Creativity in Art, Playing and Madness

We experience the world from the solid stand point of logical thinking. However playing is entering the world of magical thinking and gathering the pure look of the child’s eye. Plays let us go into a more unbounded layer where we can experience the ‘reality’ differently. In this altered state of consciousness, s/he can experience derealization and depersonalization. This dissociation can be regarded both as the symptom of a mental illness and the experience of the artist who loses himself in the process of creating. When one flows in playful trance, some mental images can come into being. Bipolar disorder is a type of mental illness where this kind of mental images, creativity and madness come close to each other. Although traditional approach can relate those images to delusions, this image-producing process is the main necessity of creating and standing against that one-dimensional perception of psychiatry may be liberating.

Creativity in Art, Playing and Madness

We experience the world from the solid stand point of logical thinking. However playing is entering the world of magical thinking and gathering the pure look of the child’s eye. Plays let us go into a more unbounded layer where we can experience the ‘reality’ differently. In this altered state of consciousness, s/he can experience derealization and depersonalization. This dissociation can be regarded both as the symptom of a mental illness and the experience of the artist who loses himself in the process of creating. When one flows in playful trance, some mental images can come into being. Bipolar disorder is a type of mental illness where this kind of mental images, creativity and madness come close to each other. Although traditional approach can relate those images to delusions, this image-producing process is the main necessity of creating and standing against that one-dimensional perception of psychiatry may be liberating.