Creativity and Psychological Well-Being

ABSTRACT. In this paper, originally delivered as the keynote address at the annual meeting of the NYS Psychological Association, I take issue with the common view that madness or mental illnesses such as depression and bipolar disorder contribute to creativity and suggest that it is more interesting to explore the converse view that creativity contributes to mental health and psychological well-being. Drawing from art, literature, psychology, and my own experience as a mental health professional, a jazz pianist, and a photographer and digital image maker, I maintain that the creative process creates opportunities for intense activity and accomplishment, can open people to inner depths and to powerful connections with artistic colleagues and cultures, and can provide a sense of transcendent meaning. Creative efforts can contribute, not uniquely but importantly, to developing a sense of well-being for people who are fundamentally mentally healthy and for those who have mental disorders, including those with severe mental illness and those with dementia.Keywords: creativity; well-being; mental health; recoveryRichard Juman, The President of the NYS Psychological Association in 2012, asked me to give this keynote address because I am a semi-professional jazz musician and photographer as well as a mental health professional. I immediately said, "Why would anyone want to come to hear me speak about art and psychology?" I'm not Miles Davis or Ansel Adams or any musician or photographer that anyone has ever heard of. Richard persisted, appealed to my abundant narcissism by saying that he wanted me to talk about my personal experience with music and photography and tempted me beyond my ability to resist with the opportunity to explore a new area of thought for me.As I was doing some research about creativity for this speech, it dawned on me that it was almost all about creative geniuses, something that I very clearly am not. As I often say, for a social worker I am a hell of a jazz piano player; as a jazz piano player I'm mediocre. Then it occurred to me that not being a creative genius might make my experience usefiil for understanding what engaging in creative activity can contribute to the mental health of us ordinary mortals. So today I am going to discuss the important, but not unique, contribution that art can make:1. to psychological well-being, using the framework of positive psychology and2. to having a decent quality of life if you have a serious, long-term mental illness or even dementia.Note that I am not talking about the frequent claim that madness - i.e., mental illness - is the root of creativity. Instead, I am making a case for the idea that creativity is a major source of mental health.8,9,10,111. Art and Psychological Well-beinghttp://www. youtube.com/watch ?v=jM9L 1 qUCYLIThis music played by the Gerry Mulligan Quartet in Paris in 1954 changed my life. I heard it first when I was 15. I had started playing jazz after my mother took me and a few friends to a Jazz at the Philharmonic concert two years earlier. I was transfixed, bought a book with the music of three boogie woogie stars, and taught myself to play boogie woogie. Something caught my eye about the cover of the album we are listening to, but $3.99 was a lot of money in those days. Eventually I found a used copy I could afford; and from the sound of the first notes of these close harmonies defined without the help of a piano, I was captured. I remember the feeling more clearly than I remember the first time I had sex - which was, if you'll excuse the pun, an anti-climax, whereas this music has influenced every note I have played since I first heard it. I don't mean to suggest that music is more powerful than sex. There's nothing more powerful than sex. But even as an adolescent who thought about little else, I was captured by this music in a more profound way. It opened a part of myself that is usually buried and hidden and that I have returned to over and over again for the past 55 years. …