On the artistic shaping of delusion in psychosis
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/20428301211205874 |
| Pages | 26-30 |
| Published date | 24 February 2012 |
| Date | 24 February 2012 |
| Author | Peter Chadwick |
| Subject Matter | Health & social care |
On the artistic shaping of delusion
in psychosis
Peter Chadwick
Abstract
Purpose – The paper aims to discuss delusion as a creative experience.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper addresses narrative rendering of delusional thinking in
detail and related styles of thought in artists.
Findings – Enhanced creativity during psychosis can be put to productive use in recovery. Artistic
cultures may help psychosis sufferers move to a more socially inclusive, consensual view of reality.
Originality/value – The paper emphasises the artistic aspect of psychosis as a counterweight to the
‘‘machine aesthetic’’ of positivistic science and also stresses the importance of spiritual experience to
recovery.
Keywords Psychosis, Creativity, Delusion, Artistic approaches, Narratives, Social inclusion
Paper type Conceptual paper
Although psychosis traditionally is researched almost exclusively in a scientific way, a
moment’s reflection will reveal that looking for genetic, temperamental and in some sense
‘‘hardware’’ predispositions to actions, in a spirit of ‘‘all is number’ ’, is a cyclopean way to
approach the issue of mind-in-life when life so often copies theatre, television, cinematic and
novelistic drama – to say nothing of the behaviour of celebrities.
Science and art at war
Sadly, for many decades, perhaps centuries, the relationship between science and art has
been strained. For example, Strauss (1994) laments on the asymmetry that has occurred
because of artists enthusiastically borrowing and learning from science but scientists in no
way reciprocating in their attitude to the arts. In the early days of Modernism, doctors and
psychiatrists were not enthusiastic. Kazimir Malevich, the Russian abstractionist, wrote
(Malevich, 1976/1925), ‘‘Criticism has attempted to reduce all new forms of art to a whole
series of diseases: rickets, psychic sickness, degenerate types, the mentally retarded,
epileptics, louts, etc.’’ and ‘ ‘when Futurism and Cubism arose, many doctors and
psychiatrists said that Futurists and Cubists were suffering from a morbid derangement of
their capacity to perceive phenomena, causing a disintegration of the whole aspect, and they
have produced examples, analogies between Cubist drawings and the drawings of sick
people, in which the object was torn into shreds and every part of it was drawn separately’’
(Malevich, 1976/1925, p. 168).
Puppeteered by the gods
Strauss (1994) argues that we should listen to the patient’s story and that narrative
approaches should have a place in psychiatry,something that in recent years, thanks not least
to journals such as this one, has been coming to pass. The stories that people recount of
paranoid delusions are characterised by persecution, suspicion and threat. Very often they
PAGE 26
j
MENTAL HEALTHAND SOCIAL INCLUSION
j
VOL. 16 NO. 1 2012, pp. 26-30, QEmerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 2042-8308 DOI 10.1108/20428301211205874
Peter Chadwick is a retired
lecturer in abnormal
psychology and personality
at Birkbeck College,
University of London,
London, UK.
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