Bugged out by the latest trend of ‘high protein’ crickets on restaurant menus? In his recent book, Flourish, Martin Seligman often regarded as the father of positive psychology maintains that there’re five critical elements of psychological ‘wellbeing’, positive emotion, engagement, accomplishment, positive relationships, and meaning. Whenever living well involves feeling good about life, having something to do that you care a lot about that you immerse yourself in it, becoming good enough at something to take some pride in it, having people in your lifetime whom you care about and who care about you, and feeling connected with something that takes you beyond yourself just like your family, your community, your work, and so forth, in simple terms. Michael Friedman will deliver the keynote address at the NYS Psychological Association’s Annual Conference on Art and Psychology on June 9, For information. Given an ordinary belief that madness and creativity are linked, it’s surely worth noting that whether mental illness contributes to art, art certainly can contribute to mental health. Surely it’s a tremendous source of happiness for a great many people, art isn’t the source of the greatest happiness in everyone’s life.
Art is one transcendent source experience, not a solitary one but a very important one.
Everyone who appreciates some sort of art experiences through it something powerful, significant, and elevating, a few of us, for sure, are not captured by Pop art.
His example is Warhol’s Brillo Box or Campbell soup cans, that somehow convey a significance way beyond their visual surface. Needless to say, by this he means that art somehow becomes imbued with meanings that go well beyond the surface of the artistic product. Oftentimes arthur Danto a philosopher and art critic refers to the transcendent capacity of art as the transfiguration of the commonplace. There’s more information about this stuff on this website. Whenever shaping of self, connections with people and a culture, and the potential for transcendent experience apply both to people without mental disorders and those with mental disorders, the contributions that art can make to psychological wellbeing via enjoyment, immersion, development of skill, revelation and expression of emotion. Now please pay attention. For them, art can have a great healing impact, a fact I have recently written about in other posts. Which also addresses the human potential to live well, all of this has vast implications for how we can build satisfying lives for ourselves and our children and on p of that suggests that there ought to be a public mental health agenda that isn’t limited to the treatment of mental illnesses.
There’re two dimensions to this. Art can be a healing force for people with mental disorders, including people with dementia, and art can contribute to psychological well being of people regardless of whether they have a mental disorder or not. It can also therefore inarticulate. Also, it’s also selfcreation, Art isn’t just ‘selfexpression’. Through art, people can shape their own identity. Through the arts people can find voices to express dimensions of self usually left in silence.
Ok, and now one of the most important parts. Art also helps people to connect with and deal with their emotions. Art can it’s clear, I believe, that art can provide any of these elements of ‘wellbeing’. While doing art also connects the artist with a field of art, with a history and a language that goes far beyond what any individual artist does.