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CREATIVE MINDS: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights
“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”
-Louise Nevelson
When discussing the origins of creativity, the idea I hate the most is that of inspiration. In my clinical work with creative patients, I have found it to be soul-killing for artists of all stripes and at all levels of professional success.
Like the quote by Mary Chase, when asked how she got the idea for her famous play, “Harvey.” Her reply? “I looked up from the breakfast table one morning and there he was.”
This is the kind of story that gives new (and not so new) artists acute and potentially shaming grief: the belief that brilliant ideas just “come to you,” that the lucky few are visited by the spirit of creativity and originality. Even Shakespeare, in his prologue to “Henry V” implores the gods to inspire him: “O for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention…”
Most of our creative patients, when having breakfast, rarely encounter an invisible 6-foot rabbit, or a Muse of Fire, for that matter. Most encounter the empty canvas, the blank computer screen, the inert, unhelpful lump of modeling clay.
The idea of inspiration, as it is commonly understood, does a great deal of damage to those of our creative patients who succumb to its siren song. For one thing, it devalues craft, which I believe is the most important attribute to be cultivated by every artist. It also reinforces the notion that the creative patients themselves are somehow not enough. That some special talent or knowledge or divine gift—something outside of the artist—is necessary. I call this “The Inspiration Trap.”
It is an understandable misconception, since the word inspiration—from the Latin inspirare, which means “to breathe into”—certainly reinforces the notion that a creative burst comes from the outside of a person; that a divine spark animates the literary, musical, or visual artist, leading to new and innovative work.
Conceptualized in this way, inspiration, by its very nature, cannot be grasped or looked for, and certainly not commanded to show up. (Though many artists give it a try. Hence the various rituals I have heard from creative patients when starting work, everything from earnest prayer to vigorous hand-washing to wearing “lucky” socks. More than 1 writer patient has pointed out to me that Jack Kerouac famously made the Sign of the Cross before sitting down at the keyboard.)
This conception of inspiration can do tremendous damage to our creative patients. I have known artists to give up halfway through a beloved project because they “no longer feel inspired.” (As if you are always supposed to feel good about what you are working on! In my previous career as a Hollywood screenwriter, this was rarely the case.)
Then there was a composer patient of mine who consistently refused to begin a new orchestral piece until he “heard the goddam Muse,” which meant he spent more time listening for that elusive, ethereal helpmate than risking the possibility of composing badly.
(Which reminds me of an old Zen Buddhist story about a monk who patiently tilled the soil in his garden for 20 years, hoping to attain enlightenment. Then, 1 day, his hoe struck a small rock in the dirt and he heard a soft “ping.” Suddenly, he was enlightened. So then the question is, did hearing the “ping” bring him to the state of enlightenment, or was it rather the 20 years of sustained effort tilling the soil that prepared him to recognize and understand the significance of that soft sound when it happened?)
What the 2 aforementioned patients fail to grasp is that— like the experience of the monk in the story—the artistic struggle is, and has always been, something of a grind. It requires persistence, which means one usually spends more time slogging through the valleys of frustration than standing at the peaks of fulfillment. To put it bluntly, if inspiration is going to strike at all, it will emerge unbidden; embedded, I believe, in the deepening levels of craft the artist develops. As most professional artists—and creative types in all fields—seem to understand.
For example, the novelist Albert Morovia said, “I pray for inspiration…but I work at the typewriter four hours a day.”
Writer Peter De Vries goes him one better: “I only write when I’m inspired, so I see to it that I’m inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”
In other words, good creative work results from the doing itself. As Pablo Picasso said, “Action is the foundational key to all success.” In a similar vein, he reminds us that “inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”
Or as I often tell my writer patients, “Writing begets writing.” As doing any creative task tends to beget more of the same. Conversely, not working while waiting for inspiration to strike begets more work undone and, ultimately, unfinished. In such instances, there’s very little difference between waiting for inspiration and procrastination.
Of course, leave it to an engineer and entrepreneur, Nolan Bushnell, to cut to the chase: “The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.”
Pragmatic as that comment may seem, I think the best way to help our creative patients wedded to the idea of inspiration, and often therefore its shaming byproduct, is to challenge the underlying meaning they assign to this belief. By which I mean the notion that they themselves are untalented, fooling themselves, or simply fated not to succeed.
Usually, this meaning is birthed in critical or shaming childhood dynamics, which the patient believes they can only transcend by means of a sort of inspirational jump-start. (Frequently, when hearing of another artist’s seemingly “overnight success,” these patients usually attribute it to some inspirational notion the artist suddenly had. Rather than the fact that most “overnight successes” are the result of years of toil, false starts, and bitter disappointments.) As well as that most fickle of gods, luck.
Though, as golfer Ben Hogan once remarked, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”
Maybe that is a clue as to how we might reframe inspiration, both for ourselves as clinicians and for our creative patients. What if we conceptualize inspiration as the lucky idea or notion that sometimes emerges as a result of a determined constancy in our work, a love of the practice of the artistic project itself. After all, we can love people who sometimes disappoint us. Perhaps we can extend to our creative work that same loyalty and regard.
Given the shifting winds of fortune that accompany any creative person’s life, the smart money is on craft, practice and the love of doing the thing. If luck—or inspiration—shows up, so much the better.
Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.