{"id":706,"date":"2012-10-08T13:41:58","date_gmt":"2012-10-08T21:41:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=706"},"modified":"2012-10-08T13:41:58","modified_gmt":"2012-10-08T21:41:58","slug":"creativity-the-arts-therapies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/?p=706","title":{"rendered":"Creativity & the Arts Therapies"},"content":{"rendered":"

In response to a request to speak to some students of one of the arts therapies at a college in the USA, I contemplated what such students need to hear. I asked about improvisation as a theme and the teacher noted that developing skills to promote improvisation in art media\u2014music, dance, art, poetry, etc.\u2014is indeed relevant. I realized that I have wanted to witness to the deep importance of cultivating improvisational skills. I wrote: It partakes of re-encountering one\u2019s creative potential<\/strong><\/em>. I went on to talk about creativity.<\/p>\n

Creativity is beginning to be recognized, but it doesn\u2019t fit much with most theories of psychology. There\u2019s a 30 \u2013 60 year delay in the understanding of the nature of the psyche—sort of like the state of biology and medicine in the mid-19th century before the vivid truth of the microbial (invisible?!) world became apparent. <\/p>\n

Creativity is a subtle dynamic: It flowers more when there\u2019s a relative reduction of arousal of the mid-brain limbic system, which means that in states of fear, grief, anxiety, annoyance, illness, and the like, the emotional \u201cnoise\u201d obscures the more subtle inflow of \u201cinspiration.\u201d What\u2019s needed, as in other scientific studies, is the reduction of that which introduces too much contamination, noise, etc.—and in this case, a relative feeling of safety and a context that promises social safety, forgiveness, being liked, secure self esteem and the esteem of others, group cohesion, high morale, playfulness— all quiet the mind and let one notice creative ideas from the forebrain. <\/p>\n

In a more turbulent world, many people were reacting to coarser inputs, people have just died, threats of being hurt, dispossessed, etc. Only in this more affluent world, and also because of the acceleration of technology and the demand for innovation, has creativity emerged from something only a rare few inventors and artists could dare do to something we want to promote in most people. It\u2019s a pretty new commodity, in other words. And we are exploring now how to reduce the elements that interfere with creativity—needs to be in control, worries about the \u201cproduct\u201d rather than the process, a demand that what is developed be immediately explainable, etc. <\/p>\n

Psychodrama applies creativity not as art or music—but other approaches do that— but more as drama, which draws on the tendency of people to tell stories, to live out their own stories, to create and re-create their own life scripts. Improvisation, though, is a key—it\u2019s not a scripted process. And psychodrama operates as a method within a larger group of primary concepts:<\/p>\n

1. Creativity<\/em><\/strong> may be imagined as a primary philosophical and even theological quality, and indeed, this has been suggested by some philosophers such as Henri Bergson or Alfred North Whithead, or the inventor of psychodrama, the multi-role-developed genius Jacob L. Moreno (1889-1974).<\/p>\n

2. The best way to promote creativity is not through quiet pondering and then flash insights—though those do get more press than they deserve; far more often, though, the creator improvises<\/strong><\/em>, then refines, and the refining and revising may go through scores of reiterations! Persistence is a major quality, but our culture overly focuses on the end point, the product. A careful reading of history of art or technology reveals, though, that most created pretty good products then get superseded by improvements, and those get improved upon, too. In other words, don\u2019t assume that what is created cannot yet be revised or improved. Really appreciating the process of improvisation is one of Moreno\u2019s contributions.<\/p>\n

3. The state of mind of the improvising person is called \u201cspontaneity<\/strong><\/em>.\u201d To be creative, one of the best techniques is to free up your spontaneity. Be aware that not everything you spontaneously evolve will in fact be creative. But the attitude differs from mere impulsivity in that you\u2019re looking for that more useful end-point, and if what you generate doesn\u2019t work, you\u2019re alert to the fact that it doesn\u2019t and perhaps you even pursue why it doesn\u2019t so you can try again with a different approach. A famous scientist named John Wheeler is said to have noted that science proceeds only by making all possible mistakes<\/em>—but the catch is noticing<\/em> that they are mistakes<\/em><\/strong>. (This differs from falling into a cult-like mentality of believing in beliefs.) In other words, have a part of your mind that is alert to the possibility that what you are doing may be mistaken, or at least worthy of possible refinement, making it even better! Indeed, build into your activities some sub-routine that is geared to discovering and identifying what isn\u2019t working.<\/p>\n

Getting People In Touch With Their Own Creative Potential<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finally, my point is that this is much much bigger than therapy per se. Applied to therapy and rehabilitation, let\u2019s say that that getting people in touch with their own creative potential is enlightening and exciting and empowering, and in that sense it promotes health and resilience. Many people who are \u201csick\u201d are likewise demoralized, and our culture does much to add to this demoralization, though of course it means well and doesn\u2019t want to demoralize anyone.<\/p>\n

The source of intrinsic demoralization is the fairly widespread and implicit belief in the industrial world that normal people can work any factory job if they want to. People in the industrial era were thus imagined to function like cogs in a great machine. The unspoken expectation has been that you should be normal, which implies that you should not be distracted by such strange notions as talents or inspirations. After all, there is no place for individual talents, temperament, or other marks of individuality in most factories. Shut up and do what you\u2019re told.<\/p>\n

Alas, much schooling is like this, too. As a result, the hypocrisy of administrators who believe they\u2019re doing good but really are only serving the convenience of administration in a large knowledge factory prevents well-meaning administrators to realize they\u2019re part of an oppressive hyper-machine. Conventional education still believes that filling vessels with information is what it\u2019s about, rather than kindling flames. Back when just getting a general education of information depended on instruction rather than the internet, this belief was more plausible. (It was wrong even then, but more plausible.)<\/p>\n

So it is good to help people discover their creative potential, that more vital and enthusiastic component of the healthy \u201cinner child\u201d complex, and drawing it forward. It\u2019s good to distill out the healthy inner child, away from the less healthy inner child elements of egocentricity, selfishness, impulsivity and other errors of immaturity. But in the olden days, this recognition of the idea that there are healthy, life-affirming elements in the inner child was rare; mostly inner child was all lumped together, like unrefined oil, and viewed as useless or even bad. Part of our own era and this program is to introduce the concept of \u201crefining\u201d into education and therapy.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re interested in these ideas, you might enjoy reading more in some of the many papers on my website: www.blatner.com\/adam\/<\/a> including those aimed at the creative arts therapies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In response to a request to speak to some students of one of the arts therapies at a college in the USA, I contemplated what such students need to hear. I asked about improvisation as a theme and the teacher noted that developing skills to promote improvisation in art media\u2014music, dance, art, poetry, etc.\u2014is indeed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,11,26,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-play-and-spontaneity","category-literacy","category-psychology","category-wisdom-ing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=706"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":707,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/706\/revisions\/707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blatner.com\/adam\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}