An Illustrated Visit With Eric Maisel
We've been talking about creativity and depression all week at The Artella Cafe. In fact, this is the very topic for both this week's Blog Topic of the Week as well as the Weekly Creativity Art Challenge (sidenote: it's not too late to enter these contests! See the respective links for their deadlines). It has all been in anticipation of my interview with Dr. Eric Maisel, author of the book, Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person's Path Through Depression.
I hope you'll enjoy the conversation with Dr. Maisel, below. He will be back in The Artella Cafe for an entire week in March, with interviews appearing in seven other Artella Cafe blogs. All of the hosts of these interviews are winners in the Blog Topic of the Week Contest, by the way, so if you're interested in hosting an interview yourself, be sure to take a look at the Topics of the Week over the next few weeks.
As a special treat, I have selected several submissions from Weekly Creativity Contest #14 - the theme was "creativity and depression" - to illustrate the interview. Thanks to these artists who got their submissions in early, so I could feature them alongside the interview!
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M: Can you tell us what The Van Gogh Blues is about?
E: For more than 25 years I’ve been looking at the realities of the creative life and the make-up of the creative person in books like Fearless Creating, Creativity for Life, Coaching the Artist Within, and lots of others. A certain theme or idea began to emerge: that creative people are people who stand in relation to life in a certain way—they see themselves as active meaning-makers rather than as passive folks with no stake in the world and no inner potential to realize. This orientation makes meaning a certain kind of problem for them—if, in their own estimation, they aren’t making sufficient meaning, they get down. I began to see that this “simple” dynamic helped explain why so many creative people—I would say all of us at one time or another time—get the blues.
To say this more crisply, it seemed to me that the depression that we see in creative people was best conceptualized as existential depression, rather than as biological, psychological, or social depression. This meant that the treatment had to be existential in nature. You could medicate a depressed artist but you probably weren’t really getting at what was bothering him, namely that the meaning had leaked out of his life and that, as a result, he was just going through the motions, paralyzed by his meaning crisis.
"Under His Thumb" by Lori Minick
M: Are you saying that whenever a creative person is depressed, we are looking at existential depression? Or might that person be depressed in "some other way"?
E: When you’re depressed, especially if you are severely depressed, if the depression won’t go away, or if it comes back regularly, you owe it to yourself to get a medical work-up, because the cause might be biological and antidepressants might prove valuable. You also owe it to yourself to do some psychological work (hopefully with a sensible, talented, and effective therapist), as there may be psychological issues at play. But you ALSO owe it to yourself to explore whether the depression might be existential in nature and to see if your “treatment plan” should revolve around some key existential actions like reaffirming that your efforts matter and reinvesting meaning in your art and your life.
"Create Art Instead" by William J. Charlebois
M: In the book, you say, "The centerpiece of a meaningful life for creators is meaningful creating." In aiming to achieve this, do you think there are benefits for people to create outside their "usual" medium? (i.e., artists try their hand at writing; writers dabble in a visual art project, etc.)
E: There are; and obvious dangers, too. Our first job is to make meaning in a particular discipline over time, because this gives us the best sense of continuity and completion and is the best way to make ourselves feel proud, existentially speaking. If we are a writer, we want to write well and regularly—other mediums come second. If we are a painter, we don’t want to neglect our painting because of some momentary meaning enthusiasm. So, first things first: our lifelong apprenticeship in one discipline. That having been said, it can be wonderful to work in another discipline, especially if your primary one is at the mercy of others: for instance, if you are an actor waiting to be hired, it can be grand to get your performance piece written and produced. So the short answer is yes—but beware that you don’t shortchange your primary discipline.
M: How can a creative person keep from becoming depressed when faced with criticism and rejection, which is often prevalent in living a creative life?
E: The first step is remember that everyone has an opinion, that great works have been roundly panned, and that you and you alone are the arbiter of meaning and quality in your life. If you don’t buy that at a visceral level, you will block when criticism comes. You have to have more than an intellectual understanding that your opinion must count the most: you must feel it in your bones. Once you possess that absolute certainty, then you can examine the criticism to see if there’s something there for you to learn—for often there is. The tricky dance is to reject all criticism while at the same time making use of feedback that serves you, a dance that no artist manages perfectly. Some err of the side of grandiosity and listen to no one; others, lacking in self-confidence, err in the direction of caving in and blocking.
I think it is a great help just to have a "vocabulary of meaning" and to have language to use so that you know what is going on in your life. If you can’t accurately name a thing, it is very hard to think about that thing. That’s why I present a whole vocabulary of meaning in The Van Gogh Blues and introduce ideas and phrases like “meaning effort,” “meaning drain,” “meaning container,” and many others. When we get a rejection letter, we want to be able to say, "Oh, this is a meaning threat to my life as a novelist" and instantly reinvest meaning in our decision to write novels, because if we don’t think that way and speak that way, it is terribly easy to let that rejection letter precipitate a meaning crisis and get us seriously blue. By reminding ourselves that is our job not only to make meaning but also to maintain meaning when it is threatened, we get in the habit of remembering that we and we alone are in charge of keeping meaning afloat—no one else will do that for us. Having a vocabulary of meaning available to talk about these matters is a crucial part of the process.
"This is the Blue...This is the Funk" by Pattie Mosca
M: Could you explain more about the importance of creating a life plan sentence/statement?
E: If you agree to commit to active meaning-making, you need to know where to make your meaning investments, both in the short-term sense of knowing what to do with the next hour and in the long-term sense of knowing which novel you are writing or which career you’re pursuing. Having a life purpose statement or life plan statement in place serves as an ongoing reminder of the sorts of meaning investments that you intend to make, both short-term and long-term, and helps you make the right “meaning decision” about where to spend your capital and how to realize your potential.
M: Should a life plan statement change over time, or is it best if it is written in general enough terms so that it isn't altered by time, circumstances, and life changes?
E: If you agree to commit to active meaning-making, you need to know where to make your meaning investments, both in the short-term sense of knowing what to do with the next hour and in the long-term sense of knowing which novel you are writing or which career you’re pursuing. Having a life purpose statement or life plan statement in place serves as an ongoing reminder of the sorts of meaning investments that you intend to make, both short-term and long-term, and helps you make the right "meaning decision" about where to spend your capital and how to realize your potential. But it also necessarily changes over time, as you have additional life experiences and refine and reformulate your sense of what is meaningful to you. Create a beautiful one for right now—and then revisit it periodically, especially if the blues have crept in.
M: With depression having existential roots in many creative people, do you think that antidepressants and other psychiatric medications are over-prescribed in modern culture?
E: Yes. They work for some people some of the time and checking in to them may make good sense, but they are not at all as effective as the public has been led to believe. A recent study showed that 95% of published reports praised the effectiveness of antidepressants and 90% of unpublished reports disputed the effectiveness of antidepressants—reports that went unpublished because of the clout of pharmaceutical companies, psychiatrists, and the medical-industrial complex. They sometimes have their place, but they are no real substitute for actively making and maintaining meaning.
"Depression" by Carol Henley
M: You mention that intimacy and personal relationships are as important to alleviating depression as are individual accomplishments. What is the link between the two and are they forged in similar ways?
E: It is important that we create and it is also important that we relate. Many artists have discovered that even though their creating feels supremely meaningful to them, creating alone does not alleviate depression. If it did, we would predict that productive and prolific creators would be spared depression, but we know that they have not been spared. More than creating is needed to fend off depression, because we have other meaning needs as well as the need to actualize our potential via creating. We also have the meaning need for human warmth, love, and intimacy: we find loving meaningful. Therefore we work on treating our existential depression in at least these two ways: by reminding ourselves that our creating matters and that therefore we must actively create; and by reminding ourselves that our relationships also matters, and that therefore we must actively relate.
M: In the book, you mention the phrase "marvels of relating". What are some steps we can take to improve our chances of giving and receiving these "marvels of relating" within creative community?
E: The most important internal movement is toward the belief that other people exist and that other people count. It is very easy to drift from taking sole responsibility for your meaning-making efforts, which is good thing, to a grandiose, arrogant, selfish, and narcissistic place where "only you count." On the other side of the coin, if you grew up in an environment where the messages you received were about being seen and not heard, about blending in and not standing up for yourself, and so on, then you need to find the courage to stand up for yourself, to maintain healthy boundaries, and to exert your power as the meaning-maker of your own life. One artist may have as his central task treating others better; another artist may have as her central task standing up taller.
"Out of the Blue" by Marney Makridakis
M: You write about the difference between busyness and action. Could you give us a sample of the self-talk an artist needs to being thinking when she steps boldly into action?
E: The first step is to completely stop—not to slow down but to completely stop. Learning how to do this (and it isn’t easy, especially in our culture that promotes speed, fracture, and a short attention span) makes all the difference in a creative person’s life, as internal busyness is completely eliminated if in fact you actually stop, quiet your mind, and allow yourself to calmly grow present. The self-talk is exactly "I am completely stopping," followed by the idea that you intend to calmly create without worrying about outcomes—that you are just intending to be present and to do your work. If a doubt or a worry intrudes, you dispute it by saying "I'm not interested in that doubt" or "I reject that worry" return yourself to deep silence, and continue "just working."
M: When she feels the blues descending, what questions could an artist ask herself to locate the source of her discontent?
E: A medical work-up is a good idea, especially if her depressions in the past have been severe or long-lasting, as the coming depression might possibly be avoided with antidepressants (if it the "right" sort of depression). She can also engage in some simple "home remedies": exercise is a depression-fighter, as is getting out in the sun. From an existential point of view, what she wants to ask herself is if her current creative work matters to her—if at some level it doesn’t, she will need to reinvest meaning in it by telling herself that she and it do matter; or, if she can’t imbue it with meaning, she will need to turn to other, more meaningful work.
"Bitter/Sweet" by Pattie Mosca
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Thanks for taking the time to read this interview! Be sure to check out Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person's Path Through Depression. It's a groundbreaking book that is very special to me, since this topic is so close to my heart.