Mental Wellbeing and Psychology

The Role of Art and History in Self Discovery and Creation

Sue Barker

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Topic: Psychology
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429784613
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Mental Wellbeing and Psychology unpacks the philosophical and psychological need to understand ourselves through an exploration of historical archives and artistic creativity. This focuses on some practical, evidence-based approaches to developing mental wellbeing.

The book uses phenomenological psychology to explore the materials developed by the Stiwdio Arts group and offers an understanding of one's experiences of their world, recognising that these are embodied and perceived within a temporal and relational place. It offers examples for developing mental health and wellbeing interventions for charities, private care and the NHS. It provides an evidence base for the use of creativity and historical resources in mental health care.

This book will be of great interest for academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the field of mental wellbeing, nursing and mentalhealth nursing, occupational therapy and social work.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Why mental wellbeing now?

Mental health and mental wellbeing have become ‘hot’, even ‘sexy’, topics in contemporary society despite the discrimination and stigma still associated with long-term mental illnesses. This has been proliferated by the involvement of celebrities and politicians ‘coming out’ as having mental illnesses or being mentally unwell due to addictions, phobias or someone close to them having dementia. It has been further promoted within the media due to the involvement of the younger members of the UK Royal family through the Heads Together charity. The rates of suicide in the UK have been fairly stable but there has been an increase amongst young men in Scotland despite government initiatives (Samaritans 2018). Globally the highest rates of suicide are in Lithuania (1), Russia (2), Guyana (3), South Korea (4) and Belarus (5), with the US at (27) and UK at (78) (World Population Review 2019).

Alongside governmental and charity concerns, many individuals are also trying to find new ways of developing their wellbeing and resilience in what is considered a rapidly changing and pressurised culture. Wellbeing can even be found to be a pressing issue in the classroom with the Guardian newspaper stating, “With mental health problems on the rise in classrooms, we’re bringing happiness inspectors into schools and developing a GCSE in wellbeing” (Cope 2017). The current National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) consultations on social, emotional and mental wellbeing in primary and secondary education, school-based interventions, physical and mental health and wellbeing promotion and the Mental Health Foundation Campaign ‘Mental health is not extracurricular – make it count’ all demonstrate the current concern for mental wellbeing of young people.

The concern is not just for young people’s mental health and wellbeing; the highest suicide rates in the UK are in middle age (ONS 2018). There is concern from both statutory and non-statutory agents, with NICE consultations on mental wellbeing at work, and social work interventions for adults with complex needs including learning disabilities and mental health, decision making and mental capacity. Charities such as Mind and Rethink developed the Time to Change campaign leading to the ‘Ask Twice Campaign’, and ‘In Your Corner’. This is alongside the LADbible (UOKM8?), ‘Mental Health Minute’ on 300 radio stations, Wired UK and See Me (Scotland). There are also many purely online resources such as #realconvo (in US) and #HereForYou.

Given all this input and resources there is obviously great concern, particularly in Western societies, about mental wellbeing. The evidence base for these is said to be limited by methodological issues and Leckey (2011) states there is a need to define mental wellbeing but it is acknowledged that a number of approaches are helpful. The Stiwdio Arts Group did not set out to change the world; it was just hoped that a few people could be supported with limited resources to improve how they felt about themselves and the world. After the first couple of projects it appeared to all involved this was happening. It was agreed that it felt good and whilst what was happening could not be described as adhering to a traditional research approach for justification, and no one wanted to change that, a different way of explaining and understanding was sought.

What is phenomenological psychology and why use it?

The focus of phenomenology is a ‘returning to thing itself’ as identified by Edmund Husserl, the founding father. It is “the study of human experience and the way in which things are perceived as they appear to consciousness” (Langdridge 2007: 10). Phenomenology is a family of research methods, but they all are built on the foundations of Husserl’s writings and teaching. Whereas the focus of psychology, which also is an umbrella term for several different perspectives, is the science of the human mind, the way people think, feel, behave and interact. Therefore, the focus of phenomenological psychology is people’s perceptions of the world in which they live and what this means to them; their lived (lifeworld) experiences.

Within phenomenology there are several essential features which occur in most of their methods:

• Intentionality

• Noema and noesis

• Epoche

• Phenomenological reduction

• Imaginative variation

• Essences

Intentionality

The meaning of this term, in phenomenology, is not the same as the regular dictionary definition which states that intentionality is a goal orientated or consciously motivated desire to undertake a certain behaviour. For example, I intended to climb the mountain; my intention is to ride a bike. For Husserl intentionality describes how the mind works; whenever the person is conscious the consciousness is focused towards something (it is aware of something). It is never conscious but unaware (this is to be sub/unconscious). For example, I wake up from sleep with my partner beside me, a clock near my ear and a myriad of other things available to my senses but my intentionality is focused on the bedroom window where I can see the weak morning light seeping through, and I am mostly oblivious to the rest of my surroundings.

Intentionality allows the researcher or philosopher to sidestep whether something is subjective or objective; it is a recognition that there is something that arrives to the conscious or mind that is then processed, perceptually, into the everyday experience of it. It is the relationship between consciousness and the world that is of concern to phenomenologists. The mind and body are not separate; the mind and body are one and things appear to the mind through the body. Perceptions are grounded in people’s bodies in relation to the environment in which they live. For psychology this means instead of searching for individual thought patterns and cognitive processes phenomenological psychologists explore experiences, how these are perceived and what meaning is made of them.

Noema and noesis

Noema refers to what is experienced and noesis is the way in which it is experienced. Despite this division the two are intrinsically linked, for example if we return to my waking to focus on the morning light coming through the window. I initially just see the light and perceive it as light in my conscious awareness; light is the noema but the process of noesis offers further possibilities of understanding and perceiving the noema. The noema also provides more information for the development of my understanding of the noesis and further understanding of the noema. Phenomenologists focus on the experience as lived by the person through their perceptions of their world: “we understand the person in the act of perceiving the world” (Langdridge 2007: 17).

Epoche

Epoche, bracketing or bridling, is an attitudinal shift where the researcher or philosopher attempts to abstain from presumptions and preconceived ideas of what might be found. Within traditional research this is achieved through seeking the null hypothesis and replicable studies. The core stance with epoche is one of doubt: doubting what is thought to be known, particularly of what has been called the natural attitude. The natural attitude is the basic way of understanding the world with or without conscious effort but with all pre-learnt suppositions intact.

The use of epoche enables a description of the things themselves by putting on one side the natural attitude. There has been debate over whether epoche can be achieved. Husserl believed that it could be achieved through transcendental philosophical reduction whereas Heidegger and the existentialists believed that whilst it was a good discipline to try to achieve epoche it was not totally achievable. They state that a person is part of the world; they are not separate from it and therefore cannot stand outside it to describe it.

Phenomenological reduction

Another type of attitudinal shift is phenomenological reduction. Whether phenomenologists believe that transcendental reduction can occur or not they all attempt phenomenological reduction which Husserl states can be achieved at different levels and has different types. The deepest level is transcendental but psychologists such as Giorgi and Giorgi (2003) state that phenomenological psychological reduction is sufficient for psychology and health care. This attitude, whilst attempting to bracket the natural attitudes, accepts presences are exactly what they are described as, but no claim is made that they are exactly what they present themselves to be.

Imaginative variation

The first steps to undertaking a study using phenomenological psychology are to assume two attitudes: a psychological perspective and phenomenological psychological reduction. Within these attitudes the stories (data) are read and reread and meaning units are intuited. The intuited meaning units are then transformed into psychologically relevant terms using imaginative variation. Imaginative variation involves exploring all the ways in which a meaning could be expressed whilst retaining its meaning. This sometimes leads to meaning units becoming larger and sometimes they can be reduced to a single word.

Essences

The essence or essences are the core elements of the meaning of a phenomenon. It is the structure underlying the phenomenon. These can be attributed to an individual or termed universal when they are usually labelled eidetic intuition.

Phenomenological psychology therefore offers a way to understand people and their experiences of the world; people’s experiences of the world are embodied and perceived within a temporal and relational place. It also offers a method to explicate new understandings and meanings through attitudinal changes (psychological perspective and phenomenological psychological reduction) and within this epoche to intuit meanings within descriptions from the natural attitude.

This does, though, pose a problem for contemporary society where evidence-based practice is formulated into a hierarchy and metanalysis of randomised controlled trial has the ‘gold star’. At this point it might be pertinent to consider what evidence or knowledge and how this might be gained.

Ways of knowing?

Generally, when people consider what knowledge is, they identify pieces of information that have been received through reading, watching or listening to others. This is promulgated within contemporary society through the value given to high level empirical evidence in clinical practice and academia, the questions asked in intelligence tests, compulsory education, television quizzes, etc.

As long ago as 1978 Barbara Carper established four ways or patterns of knowing, which she labelled Empirical, Personal, Ethical and Aesthetic.

• Empirical knowing – the understanding of knowledge derived from the traditional scientific approach.

• Personal – the understanding of knowledge developed from self-knowledge or understanding. It is about gaining empathy for another person’s experience. It is knowledge that can be gained through imagining self in the other’s position to understand their experience.

• Ethical – the understanding of knowledge is gained by exploring and understanding the experience or situation through questioning of choices and their consequences.

• Aesthetic – the understanding of knowledge here is referred to as a consideration of art and beauty but it is about the sensing or perceiving of something and might be labelled intuition.

(Adapted from Barker 2016: 61–62)

Carper’s ways of knowing provide a framework to explore a situation or experience in greater depth and to move away from a purely scientific or empirical way of knowing. She facilitated with this work the development of reflective practice and an acknowledgement that caring is an art, not just a science, in the same way that Freud and Rogers have done with psychological understanding. She also opened more widely the exploration of the use of the aesthetic or intuition in care.

Patricia Benner (1984) in her book From Novice to Expert described e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of boxes
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Mental wellbeing
• 3 Embodied subjective self and resilience
• 4 History, temporality and culture
• 5 Creativity and wellbeing
• 6 Stiwdio Arts Group
• 7 Evaluations, reflections and creations
• 8 Phenomenological psychological lifeworld experiences
• Index