Synopsis
Book by Tobi Zausner
Extrait
Chapter 1
What Is a Transforming Illness?
Experts are those who pass through the forest of thorns.
—Zen proverb
What is a transforming illness and how does it work? Can anyone have a transforming illness? And why is creativity central to its effectiveness and so beneficial that artists choose to be creative when they are sick? The psychologist Henri Ellenberger calls the sickness preceding a breakthrough a “creative illness” since it affects productivity.1 I call it a “transforming illness” because the person changes as well as the work. The transforming illness is found throughout humankind, and we see it in shamans, who are the healers of their tribes. Mircea Eliade, the scholar of comparative religion, finds that shamans are only able to access their full abilities after recovering from an illness that transforms them.2 This chapter presents the components of a transforming illness and shows us how it acts to strengthen our lives.
Transforming Illness
A transforming illness is a time of poor health that profoundly alters your work, your outlook, and your life. It can occur at any age, from early childhood to the very end of existence, and can even happen more than once. It can also take many forms, but whether the transforming illness is a single episode of poor health or a chronic condition, things are never the same afterward. When the transforming illness occurs early in life, it can set the path for a future career; in adulthood it can alter a person’s way of living and working. Lawrence Alma-Tadema experienced both stages.
Lawrence Alma-Tadema (English, born in Holland, 1836–1912) wanted to be an artist since early childhood, but his family insisted that he become a lawyer.3 The stress of attending academic classes and making art in his spare time took its toll on the boy, and he contracted tuberculosis. Believing the illness to be terminal, doctors told the family that he should be permitted to do as he wished. Once Alma-Tadema was allowed to be creative without feeling pressured, his health returned and he became an artist. A second transforming illness came in 1870, when he was an established painter living in Brussels. None of the doctors there knew what was wrong, so a friend advised him to consult with the famous English surgeon Sir Henry Thompson. While in London to see Thompson, Alma-Tadema met his future wife. Later that year he settled in the city, and it became the place of his greatest success.
Even the end of life is not immune to a transforming illness. Intent to stay creative, artists will produce masterpieces in the face of immi-nent death. Ill from diabetes, Paul Cézanne (French, 1839–1906) wrote a letter to his son just days before he died.4 “I continue working with pains,” he admitted, “but finally something will come of it, and that is all that matters.”
Change during Illness
There are as many variations of transforming illnesses as there are people who have them. Everyone is a potential candidate because no one is immune either to illness or to change. Sometimes during illness change occurs in a split second of insight, that moment of epiphany when the veil drops away and your path becomes clear. At other times it is a gradual transition to a completely new life. Usually the creativity that starts during a transforming illness begins in convalescence, when the acute phase is over and extended rest produces a need to fill the empty hours. Changes can even begin before an illness, but then poor health accelerates the transformation. Specific illnesses can also pose their own problems. To overcome these obstacles, artists like Janet Sobel and Consuelo Gonzalez Amezcua change their mediums and alter their creative process in order to keep working.
Janet Sobel (American, born in Ukraine, 1894–1968) was an abstract artist who made drip paintings in the 1940s at the same time as Jackson Pollock.5 When Sobel became allergic to paints, she changed her medium to crayon and pencil. Expressing herself through colorful drawings, she left a large body of work. Consuelo González Amezcua (American, 1903–1975) also changed mediums because of her health.6 She was a sculptor who carved limestone into intricate designs by mixing imagery and abstraction. Amezcua developed breathing problems from inhaling rock dust, so she turned to drawing. By working on paper, she discovered her gift for color.
Physicians have recognized and written about the connection between illness, creativity, and self-transformation. In his book Creativity and Disease, the surgeon Philip Sandblom says, “In artists, the passion to create generates a will power strong enough to defy the worst disease.”7 And in his book Radical Healing, the psychiatrist Rudolph Ballentine writes, “Illness gives you the gift of helplessness, the overwhelming awareness that your way of being has, at least in some respects, failed.”8 He believes that an awareness of this situation offers opportunities for renewed health and fundamental change. Whenever a transforming illness occurs, it is a turning point in life, leaving you a different person from the one you were before. But this time of change before the new life begins may feel chaotic.
Illness as Chaos
Whenever we are sick and every time we are stressed we are in a state of chaos. The situation may not always look chaotic, but emo- tional and physical stress produce turmoil. And turmoil is chaos. Ilya Prigogine, who won the 1977 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his work on chaos theory, describes chaos as a state of turbulence in which things may appear disordered, but actually have an inherent structure that can produce new order.9 The transforming illness also looks disordered, but it too holds the seeds for a new existence. Illness appears to act like chaos in two ways. In an acute illness, a time of chaos comes, reorganizes our world, and leaves. In chronic illness, the chaos is ongoing, but artists like Dory Coffee persevere and their output increases.
Dory Coffee (American, b. 1942) has eye problems that impair her vision: pseudoexfoliation (flaking of the lens), glaucoma, and cataracts.10 As a result she has so many floaters in her visual field that they collect, forming cloudy spots. Resilient and persistent, Coffee fights her floaters with blinks that temporarily move them away. Her joyful, bright paintings reveal nothing of this constant struggle. “It’s a daily challenge,” she says, “but I continue to paint more than ever.”11
Chaos brings in the new. Our noisy, chaotic New Year’s Eve parties usher in the new year, and in Hinduism and the Judeo-Christian Gene- sis, there is a period of chaos before the new world takes form.12 We mirror creation through chaos whenever we are so upset that we feel impelled to change. During this period of inner chaos, which can be an experience of poor health, we are uncomfortable, but we also have a window of opportunity. Chaos theory is part of the science of nonlinear dynamics, but the transforming illness can also be explained using concepts from psychology.
Creativity as a Coping Mechanism
In psychology, the method we use to deal with a stressful event is called a coping mechanism. Using creativity to cope during poor health is a positive response to a difficult situation. Making a hard time more bearable is what the psychologist Salvatore R. Maddi calls transformational coping.13 It is central to a transforming illness.
The portrait and landscape artist Karen Koenig (American, 1938–1994) coped by using creativity in two separate ways. She was diagnosed with von Hippel–Lindau disease (VHL) in her late twenties.14 This rare genetic disorder affects the brain, eyes, spinal cord, kidneys, and, in its late stages, other parts of the body as well. At first she used painting to cope with the stress of illness. Even with diminishing sight in her left eye, Koenig continued to work using her right eye. When her right eye became impaired in 1992 and she could no longer paint, Koenig coped by writing poetry. “My art has been taken from me. . . . How could I endure?”she asked in a poem and then realized, “I could learn to cope.”15 She proudly stated, “I’m a fighter,” while creating poems about life, her family, her medical treatments, and her cat, Parpie. “I have somehow coped,” she wrote. “We will find ways. Life will still be good. Life will be different. But there are discoveries to be made at every juncture.”16
There are both positive and negative coping mechanisms. For example, improving nutrition in response to an illness is a healthy cop- ing mechanism; substance abuse is an unhealthy strategy. But even creativity itself can become a negative coping mechanism when it is used as an escape from reality to the detriment of your health; that is, if you ignored early warning signs of an illness and made art instead of going to a doctor. Creativity is an adjunct therapy that does not take the place of medical care; rather, it supplements that care in the pursuit of wellness. As creativity helps us cope through stress reduction and we make a difficult time more tolerable, we increase our hardiness.
Hardiness
Hardiness is the strength that helps us thrive despite obstacles. Maddi believes that hardiness has three components: commitment, control, and challenge.17 Although Maddi did his psychological research in the corporate environment, his findings relate to creativity. Commitment, which is involvement, is an artist’s commitment to work. Control is inherent in the decisions about what will or will not appear in the work of art. And challenge is a constant in the creative process where problems are continually met and solved in the course of a work. Because creative activity contains the three components of hardiness, I believe that it can not only increase hardiness but produce hardiness as well.
Creating hardiness through commitment, control, and challenge is very important to people who have suffered prejudice. For them, creativity can build a sense of self-worth. Sylvia Fragoso (American, b. 1962) is an artist with Down syndrome who paints at the National Institute of Art and Disabilities (NIAD) in Richmond, California. Founded by the psychologist Elias Katz and his late wife, the art teacher Florence Ludins-Katz, NIAD has a spacious studio where challenged people make art and also have a chance to sell their work.18 Painting at NIAD has given Fragoso both hardiness and self-esteem. “I am an artist,” she says and sees herself as a practicing professional.19
Hardiness is especially important during illness, when adversity can be a constant companion. According to the American Psychological Association, hardiness helps both our physical and our mental health and is the key to resilience.20
Resilience
Resilience is our ability to adapt to new circumstances when life has changed in ways we could not have predicted and would not have chosen. It is the development of strength during a time of hardship. Resilience is our capacity to thrive despite major life stresses that could seriously threaten us. In their study of children born to underprivileged families on Hawaii’s island of Kauai, the psychologists Emmy Werner and Ruth Smith show that even in the face of great risks, there are still individuals who will have successful, rewarding lives.21 They are the resilient ones. Despite multiple problems at home, in school, and in the workplace, they overcome their difficulties and thrive. The artists portrayed in this book use creativity as a tool for resilience, to overcome adverse physical conditions.
Ezekiel Gibbs (American, 1889–1992) says his father came from Africa “around the end of slavery times” and his mother was a Cherokee.22 Originally a farmer, Gibbs started painting at the age of eighty-three and spoke about resilience in the face of physical exhaustion. “Sometimes, when I think I’m just about played out, I sit down and rest awhile,” he explained. “Then I just go to it again. You just have to keep on doing whatever you are doing.”23 It worked for him. Gibbs continued to paint until his death at age 103; he was believed to have been the oldest self-taught artist living and working in America.
The psychiatrist Michael Rutter describes resilience as a dynamic process containing protective mechanisms that modify the response to risk, lessen vulnerability, and generate turning points in life.24 Using Rutter’s model, we see that creativity is also a dynamic process that can be used as a protective mechanism, generating turning points in both life and art. It also modifies the response to risk and lessens vulnerability because it releases stress and builds strength. It releases stress by allowing you to enter the world of art, where physical problems seem to diminish, and it builds strength through the achievement of goals met and tasks accomplished.
Self-Efficacy and Mastery
Because it is a dynamic process, creativity is not only a tool for resiliency, but can generate what the psychologist Albert Bandura calls “self-efficacy.”25 Self-efficacy is the way we perceive ourselves and our belief that the things we do make a difference. These beliefs inspire motivation and determine our behavior. The best way to strengthen our sense of self-efficacy is through success and the experience of mastery. Mastery is success in performing a task or in the outcome of a situation. The artists in this book achieve self-efficacy through the experience of mastery by creating art despite physical challenges. The sculptor Michael Gregory acquired this ability through effort.
Michael Gregory (American, 1951–1995) believed he had to work twice as hard to succeed because of the prejudice against him. “One, I’m legally blind since birth,” he stated, “and two, I’m black.” Unable to see well, he worked with clay, a medium he could feel. Through effort and talent Gregory went from can collector to prize-winning sculptor featured on television and in newspapers. “If you don’t try,” Gregory insisted, “you don’t know what you can do.”26
According to Bandura, people find stress less upsetting if they think they can cope with it. One of the primary ways creativity helps artists cope is through compensation.
Artistic Projection as a Method of Compensation
A compensation response is an act of doing something to make up for something else that is missing. My clear style of painting is my compensation response to the blurred world I see without corrective lenses. But there is an additional aspect of compensation in art that seems magical but is really psychological. It occurs during what I call artistic projection: artists project themselves and what they desire into what they are creating; as a result, they are able to forget their physical condition at the time. Artistic projection differs from Freud’s concept of an individual unconsciously projecting his or her thoughts onto another person.27
Artistic projection is a powerful experience because the work of art becomes a kind of virtual reality for artists. When artists draw or paint something, a psychological aspect of their being is projected into what they are making, and they actually sense themselves in their creations. When I draw a leg or a hand, I feel that leg or hand as I make it appear: there is a connection between me and what I create. Projecting oneself into a work of art is so intrinsic to artistic experience that it is routinely used in both Eastern and Western art education. My drawing and anatomy teacher at the Art Students League in New York City told us to “feel” the muscles in the bodies we drew. And when the eighth-century painter Han Kan (Chinese, d. 780) created a horse, “he became a horse.”28 Classical Japanese painting calls this concept sei do, or “living movemen...
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