Painting, Psychoanalysis, and Spirituality examines the spiritual and transcendental dimension of painting. Using psychoanalytical ideas, the author demonstrates the developmental processes that are the inner core of the creative process. Newton shows how painting can psychologically transform the artist or viewer through engagement with the spiritual dimension of the art work through analyses of works of contemporary artists such as Roger Hilton, Willem de Kooning, and Georg Baselitz, along with those of icon painters Fra Angelico, Leonardo, Nicholas Poussin, and Cézanne, among others.
This book is a study of contemporary spirituality as it is practiced in the world today, characterized by its secular and inclusive nature, and applied to art and art education. It identifies the issues facing a formal introduction of contemporary spiritual concepts into a secular and multicultural arts educational environment. Lander begins by separating the notion of "the spiritual" from the study of organized religions. She uses examples of art from different cultures in contemporary spiritual systems, making the study a reference book for contemporary spirituality and spirituality in art education, with usable definitions and practical examples suitable for scholars in art and visual studies, art education, and contemporary spirituality.
Making Sense utilises art practice as a pro-active way of thinking that helps us to make sense of the world. It does this by developing an applied understanding of how we can use art as a method of healing and as a critical method of research. Drawing from poststructuralist philosophy, psychoanalysis, arts therapies, and the creative processes of a range of contemporary artists, the book appeals to the fields of art theory, the arts therapies, aesthetics and art practice, whilst it opens the regenerative affects of art-making to everyone. It does this by proposing the agency of 'transformative therapeutics', which defines how art helps us to make sense of the world, by activating, nourishing and understanding a particular world view or situation therein. The purpose of the book is to question and understand how and why art has this facility and power, and make the creative and healing properties of certain modes of expression widely accessible, practical and useful.
In Minding Spirituality, Randall Sorenson, a clinical psychoanalyst, "invites us to take an interest in our patients' spirituality that is respectful but not diffident, curious but not reductionistic, welcoming but not indoctrinating." Out of this invitation emerges a fascinating and broadening investigation of how contemporary psychoanalysis can "mind" spirituality in the threefold sense of being bothered by it, of attending to it, and of cultivating it. Both the questions Sorenson asks, and the answers he begins to formulate, reflect progressive changes in the psychoanalytic understanding of spirituality. Sorenson begins by quantitatively analyzing 75 years of journal literature and documenting how psychoanalytic approaches to religious and spiritual experiences have evolved far beyond the "wholesale pathologizing of religion" prevalent during Freud's lifetime. Then, in successive chapters, he explores and illustrates the kind of clinical technique appropriate to the modern treatment of religious issues. And the issue of technique is consequential in more than one way -- Sorenson presents evidence that how analysts work clinically has a greater impact on their patients' spirituality than the patients' own parents have. Sorenson brings an array of disciplinary perspectives to bear in examining the multiple relationships among psychoanalysis, religion, and spirituality. Empirical analysis, psychoanalytic history, sociology of religion, comparative theory, and sustained clinical interpretation all enter into his effort to open a dialogue that is clinically relevant. Turning traditional critiques of psychoanalytic training on their head, he argues that psychoanalytic education has much to learn from models of contemporary theological education. Beautifully crafted and engagingly written, Minding Spirituality not only invites interdisciplinary dialogue but, via Sorenson's wide-ranging and passionately open-minded scholarship, exemplifies it.
This book explores the experience of time in psychoanalysis and Andean shamanism. It plots ways to work through unresolved trauma by expanding how we conceptualize both implicit and nonverbal atemporal experience, drawing from the rituals, narratives, and medicine of Andean shamans and quantum theory. Shifting between subjective states in time is fundamental in trauma work and psychoanalysis. Integrating traumatic experiences that have become split off and held in “timeless” unconscious states of implicit memory is an essential aspect of psychic healing. Becoming familiar with the Andean shamans’ understanding of atemporal experience, as well as learning about their ways of “grounding” the experience consciously, can offer a route through which psychoanalysis and therapy may deepen the therapeutic process and open new states of consciousness. Theories developed in quantum physics are included to parallel the shamans’ experience and for describing the analytic process. Written by a noted expert in this field, this insightful volume will interest trainee and practitioner analytical psychologists, as well as any professional interested in the resolution of trauma within a psychotherapeutic setting.
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.
Why do painters paint? Obviously, there are numerous possible reasons. They paint to create images for others’ enjoyment, to solve visual problems, to convey ideas, and to contribute to a rich artistic tradition. This book argues that there is yet another, crucially important but often overlooked reason. Painters paint to feel. They paint because it enables them to experience special feelings, such as being absorbed in creative play and connected to something vitally significant. Painting may even transform the painter’s whole sense of being. Thus, painting is not only about producing art, communicating content, and so on, but also about setting up and inhabiting an experiential space wherein highly valued feelings are interactively enabled and supported. This book investigates how and why this happens by combining psychoanalytical theorization on creativity with philosophical thinking on affectivity. It focuses on creative experience itself, and illuminates the psychological mechanisms and dynamics that underlie the affects at stake. Painters’ own descriptions of how they feel at work are used throughout to give an accurate, true-to-life portrayal of the experience of painting. The strength of the book lies in its open-minded yet critical integration of contemporary psychoanalytic and philosophical thinking, and in its truthfulness to painters’ experiential descriptions of the painterly process. On the whole, it enriches our understanding of artistic creativity and sheds more light on how and why we come to feel the things we do. As such, the book will appeal to philosophers, psychoanalysts, and art researchers alike.
An introduction to the field of psychological aesthetics for art educators, art therapists, psychoanalysts, artists and art lovers, this book re-evaluates conventional philosophical and psychoanalytic approaches to aesthetic qualities themselves, to the kinds of psychological significance they can generate, and to the interweaving of inner and outer realities upon which this depends. Art history tends to see an artist's work in the context of their life and times; psychoanalysis and art therapy tend to see art works in terms of an unconscious' meaning that is beneath the surface of its aesthetic' properties, within the context of the therapeutic relationship. Maclagan draws attention to the intimate connections between the aesthetic qualities of an art work per se, felt out in its material handling, be they attractive, disconcerting or just bland, and a wide range of psychological meanings. Drawing on phenomenology and archetypal psychology, as well as on neglected writers on unconcious aspects of form, Psychological Aesthetics: Painting, Feeling and Making Sense explores this realm of feeling, the different ways in which it is embodied in art and how we can use subjective' strategies to articulate it in words. It will open new perspectives in understanding both the processes of art making and our creative response to its results.
In Freud's Art – Psychoanalysis Retold Janet Sayers provides a refreshing new introduction to psychoanalysis by retelling its story through art. She does this by bringing together experts from psychoanalysis, art history, and art education to show how art and psychoanalysis illuminate each other. Freud's Art begins with major founders of psychoanalysis - Freud, Jung, Spielrein and Klein. It then details art-minded developments of their ideas by Adrian Stokes, Jacques Lacan, Marion Milner, Anton Ehrenzweig, Donald Winnicott, and Wilfred Bion before concluding with the recent theories of Jean Laplanche and Julia Kristeva. The result is a book which highlights the importance of psychoanalysis, together with painting and the visual arts, to understanding the centrality of visual imagery, fantasy, nightmares and dreams to all of us, artists and non-artists alike. Illustrated throughout with fascinating case histories, examples of well known and amateur art, doodles, drawings, and paintings by both analysts and their patients, Freud's Art provides a compelling account of psychoanalysis for all those studying, working in, or simply intrigued by psychology, mental health and creativity today.
Traditional fine arts are often regarded as rarefied, something accessed by the uniquely talented and displayed in impressive museums or on lavish stages. Art thusly conceived is something that most people never practice in their lives. Yet in day-to-day life we all experience creative satisfaction through interaction with the physical and social environment that is a form of artistic practice. In Transformative Arts: Biological, Digital, and Everyday Aesthetics, Gary A. Berg explores what we gain through understanding ways to live imaginative lives and considers the increasingly important collaborative role of computers and interaction with nature.