Creativity, Spirituality, and Mental Health

Exploring Connections

Kelley Raab Mayo

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317158134
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

This book emphasizes the integral connections between imagination, creativity, and spirituality and their role in healing. First, the author highlights the work of a neglected yet important psychoanalyst, Marion Milner - a painter and undeclared mystic - expanding her work on creativity, mysticism, and mental health. Second, she explores imagination and creativity as expressed in fostering hope and in spiritually-oriented therapies, particularly for mood, anxiety, and eating disorders - offering practical application of studies in imagination and the arts. Raab Mayo concludes that both creativity and the potential for transcendence are inherent in the human psyche and can work as allies in the process of recovery from mental illness.

Chapter 1
Introduction

In the context of spirituality and mental illness, one sometimes hears the following biblical story about a man possessed by demons:

Then they arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. As he stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me” – for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man (for many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds). (Luke 8:26–8, NRSV)

According to the biblical story, Jesus sent the demons into a herd of swine, which proceeded to rush down the steep bank and drown. The man who received the exorcism was told to go home and proclaim what God had done for him. Reflecting on this example, most people in the Western world no longer attribute mental illness to demons as did the writer of the gospel of Luke. The interpretation of “religious insanity” – once used diagnostically in the psychiatric profession – is no longer a valid classification. Yet in many cases the baby has been thrown out with the bath water, I believe, and spiritual and religious resources that could be used in the service of healing have either been ignored or discarded.

This book concerns how creativity and spirituality can work as allies in the process of recovery from mental illness. The crux of the book is that both are inherent in the human psyche and, because of this, that individuals possess the inner resources to facilitate or augment their own recovery, resources that often need coaxing. This does not obviate the need for pharmacological treatment – medication is often essential. But medication is not the whole answer – and, once stabilized on medication, what next? How can one continue to move forward in the recovery process? Imagination, I suggest, is a powerful and highly underutilized aspect of psychic functioning, and the book aims to emphasize the integral connections between imagination, creativity, and spirituality and their role in healing. Since the field of psychiatry largely utilizes a medical model for treatment, the healing potential found in creative and spiritual expression frequently is overlooked. This book encourages individuals to listen to the wisdom of their own internal resources.

Questions I intend to explore include: Can creative expression render mental illness more manageable? Can spirituality do the same? Just how far can spirituality and creativity take one on the journey to recovery? Is creativity in and of itself healing? The idea that many writers, artists, musicians, etc., suffer from mental illness will be explored. If true, is the reason because creative people are naturally more sensitive, and thus more vulnerable to mental instability? Or is there something else going on, a relationship between the state of mind of the artist and that of an individual in a manic episode? Over the centuries a number of charismatic religious leaders have been accused of suffering from mental disorders. This list includes not only cult leaders such as Marshall Applewhite, founder of Heaven’s Gate, and Shoko Asahara, founder of Aum Shinrikyo, but also Martin Luther, who initiated the Protestant Reformation, and George Fox, founder of the Quaker tradition.

In days past, religion was blamed for causing mental illness. Current research leads away from this cause and effect relationship. In Religion, Culture and Mental Health (2007), for example, Kate Loewenthal indicates that there is little evidence that religious factors play a causal role in mental disorders. Religious beliefs, in her view, can help to entrench some symptoms, but these same beliefs can be helpful in relieving others. While Loewenthal focuses on religion in various cultural settings, here the focus is on ways that religion and spirituality can be used in treatment. Can spirituality be a catalyst for recovery from illness? If so, how might this happen? Can creative expression help one live more authentically, and, if so, how is this linked with living a spiritual life? These are some of the questions I will explore throughout the book.

Personal Background

I first became interested in connections between creativity, spirituality, and mental health while participating in a National Endowment for the Humanities summer seminar at Yale University in the summer of 1999. My professor, Dr. Mary Jacobus, included a text by psychoanalyst Marion Milner (On Not Being Able to Paint, 1950) among the course readings. Milner investigates the connections between her own unconscious processes, painting, and a body-oriented mysticism which she discusses in more detail in other writings. Her book peaked my interest, and I began to investigate the connection further.

Personally, creativity and religion overlapped in my childhood. Thanks to my grandmother, who inherited several violins from her late husband, I took violin lessons as a youth. I also sang in the church choir, took sculpture and other art classes, and later studied organ. As a girl I went to a Presbyterian church with my mother on a regular basis. Later I enrolled in seminary and went on to further graduate studies in religion.

When I was four years old I suffered third degree burns in a grill fire explosion, necessitating several operations. I spoke to virtually no one about the accident until I was twenty years old, and the first professional I saw was the university chaplain. I have often wondered what got me though the difficult years of childhood and adolescence. I had a great deal of anxiety, including post traumatic stress and obsessive-compulsive traits, and in high school I was depressed a good deal of the time. Also in high school I became very religious, reading the Bible and praying daily. I continued with music lessons and played in orchestras.

In retrospect, I believe the combination of a few resources kept me going. One was the consistency of care by my mother, and to a lesser extent, by my grandmother. I felt they were there for me, despite my problems. My brother’s presence also made a difference. Being able to play music was important. I had difficulty verbalizing my emotions, and music served for me as a nonverbal means of expression. Finally, there was my spirituality. I had some unhealthy beliefs when I was younger, such as the trauma being a punishment from God. At the same time, however, faith and prayer offered me hope that my future would be better than my past. It was a complicated scenario, as it often is.

Academically, the 1999 seminar furthered my interest in exploring the relationship between spirituality, creativity, and mental health. In On Not Being Able to Paint, Milner begins the book with a concern to find her own way of painting, in contrast to copying other painters’ styles. The book’s title is provocative. Why would anyone want to learn not to paint? After exploring a number of books on painting, Milner settles on a couple of key ideas: the eye should find out what it likes, drawings express moods, and one should draw without any conscious intention of trying to draw “something.” At the end of the book Milner concludes that painting provides a setting in which to engage in “reverie,” a kind of absentmindedness or freedom from the need to make an expedient response to others. This freedom can be found in many forms of creative expression.

I had been interested in mysticism prior to taking the seminar, but I was intrigued by Milner’s “quiet” mysticism, one involving the body and embracing a way of being that suited her. Milner had brief contact with Jung, and some of her concepts, e.g., the creative unconscious, indicate either parallel or overlapping thinking. I became intrigued with the relationship between Milner’s mystical leanings and her own psychological well-being. Over the years, Milner’s mysticism seemed to result in greater contentment, greater ability to go with the flow in her life. I also read her 18-year analysis with a patient with schizophrenia as chronicled in The Hands of the Living God (1969). This analysis served as a sounding board for many of Milner’s developing ideas. One was the notion of reverie, or the ability to move between the “me” and the “not-me,” as a healthy form of primary narcissism. Another was the need for developing a self before being able to lose it in any mystical sense.

My personal interests in mysticism are linked to the concept of imagination, particularly dreams. Dreams have offered me guidance during difficult times in my life. I picked my doctoral advisor, for example, on the basis of a dream. Moreover, I believe there is a strong connection between imagination and hope. Theologically, hope is a redemptive concept. Donald Capps’s book Agents of Hope (1995), written from a theological perspective, draws upon Winnicott to explore the origins of hope in childhood. Similarly, Erikson (1964) associates hope with early trust. In my work as a mental health chaplain, I attempt to assist patients in imagining a more positive future, often drawing upon the resources of story and metaphor from sacred texts to do so. The ability to fantasize enables humans to hope, tell stories, and to heal, and I find that narrative therapy, story telling, and the use of metaphor are well-suited to a religious context.

The mood disorders unit of the psychiatric hospital where I work offers a unique testing ground for investigating the relationship between mental health, creativity, and religious experience. In Touched with Fire (1993), Kay Redfield Jamison explores the connection between an artistic temperament and mania, and Goodwin and Jamison, in their classic text Manic-depressive Illness (1990), suggest that many religious leaders may have suffered from manic-depressive illness. Religion frequently serves as a template for manic and hypomanic visions and experiences, and patients understandably experience confusion when their visions are diagnosed as delusions. Yet there is meaning in every delusion, whether it entails believing one is the Second Coming of Christ or thinking one is the Queen.

From 2006 to 2009, I was involved in a research project with the Stress and Anxiety Research Unit of the Institute for Mental Health Research (IMHR), University of Ottawa. The first pilot study was oriented around using a spiritually-based therapy for the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder. Our treatment protocol drew upon Roger Walsh’s book Essential Spirituality: The Seven Central Practices to Awaken Heart and Mind (1999). My academic training is in theology, religious studies, and pastoral counseling. Since beginning to work in a mental health context in 2005, I have attended training workshops in a number of therapeutic modalities, including cognitive behavior therapy, interpersonal therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, spiritually integrated therapy, and group therapy. All these have informed the way I think and work.

Outline of the Book

The book is loosely structured in two parts. Chapters 2 and 3 leans towards theory, and Chapters 4, 5, and 6 emphasize clinical application. In Chapter 2 I explore the work of Marion Milner and its relevance for spirituality and creativity. Milner, both a psychoanalyst and painter, viewed art as a “spiritual pursuit.” As mentioned, she became interested in body-oriented mysticism as a way to achieve a deeper awareness of self and world, as well as a way to paint authentically, without copying the styles of others. In her therapeutic work with one patient in particular, she used “doodling” as a method of uncovering unconscious material. Creativity and mysticism overlap as Milner discusses divine ground, emptiness, and the temporary “I-not-I” dissolution experienced in both instances. As well, Milner wrote two articles focused on Blake’s Illustrations to the Book of Job, which served as a template for her explorations of blocks in creativity in her patients and herself. For a year I experimented with a “Milnerian technique” of making doodles to facilitate my own psychological/spiritual journey.

Milner’s work provides a stepping stone to a larger discussion of spirituality and creative expression in Chapter 3. I initiate the discussion with the question of whether there is a “basic” experience common to mystical and creative states. Psychologically, in both mystical experiences and creative expression one observes a temporary giving up of the self, a flow experience, an absorption. The definition of mysticism has a role to play here – is it constructivist, perennialist, monist, dualist? The different ways to describe mysticism become important in determining to what extent creativity and mystical experience are the same. Exploring the work of artists and musicians furthers the investigation of the relationship between spirituality, well-being, and the arts. Using examples from the lives of artists, musicians, and scientists, I explore creativity as a form of “spiritual seeing.” Creativity, I suggest, is both a search for the sacred and a search for an authentic self.

In Chapter 4 I examine hope, religious stories, and imagination. Evidence of low hope is common among patients with severe and persistent mental illnesses. Hope, it would seem, is important for recovery. The chapter takes two directions: one is to explore the nature and sources of hope. In short, hope depends on the capacity to imagine a better future. The chapter’s second direction is to investigate creativity as derivative of human imagination, particularly as expressed through story, symbol, and metaphor. Here I explore narrative as an expression of imagination and how religion can serve as a warehouse for stories. Narrative therapy is drawn upon to elucidate how biblical texts can be used to assist clients with the task of reworking their life stories.

Viewing creativity as spiritual pursuit can be a fruitful avenue for exploring ways that spirituality and creativity can be utilized in clinical application. These ways are investigated in Chapters 5 and 6. Chapter 5 concentrates on issues of mood and anxiety. Manic-depressive illness has been associated with heightened states of both religiousness and creativity, and spiritual strategies can be used alongside other treatment modalities in its treatment. Spiritual interventions have been shown effective for anxiety disorders as well. For example, mindfulness meditation, with roots in the Buddhist tradition, has been the subject of research studies for treating anxiety. Religious cognitive therapy, as well, has demonstrated effectiveness for working with religious patients. A spiritual approach also needs to take into account “existential anxiety,” or the anxiety that comes with being human. The inevitability of death requires us to bring existentialist perspectives to bear on modern anxiety.

In Chapter 6 I address how spirituality and creativity can be allies in the treatment of eating disorders. While books such as Holy Anorexia (Bell, 1985) may lead to speculation that religion contributes to the etiology of eating disorders, spiritually-based interventions are being developed for their treatment. Some would argue that anorexia, bulimia, and binge eating disorder are symptoms of “spiritual starvation,” with hunger as a metaphor for the need for spiritual fulfillment. Spiritual interventions for eating disorders include theistic-oriented therapy, spirituality groups, zen in the context of dialectical behavior therapy, and grief work as part of interpersonal therapy. Other treatment modalities include meditation, yoga, storytelling, ritual, and music. To speak in metaphors is to draw upon imagination, and the creative process involves connecting with and expressing one’s voice – critical to recovery from an eating disorder.

In the book’s concluding chapter I tell my own fictional story of Jesus’ sister Salome, who in my account suffers from mood and eating issues. In offering an interpretation of the story, I include insights from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (2002). Cameron highlights the healing role of creativity in her own life; she also offers a systematized program for others to recover their “blocked artist selves.” Her notion of creativity as innate is consistent with Milner’s view and with other theoretical perspectives. Both Milner and Cameron suggest that creativity can help one access one’s “inner divinity” or creative unconscious.

Psychiatry and Religion: Historical Background

As we prepare to explore the connections between mental illness, creativity, and spirituality, there is value in reviewing the historical tensions between psychiatry and religion. Over their respective histories, psychiatry and religion have had a complicated, at times collaborative and at times competitive, relationship. Since the earliest days of Western medicine, scientifically-trained physicians have recognized that religion and spirituality can affect the mind for both good and ill. Historically regarded as the first spiritual healer, the shaman is a prototype of the modern physician and psychotherapist. Prior to the fall of the Roman Empire and the growth of the Catholic Church, priests and physicians were often the same individuals in different civilizations around the world (Bhugra, 1996; Kinzie, 2000; Thielman, 2000).

For all cultures, it has been a long journey to look for natural rather than supernatural explanations for mental illness. Ancient Jews seemed to have viewed madness in both natural and supernatural terms. Most Christian thinkers saw no inherent contradiction between a medical view of madness and a Christian view. Islam has a long tradition of compassion for those who were labeled mad. On the other hand, religions of Asia and Africa tended to fuse ideas of madness and demonic possession. Enlightened views on the mentally ill were found in early Christian hospitals, by Buddhist missionaries, Confucian scholars, medieval Jewish physicians, and in the Islamic hospitals of the Middle Ages. However, many societies later reverted to unscientific and at times inhumane practices. These were epitomized in the medieval Christian Inquisition, where mentally ill individuals, accused of being possessed by the devil, were put to death as witches (Kinzie, 2000; Thielman, 1998).

Fundamental controversies between science and religion laid the groundwork for the modern origin of the antagonism between psychiatry and religion. Concerning psychiatry, a number of prejudices have stood in the way of a closer relationship with religion: the view that religions attract the mentally unstable, that religions may have their origins in madness, that religious experience is phenomenologically similar to psychopathology, that paranormal experiences are a product of definable patterns of brain functioning, that religions are harmful – inducing guilt – or that religious belief is ineffective. Research has proven these prejudices false (Fulford, 1996).

Deeper reasons for the separation between psychiatry and religion have to do with the identification of psychiatry with the “medical” model. As a science, psychiatry is assumed to be based on observation and experiment and in principle open to objective testing. Religion, on the other hand, is said to be “revealed.” Psychiatry employs an essentially deterministic model, whereas religion assumes freedom of action. Yet the separation between science and religion is perhaps a peculiarly Western phenomenon (Fulford, 1996). During the early years of the twentieth century, psychiatry in the United States and Europe underwent a number of changes, most notable an increasing focus on social progress and general societal welfare. In addition to an evolving body of literature on psychoanalysis, other forces that shaped the field included new religious movements such as New Thought, Christian Science, theosophy, and spiritualism, as well as the growing social marginalization of fundamentalism. Moreover, in terms of diagnosis psychiatry began moving away from classifications based on course and prognosis of disease. Specifically, “religious insanity” or “religious mania” – diagnoses based on the content of a delusion – became irrelevant to classification and treatment (Thielman, 1998).

Although the notion of religious insanity faded with the coming of twentieth-century psychiatry, it lived on in some form in the ideas of Sigmund Freud. Freud challenged the notion that truth can be found in religion, viewing religious faith as based in the illusion that an idealized Father God can replace the lost earthly father to provide needed comfort and security. Freud viewed religion as a “universal obsessional neurosis.” A goal of psychoanalysis was to trust in the scientific method as a source of truth concerning the nature of one’s being and the world.

Since Freud, modern psychiatry and psychology make claims to have supplanted a number of religious concepts central to understanding human nature. Among these are notions of a soul, of sin, and of morality. Soul and sin have been replaced by notions of human consciousness and psychological and social pathologie...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Introduction
• 2 Marion Milner on Mysticism and Creativity
• 3 Spirituality and Creativity: Theory and Practice
• 4 Hope and the Religious Imagination
• 5 Issues of Mood and Anxiety
• 6 Eating Disorders
• 7 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index