Depression and the artistic process

Depression and the artistic process

I have always been interested in the symptoms of depression and how this condition affects artists and other visionary thinkers differently than the general population. I read an interesting article this morning about President Barack Obama's ambitious $100 million brain mapping project. This article, “To Crack the Code of the Human Brain, A Quest for Visionaries,” explores that quest and motivates me to return to notes on visionary thinking that I have collected over the past few decades. Particularly notes I had collected about visionaries who also suffered from symptoms of depression.

The best books for depression usually explore the relationship between highly creative people such as artists of all kinds, while examining exactly what a visionary is. In my way of thinking, a visionary is an individual with clarity of thought, a passion for a well-defined experience, and a foresight about how that passion can manifest itself. This is a very different mindset than the process one has. Who is satisfied with just having goals? A vision often arises when a person combines a natural curiosity with a sense of deep introspection. Over time, this develops into a passion whose scope is so great that it can be described as nothing less than a “transcendental vision”.

You can probably recognize a visionary the first time you meet them. Over time you realize that he is different from the normal person. He may seem particularly intense in conversation, but not in a negative way. He's not the type of guy prone to light cocktail party conversation or chatting about the weather. Of course, this is all a generalization. Visionaries are unique to themselves and tend to express who they are in different and often unusual ways. Because they are always unsure of what normal reality is, the visionary is a focused and experienced visionary is a force of nature. What he can do is change the external landscape, bring large groups of people into his vision, and harness and leverage formerly dormant resources toward that vision. He is able to change minds and influence society in ways that the most skilled futurists, economists and influence traders could effectively do.

Why do visionaries need to develop strategies to deal with depression? For one thing, they don't fit into ordinary situations. How do ordinary people react when they hear a visionary describe his ideas? It's like talking to an artist; It is not always easy to follow the stream of thoughts of a visionary, and yet you understand that something unique and interesting is being presented. One reason for this is that a visionary artist or a highly creative person often tends to speak of an ideal that seems completely unrealistic. Imagine speaking to the Wright brothers – two bicycle manufacturers – a year before their flight on Kitty Hawk in 1903. Imagine speaking to Gandhi or the inventors of the personal computer, the telegraph, the telephone, the ballpoint pen or robotic surgery before them as visions took shape.

Even when a vision seems unrealistic, do these visionaries continue to work to make their ideas a reality? The perception that a vision is unrealistic does not negate the fact that there is joy in having the intention to achieve and experience that ideal. Often it is the hunger, the desire, the joy and the intention that ultimately makes the vision come true.

Having a brilliant idea does not automatically make a person a visionary. But having an idea can open the door to the visionary process. Obviously, the term visionary can mean different things to different people. I have a personal interest in the idea of ​​conservation and balance when studying great visionaries, artists and inventors, and this relates to my interest in healing depression naturally. There is a dark seduction to being a self-destructive mad genius, but I'm more interested in what I like to call a balanced visionary. This is the person who is mentally clear and emotionally balanced. Such a person must be committed, feel secure in themselves, and feel secure with those who are committed to working with them to achieve a vision, including partners and members of their support system.

Inspired by Lewis Harrison