stimulate creative output instead of reducing it. Both works carry the subtle inference that the goal of early “adjustment” in life may lead to later mediocrity. 173
174
EMANUEL
niques also revealed comparatively less ego-defensive maneuvering in the creative group, along with acceptance of, and tolerance for. inner emotions. (Hammer, 1967) Thus it may well be that the deeper processes which the creative subjects bring to the surface give a spurious impression of pathological content. While the content of their inner imagery is frequently as “sick” as that offered by neurotic patients. the tolerance for this content is considerably stronger and healthier. Evelyn Hooker once observed, “Two men may produce very similar material on the analyst’s couch, but the difference between them is that one - the normal - gets up at the end of the hour and resumes his normal functioning, while the other does not.” The creative person works from the raw, emotional material we all have inside. What is significant is not only what he does with it, but how much more of it he can face and master. The artist, unlike the neurotic or psychotic, dominates his illusion, and makes it serve the purposes of closer and truer relation with subjective reality. As opposed to the delusion, the hallucination, the dream, or the daydream, art is a positive, consciously directed social accomplishment, like the work of the scientist, the the reformer, the manufacturer. The architect, presence of talent may allow a more constructive solution to the same problems neurotics face with less armamentarium. Moreover, we may well understand that the presence of tension is not necessarily harmful or undesirable. Certain intensities of emotional stress motivate self-improvement and betterment. Tension must have motivated Thomas Paine to speak out in politics, Dorothea Dix and Clifford Beers to take the case of the mentally ill before the public, Columbus to find a new land, Toulouse-Lautrec to paint, Freud to analyze himslef and reveal his findings to society, and Kafka and Poe to share their inner worlds with us. It seems probable that there is an optimal level of tension for each of us relative to our degree of personality strength. Too little leads to stagnation and complacency; too much to paralysis, defensive symptoms, a retreat from progress and originality, or even - in the extreme - a schizophrenic retreat from life itself. But an approach to the optimal ratio of anxiety, on the one hand, and strength to handle and master this tension, on the other hand, may be at the core of all of the factors suggested by the study (Hammer, 1967) as crucial to crea-
F. HAMMER
tivity. This optimal ratio may work to produce personality solutions favorable for the artist. and for society through him. Inner tension. though not sLlfjkient for the creation of art, may be necessac+’ for it. It may supply the energy to the motor but not the guiding hand to the wheel. Or, the part of the personality called the ego may be conceptualized as riding the emotional mass rather than being unsettled and washed over by its waves. A troubled inner state. if attended to, rather than escaped from, appears to constitute a condition for the emergence of novel and esthetically gratifying organizations. or gestalts. Thus, it appears that any attempts to understand the creative process merely as a form of neurosis are bound to produce not only an incomplete and lopsided theory, but an absurd one as well. Emotional disturbance and creative ability are clearly not synonymous. A gifted person combines a conflicted emotional state with the ability for syntheses _ a quality so lacking in “sick” people - and an ability to improve, rather than to diminish, his adaptations. oyster The pearls which the uncomfortable creates from his pain, their perfection and their glow, could come only from his particular creative capacities - not just from his distress. In getting to know the subjects judged “truly creative,” the writer was most impressed with watching the highly integrated nature of their “sick” and healthy components, of seeing how both the defensive and gratifying aspects of their personalities were interwoven in their sublimation, in their work. Their personality structures’ capacity for harmony, for reconciliation of conflicting tendencies, is clearly part of their creativity. Along with this capacity, these creative subjects also manifest the capacity to accept their inner emotions in all their natural “aliveness” rather than to have to dampen them, or dilute them, or repressively sit upon them. In passing, we may speculate _ and it is only speculation - upon the problem of why some creative individuals who live in such close contact with their inner, instinctual life continue to create for their entire lives while some others succumb to psychosis. As the creative person lives more closely in contact with what in other people is the unconscious, and dips into it again and again for his work. the strength of his ability to continue living in the real world may determine whether he maintains a stable life adjustment, re-emerging from
ARTISTIC
CREATIVITY:
the preconscious processes each time he creates, or whether he will be overwhelmed by the subterranean feelings until a psychosis eventually floods him. It is this concept of personality strength which may explain why Proust remained free of inundation by the instinctual forces. free from insanity in spite of the conspicuous proximity of his introspective capacity to his instinctual conflicts. and why Nietzsche, Ezra Pound. Nijinsky, Van Gogh, and others succumbed. But in spite of the risk. the gifted artist views his inner turbulence as a valued commodity. W. H. Auden addresses his “wound” in the cherishing language of a lover. thanking it for the gift of insight it has bestowed. “Knowing you,” he says, “has made me understand.” And Edmund Wilson. in The Wound and The Bow, has formulated a similar idea of the characteristic sickness of the artist, which is represented by the figure of a Greek warrior, taken from Sophocles’ Philoctetes: The warrior was forced to live in isolation because of the disgusting odor of his wound and yet had to be sought out by his fellow man because they had need of the magically unerring bow he possessed. The fundamental idea expressed here is the conception of superior strength as inseparable from disability. Andr6 Gide joins Wilson in his interpretation of Sophocles’ classic as representing the idea that genius and disease. like strength and mutilation, may be inextricably bound together. Nietzsche, too, speaks of disease as an instrument of knowledge. instructing us that there is no deeper knowledge without experience of disease and that all heightened healthiness must be achieved by the route of illness. He related this to the creative artist, in particular. Freud’s strength of character. as well as his insights, grew out of his neurosis and his
GIFTEDNESS
OR
SICKNESS
175
conquest of it. Poe, Swift. and Kafka, too. to name just a few, well knew what they owed as artists to their morbid states as men. We are struck with the fact that so many writers. and musicians in the nineteenth and painters, twentieth centuries have been strikingly neurotic. It is true, of course, that people who are not creative may also be neurotic. Hence the popular belief concerning the connection between art and emotional distress had probably been considerably exaggerated. The inflated dimensions of this popular belief must be cut down to size further when we realize that it is the creative artist who, perhaps more than other people, has his personal letters and diaries gone into after his death. Creative artists also more often leave behind autobiographies. .Writers and artists, in particular, emphasize a greater sharing with the world of what happens to them or of what goes on inside, and try more heroically to be articulate about their inner states. They pride themselves on telling the unvarnished truth - truth more or less universal but usually unexpressed by others. We are also well aware of the fact that there are many neurotics among businessmen, movie stars, scientists, and many other groups. But with the creative artist, the neurosis is not latent but consciously exploited. In the creative artist, the crucial personality ingredient is a willingness first to face, and then to shape, to mold, to work the painful material within rather than to merely moan. In him we see the height man can reach in achieving a triumph of health over illness. REFERENCES HAMMER, creative
E. F. (1966/67) Personality patterns artists, Adolescence 1, 327-350.
in young
Psychotherapy,
Vol. 2 pp. 173-175,
ARTISTIC
Pergamon
Press. 1975.
CREATIVITY: EMANUEL
Graduate
Printed
in the U.S.A.
GIFTEDNESS
OR SICKNESS*
F. HAMMER, PH. D
School of Arts and Science, New York University
mer, 1967), subjects judged “truly creative” show, on the psychological techniques, greater inner distress and agonies than do the control group of subjects judged “merely facile.” The creative youngsters also suffer from a sense of emotional disequilibrium within. Although we have just begun to scratch the surface in understanding the complex process of creativity, it can safely be assumed that, among the many variables, emotional conflict$ is a frequent one. 5 Thomas Mann, for one, in reporting his subjective experience as a creative individual, celebrated the role of disease in the making of art. Freud in his insightful essays on both Leonardo Da Vinci and Dostoevski made a number of persuasive correlations between the neurotic pattern of the lives of these creative men and their works. Lionel Trilling reports that Zola, in the interests of science, submitted himself to examination by fifteen psychiatrists and agreed with their conclusions that his genius had its source in the neurotic elements of his temperament. The Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test, and projective drawing data of the subjects judged “truly creative” were all consistent in showing a frank and open flooding of inner feelings and problems onto the test stimuli. But the projective tech-
MAN has always had an interest in what manner of creature the creative artist is, in what makes him tick. Almost from the beginning of the development of the arts, a double image of the artist took shape in the eyes of his fellow men. The creative man was believed to be mad, or at least obsessed, while at the same time he was thought to have some unusual @ft or wisdom not available to others. We are reminded of the “sacred awe” with which epileptics, lunatics, poets, and painters were all similarly regarded in ancient days, and to some degree are still viewed in the present. At times, the artist has been regarded as a first cousin to the madman, at times as the only true prophet, and at other times as embodying the idea that madness and wisdom go hand-in-hand. The controversy dates back over the centuries. For Plato, the creative artist - whether poet, writer, painter, or musician - was an inspired neurotic. For Aristotle, he was closer to an exquisitely introspective psycho1ogist.t This apparent contradiction has not, as yet, been resolved. What may we expect in a generic way, as an answer to the question: Is the.creative person a first cousin to the madman? It is hard to give a categorical yes or no answer to this question. In a study of the writer’s (Ham-
*Requests for reprints should be sent to Emanuel F. Hammer, 381 West End Ave., New York, N.Y. 10024. tPerhaps a Henry James, who has been called the writer who wrote like a psychologist, and a William James, regarded as the psychologist who wrote like a writer, are closer together than even these labels imply. $Not to be equated with mental illness, which is defined more by the manner of handling emotional conflicts than by their uresence. $Another study has appeared which is related to the question. Lawrence ffinkle’s extensive studies on healthy vs. unhealthy individuals (in R. H. Ojemann (Ed.), Recent Contributions of Biolonical and Psvchosocial Investizations to Preventive fiychiatr.y, Iowa City: State University of Iowa, 1959) found- that the mentally -healthy persons were less creative and productive. whereas the “unhealthy” were more creative. This supports the implications of the present writer than emotional tensions may actually stimulate creative output instead of reducing it. Both works carry the subtle inference that the goal of early “adjustment” in life may lead to later mediocrity. 173
174
EMANUEL
niques also revealed comparatively less ego-defensive maneuvering in the creative group, along with acceptance of, and tolerance for. inner emotions. (Hammer, 1967) Thus it may well be that the deeper processes which the creative subjects bring to the surface give a spurious impression of pathological content. While the content of their inner imagery is frequently as “sick” as that offered by neurotic patients. the tolerance for this content is considerably stronger and healthier. Evelyn Hooker once observed, “Two men may produce very similar material on the analyst’s couch, but the difference between them is that one - the normal - gets up at the end of the hour and resumes his normal functioning, while the other does not.” The creative person works from the raw, emotional material we all have inside. What is significant is not only what he does with it, but how much more of it he can face and master. The artist, unlike the neurotic or psychotic, dominates his illusion, and makes it serve the purposes of closer and truer relation with subjective reality. As opposed to the delusion, the hallucination, the dream, or the daydream, art is a positive, consciously directed social accomplishment, like the work of the scientist, the the reformer, the manufacturer. The architect, presence of talent may allow a more constructive solution to the same problems neurotics face with less armamentarium. Moreover, we may well understand that the presence of tension is not necessarily harmful or undesirable. Certain intensities of emotional stress motivate self-improvement and betterment. Tension must have motivated Thomas Paine to speak out in politics, Dorothea Dix and Clifford Beers to take the case of the mentally ill before the public, Columbus to find a new land, Toulouse-Lautrec to paint, Freud to analyze himslef and reveal his findings to society, and Kafka and Poe to share their inner worlds with us. It seems probable that there is an optimal level of tension for each of us relative to our degree of personality strength. Too little leads to stagnation and complacency; too much to paralysis, defensive symptoms, a retreat from progress and originality, or even - in the extreme - a schizophrenic retreat from life itself. But an approach to the optimal ratio of anxiety, on the one hand, and strength to handle and master this tension, on the other hand, may be at the core of all of the factors suggested by the study (Hammer, 1967) as crucial to crea-
F. HAMMER
tivity. This optimal ratio may work to produce personality solutions favorable for the artist. and for society through him. Inner tension. though not sLlfjkient for the creation of art, may be necessac+’ for it. It may supply the energy to the motor but not the guiding hand to the wheel. Or, the part of the personality called the ego may be conceptualized as riding the emotional mass rather than being unsettled and washed over by its waves. A troubled inner state. if attended to, rather than escaped from, appears to constitute a condition for the emergence of novel and esthetically gratifying organizations. or gestalts. Thus, it appears that any attempts to understand the creative process merely as a form of neurosis are bound to produce not only an incomplete and lopsided theory, but an absurd one as well. Emotional disturbance and creative ability are clearly not synonymous. A gifted person combines a conflicted emotional state with the ability for syntheses _ a quality so lacking in “sick” people - and an ability to improve, rather than to diminish, his adaptations. oyster The pearls which the uncomfortable creates from his pain, their perfection and their glow, could come only from his particular creative capacities - not just from his distress. In getting to know the subjects judged “truly creative,” the writer was most impressed with watching the highly integrated nature of their “sick” and healthy components, of seeing how both the defensive and gratifying aspects of their personalities were interwoven in their sublimation, in their work. Their personality structures’ capacity for harmony, for reconciliation of conflicting tendencies, is clearly part of their creativity. Along with this capacity, these creative subjects also manifest the capacity to accept their inner emotions in all their natural “aliveness” rather than to have to dampen them, or dilute them, or repressively sit upon them. In passing, we may speculate _ and it is only speculation - upon the problem of why some creative individuals who live in such close contact with their inner, instinctual life continue to create for their entire lives while some others succumb to psychosis. As the creative person lives more closely in contact with what in other people is the unconscious, and dips into it again and again for his work. the strength of his ability to continue living in the real world may determine whether he maintains a stable life adjustment, re-emerging from
ARTISTIC
CREATIVITY:
the preconscious processes each time he creates, or whether he will be overwhelmed by the subterranean feelings until a psychosis eventually floods him. It is this concept of personality strength which may explain why Proust remained free of inundation by the instinctual forces. free from insanity in spite of the conspicuous proximity of his introspective capacity to his instinctual conflicts. and why Nietzsche, Ezra Pound. Nijinsky, Van Gogh, and others succumbed. But in spite of the risk. the gifted artist views his inner turbulence as a valued commodity. W. H. Auden addresses his “wound” in the cherishing language of a lover. thanking it for the gift of insight it has bestowed. “Knowing you,” he says, “has made me understand.” And Edmund Wilson. in The Wound and The Bow, has formulated a similar idea of the characteristic sickness of the artist, which is represented by the figure of a Greek warrior, taken from Sophocles’ Philoctetes: The warrior was forced to live in isolation because of the disgusting odor of his wound and yet had to be sought out by his fellow man because they had need of the magically unerring bow he possessed. The fundamental idea expressed here is the conception of superior strength as inseparable from disability. Andr6 Gide joins Wilson in his interpretation of Sophocles’ classic as representing the idea that genius and disease. like strength and mutilation, may be inextricably bound together. Nietzsche, too, speaks of disease as an instrument of knowledge. instructing us that there is no deeper knowledge without experience of disease and that all heightened healthiness must be achieved by the route of illness. He related this to the creative artist, in particular. Freud’s strength of character. as well as his insights, grew out of his neurosis and his
GIFTEDNESS
OR
SICKNESS
175
conquest of it. Poe, Swift. and Kafka, too. to name just a few, well knew what they owed as artists to their morbid states as men. We are struck with the fact that so many writers. and musicians in the nineteenth and painters, twentieth centuries have been strikingly neurotic. It is true, of course, that people who are not creative may also be neurotic. Hence the popular belief concerning the connection between art and emotional distress had probably been considerably exaggerated. The inflated dimensions of this popular belief must be cut down to size further when we realize that it is the creative artist who, perhaps more than other people, has his personal letters and diaries gone into after his death. Creative artists also more often leave behind autobiographies. .Writers and artists, in particular, emphasize a greater sharing with the world of what happens to them or of what goes on inside, and try more heroically to be articulate about their inner states. They pride themselves on telling the unvarnished truth - truth more or less universal but usually unexpressed by others. We are also well aware of the fact that there are many neurotics among businessmen, movie stars, scientists, and many other groups. But with the creative artist, the neurosis is not latent but consciously exploited. In the creative artist, the crucial personality ingredient is a willingness first to face, and then to shape, to mold, to work the painful material within rather than to merely moan. In him we see the height man can reach in achieving a triumph of health over illness. REFERENCES HAMMER, creative
E. F. (1966/67) Personality patterns artists, Adolescence 1, 327-350.
in young