top of page

Creative Spirit Didactic




I. RESOURCES/REFERENCES

BOOK: The Farther Reaches of the Human Nature - Maslow https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1YShFulVkjERTk1SzQwdU1BYWM/view?usp=sharing




Resource Guide for Managing Patient and Family Grief During COVID-19: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1wUbnTp0lqYm-z45oZVYdB3idhH-1M15G/view?usp=sharing



II. CARE TEAM HONORABLE MENTIONS -

Starting thinking about any cases you want to Care Team at the end of the Didactic


III. HOUSE CLEANING

i.e. Workflow that is or isn’t working; Genesight; High Risk Cases that shouldn’t wait until the end of the psyho-education


IV. PSYCHO-EDUCATION/PERSPECTIVE - Patterns in Creative People

VI. CARE TEAMS; VIGNETTES; CONCERNING CASES

Overview of:

The Farther Reaches of Human Nature

ABRAHAM H. MASLOW

Part I I. CREATIVENESS

Ch. 4. The Creative Attitude

Ch. 5. A Holistic Approach to Creativity;

Ch. 6. Emotional Blocks to Creativity;

Ch. 7. The Need for Creative People

Ch. 4: The Creative Attitude: “the teacher absorbed with a new method of teachings reading to her children says, ... am utterly lost in the present." - The Spinster by Sylvia Ashton-Wamer.


Patterns in Creative Moments: “What happens in these moments of creativity?”-18 examples


1. Giving up the past- The best way to view a present problem is to give it all you've got to study ill and its nature, to perceive within it the intrinsic interrelationships. to discover (rather than to invent) the answer to the problem within the problem itself. This is also the best way to look at a painting or to listen to a patient in therapy.




2. Giving up the Future- Think how different your attitude would be right now if you knew you were to going to be criticized in five minutes.





3. Innocence- Children are more able to be receptive in this undemanding way. So are wise old people.









4. Narrowing of Consciousness- We have now become much less conscious of everything other than the matter-in-hand (less distracted)





5. Loss Of Ego: Self-Forgetfulness. Loss Of Self-Consciousness. When you are totally absorbed in non-self you tend to become less conscious of yourself, less self-aware. You are less apt to be observing yourself like a spectator or a critic. To use the language of psycho dynamics you become less dissociated than usual into a self-observing ego and an experiencing ego; i.e you come much closer to being all experiencing ego. (You tend to lose the shyness and bashfulness of the adolescent. )





6. Inhibiting Force of Consciousness (Of Self). In some senses consciousness especially of self is inhibiting in some ways and at some times. It is sometimes the locus of doubt, conflicts, fears, etc.


"Never believe the narrator if he's the main character- anonymous"


7. Fears Disappear. This means that our fears and anxieties also tend to disappear. So also our depressions. conflicts. ambivalence. our worries. our problems. even our physical pains. Even-for the moment-our psychoses and our neuroses (that is. if they are not so extreme as to prevent us,from becoming deeply interested and immersed in the matter-in-hand).







8. Lessening Of Defenses and Inhibitions. Our inhibitions also tend to disappear. So also our guarded-ness, our (Freudian) defenses. and controls (brakes) on our impulses as well as the defenses against danger and threat.




9. Strength and Courage. The creative attitude requires both courage and strength and most studies of creative people have reported one or another version of courage: stubbornness. independence. self-sufficiency. a kind of arrogance. strength of character. ego-strength. etc.; popularity becomes a minor Consideration.




10. Acceptance: the Positive Attitude. "In moments of here-now immersion and self-forgetfulness we are apt to become more "positive" and less negative in still another way, namely in giving up criticism." - A. Maslow




11. Trust vs. Trying, Controlling, Striving. All of the foregoing happenings imply a kind of trust in the self and a trust in the world which permits the temporary giving up of straining and striving, of volition and control, of conscious coping and effort.





12. Taoistic Receptivity.- Being receptive to the path/way around you wihtout trying to change or control. -anonymous “Let-Be”- “It’s your story you tell it how you like.”- anonymous social worker in a mh unit. -Taoism (Daoism) is a philosophical, ethical or religious tradition of Chinese origin that emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao[dao] [path/way/principle]





13. Integration of the B[eing]-Cognizer (vs. Dissociation). Creating tends to be the act of a whole man (ordinarily); he is then most integrated, unified, all of a piece, one-pointed. totally organized in the service of the fascinating matter-in-hand. Creativeness is therefore systemic;(Gestalt theory= Whole > sum of the parts). Think about how writers/artists/musicians have a process




14. Permission to Dip into Primary Process. Part of the process of integration of the person is the recovery of aspects of the un­conscious and preconscious. particularly of the primary process (or poetic. metaphoric. mystic, primitive, archaic. childlike).


in psychoanalytic theory, unconscious mental activity in which there is free, uninhibited flow of psychic energy from one idea to another. This mental process operates without regard for logic or reality, is dominated by the pleasure principle, and provides hallucinatory fulfillment of wishes. Examples are the dreams, fantasies, and magical thinking of young children. These processes are posited to predominate in the id. Also called primary process thinking” (https://dictionary.apa.org/primary-process)




15. Aesthetic Perceiving rather than Abstracting. “Abstracting is more active and interfering (less Taoistic); more selecting-reject­ing than the aesthetic (Northrop) attitude of savoring, enjoying, appreciating, caring, in a noninterfering, nonintruding. noncontrolling way.




16. Fullest Spontaneity. If we are fully concentrated on the matter-in-hand. fascinated with it ,for its own sake. having no other goals or purposes in mind. ["art is the illusion of sponeity-proverb].





17. Fullest, Expressiveness (of Uniqueness). Full spontaneity is a guarantee of honest expression of the nature and the style of the freely functioning organism. and of its uniqueness.





18. Fusion of the Person with the World: “To draw a bird, you must become a bird.”




Ch. 5 A Holistic Approach to Creativity: Traits of Creativity overlap with traits of self actualization. [paraphrased and shortened to death]- E Torrence


(Whole> sum of the parts) Arthur Murray School where you first move your left foot and then your right foot three paces and bit by bit you go through a lot of external willed motions. But I think we would all agree, and I might even say that we know that it is rather characteristic of successful psychotherapy that there are thousands of effects among which might very well be good dancing. i.e., being more free about dancing, more graceful, less bound up, less inhibited, less self-conscious. less appeasing, and so on.


"Holistic approaches" VS. "

Ad hoc thinkers

S-R thinkers.

cause-effect thinkers.

one-cause­to-one-effect thinkers"

Ch. 6 Emotional Blocks to Creativity


“Deep down we look at the world through the eyes of wishes and fear and gratification.” Aristotle doesn't exist for the primary processes. It is independent of control, taboos. discipline, inhibitions, delays, planning, calculations of possibility or impossibility.


1. Voluntary Regression- Regression due to Ego


“A therapist who cannot let go, stifles creativity.” – anonymous .[1]The problem of the place of the "lone wolf” in a big organization, I'm afraid, this is the organization's problem and not mine. (I.e. On regression due to ego with female rights. ) [2] Men have been afraid of women and have therefore dominated them. unconsciously. for very much the same reasons I believe that they have been afraid of their primary processes. Remember that the dynamic psychologists are apt to think that much of the relationship of men to women is determined by the fact that' women will remind men of their own unconscious. that is of their own femaleness. their own softness. their own tenderness. and so on)



2. Trying to do it all

I'll simply play the researcher and the clinician and the psychologist, toss out what I've learned and what I have to offer in the that one can make some use of it.




3. Being too rigid and freezing emotions

The "new" is threatening for such a person, but nothing new can .happen to him if he can order it to his past experience, if he can freeze the world · of flux, that is, if he can make believe nothing is changing. If he can proceed into the future on the basis of "well-tried" laws and rules, habits, modes of adjustment which have worked in the past, and which he will insist on using in the future, then he feels safe and he doesn’t feel anxious. …. He does this to feel safe and not conflicted/neurotic....And what does threaten us is softness, fantasy, emotion, “childishness.

4. Getting stuck in the aesthetic and getting stuck in the Abstract

Remember that the dynamic psychologists are apt to think that much of the relationship of men to women is determined by the fact that' women will remind men of their own unconscious. that is of their own femaleness. their own softness. their own tenderness. and so on. And therefore fighting women or trying to control them or to derogate them has been part of this effort to control these unconscious forces which are within everyone of us.

5. Dichotomous thinking vs. holistic thinking (more than one answer)

Not letting go of the past.. We learn to be ONLY. [people are too complex for ONLY one answer (i.e. Treatment modality, Philosphy, way etc...)] Only slowly have we learned what we lose by trying daily to be only and purely rational. only "scientific,"only logical, only sensible only practical, only responsible.



MRS example - "ONLY RELIGION; ONLY EVOLUTION= CONSTRUCTED PHILOSOPHY"

Ch. 7 The Need for Creative People: (In therapy.. need examples... open forum .. should be warmed up by now...)


“Common sense means living in the world as it is today but creative people are people who don't want the world as it is today but want to make another world. And in order to be able to do that. they have to be able to sail right off the surface of the earth, to imag­ine, to fantasy. and even to be crazy and nutty and so on. The suggestion that I have to make the practical suggestion for people who manage creative personnel is simply to watch out for such people as they already exist and then to pluck them out and hang on to them.” -AM


Small Excerpt regarding picking Creative Staff…[wink wink, nudge, nudge*** ]

“I think I was able to be of service to one company by making this recommendation. I tried to describe to them what these primary-creative people are like. They are precisely the ones that make trouble in an organization, usually.

I wrote down a list of some of their characteristics that would be guaranteed to make trouble. They tend to be:


unconventional

they tend to be a little bit queer

unrealistic

they are often called undisciplined

some­ times inexact

"unscientific," that is, by a specific definition of science.

They tend to be called childish by their more compulsive colleagues. irresponsible. wild. crazy. speculative. uncritical, irregular. emotional. and so on.

This sounds like a description of a bum or a Bohemian or an eccentric. And it should be stressed. I suppose, that in the early stages of creativeness. you've got to be a bum. and you've got to be a Bohemian, you've got to be crazy” -AM

“Creativity can stifle profits of agencies:” -anonymous (oil companies would not benefit from a water powered engine, human service agency wouldn't benefit from UNIVERSAL knowledge of group effectiveness within D&A mandated clients without individual sessions; Oil companies could stifle creativity if they find out water can run an engine.

[message…]

New Teaching Concepts: What is then the correct way of teaching people to be. e.g.o en­gineers'! It is quite clear that we must teach them to be creative persons. at least in the sense of being able to confront novelty, to improvise. They must not be afraid of change but rather must be able to be comfortable with change and novelty. and if pos­sible (because best of all) even be able to enjoy' novelty and change. This means that we must teach and train engineers not in the old and standard sense. but in the new sense. i.e., "crea­tive"

engineers.

"I might even go so far as to say that in this respect.

education through art is a kind of therapy and growth technique.

because it promotes the deeper layers of the psyche to emerge.

and therefore to be encouraged. fostered. trained. and educated."- Maslow in case you forgot



VI. CARE TEAMS; VIGNETTES; CONCERNING CASES































Recent Posts

See All

CRISIS & HELPLINES

TEXT OR CALL #988 (national #) for IMMEDIATE CRISIS HELP Crisis Resources If you or anyone you know are currently in a crisis or may be...

Commentaires


bottom of page