The Creative Artist, Mental Disturbance, and Mental Health

By Elliot Benjamin, Ph.D.

This book describes The Artistic Theory of Psychology, in which a dominant focus is on the successful creative artist and mental health. However, the book also describes the relationship of the creative artist to mental disturbance in various contexts, including an innovative academic treatment, personal experiential essays written by the author, excerpts related to the author’s semi-autobiographical novel, and illustrative blog excerpts from the author’s struggling actor son. The main theme of the book is that through humanistic supportive environments for creative artists, the phenomenon of the successful creative artist in the context of success in both one’s creative artistic endeavors as well as a satisfactory adjustment to day-to-day life, can be nourished and enhanced.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Oct 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781483403540

Book preview

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction

Part 1

The Artistic Theory Of Psychology

Chapter 1

On Our Own

Chapter 2

The Artistic Theory Of Psychology

Chapter 3

Mental Disturbance Viewed From An Artistic Perspective

Chapter 4

Art, Education, Mental Disturbance, And The Reality Argument

Chapter 5

Self-Actualization: Personal And Academic Perspectives

Chapter 6

Artistic Creativity, Spirituality, Religion, Mysticism, And Mental Disturbance

Part 2/Chapter 7 Personal Experiential Essays

Part 3

Excerpts From The Maturation Of Walter Goldman

Chapter 8

Excerpts From Night Attendant: Part 1

Chapter 9

Excerpts From Night Attendant: Part 2

Chapter 10

Excerpts From Alienation

Chapter 11

Excerpts From Reality

Chapter 12

Excerpts From The Control Of Reality And Fatherhood

Part 4 The Creative Artist, Eccentricity, Resilience, Egocentrism, And Mental Disturbance: The Journal Of A

Struggling Actor: My Actor/Writer Son

Chapter 13

Jeremy’s First Month In La: The Adventure Begins

Chapter 14

Jeremy’s Next Two Months In La: Accomplishments, Disappointments, And Continual Challenges

Chapter 15

Jeremy Persists In La: Freedom Or Homeless?

Chapter 16

The Months In La Continue On—And So Does Jeremy’s Resilience And Determination

Chapter 17

La Life Rages On, Amidst The Exhausting Respite Of The Halloween Hayride Scare Job

Chapter 18

Post-Halloween La Reality For Jeremy And Thanksgiving Holiday

Chapter 19

Screenwriting And Beyond

Chapter 20

Commercials And Beyond

Chapter 21

Approaching One Year In La

Chapter 22

One Year In La And Beyond; La One Year Anniversary Epilogue

Chapter 23

Assimilation And Assessment: Jeremy’s First Year In La As A Struggling Actor And Creative Artist; Jeremy Begins His Second Year In La

Part 5 Putting All The Pieces Together

Chapter 24

From Mathematics To Music To Philosophy To Love

Chapter 25

A Living Philosophy Of The Creative Artist, Mental Disturbance, And Mental Health

Chapter 26

My Father/Son Connection To Jeremy; Concluding Statement

Appendix

Natural Dimension Teaching Agency: Letters, Documents, Proposals

Author’s Bio

Notes/References

DEDICATION

to my brother Frederick Benjamin,

who taught me the true meaning of brotherly love

INTRODUCTION

I come from a family where the creative artist and mental disturbance go hand-in-hand. My grandfather—on my mother’s side—was an artist/painter; he earned a meager living through doing portraits and various other paintings. My father was a pianist; his aim in life was to be a concert pianist but unfortunately he never achieved his goal, working at odd jobs such as being a shipping foreman throughout his life. My mother wrote short stories and poetry; for most of her life this was an underdeveloped hobby but in her last few years her talents became known in a few senior citizen journals. My oldest brother Marvin was a composer; he composed piano music and lyrics of over five hundred popular music songs, including several musical shows—one of which was performed on Off-Off-Broadway in New York City for a few months, but he never became known as a composer. My son Jeremy is a writer and actor, and his current struggles to succeed as a creative artist and professional actor in Hollywood are vividly described in Part 4 of this book. And me—as I am now in my 64th year of life, I consider myself to be primarily a philosopher.

I currently teach psychology and mathematics online, and I have made my living through most of my life as a mathematics professor, complete with a Ph.D in mathematics. Recently I earned my Ph.D in psychology and during the past few years I have also taught psychology part-time at a university and community college in Maine, and I’m now the director of an online Transpersonal Psychology program. I have two self-published books (this book is my third) and over a hundred published articles in a variety of fields inclusive of psychology, philosophy, politics, pure mathematics, and mathematics education. In addition to mathematician and psychologist, I can also answer to the titles of musician, piano teacher, counselor, writer, discussion group facilitator, and perhaps even businessman (though quite a mediocre one). But when all is said and done, I consider myself to be a creative artist where by creative art I mean various forms of creativity, and the essence of my creative art is what I like to refer to as experiential philosophy.

But all of this is only one half of me and my family. I know very little about my father’s side of the family, as my father died when I was 22 months old. But the truth of the matter is that every member of my immediate family that I grew up with, i.e. my mother and my two brothers, have at some point in their lives been patients in mental hospitals. When my mother was 17, her father (my grandfather the artist) was abruptly killed by someone he was having an argument with. This catastrophic event happened on the day of my mother’s high school graduation. My mother was the oldest in a family of five, and she was very close to her father, while her four brothers and sisters were closer to her mother. My mother was the only child who wanted to take piano lessons, something which her father offered to all the children in the family. When her father was killed, my mother shed no tears at the funeral. But over the next few months she would just sit in her room and not do anything, and refuse to eat. I know very little of the details, but I do know that soon afterwards she was put in a mental hospital, where she spent much of the next two years of her life.

My mother later married a good friend of her father, who had been her piano teacher, and this was my father. Although she never went back to a mental hospital or even saw a psychiatrist for the remainder of her life (as far as I know), fate was to remind her unmercifully of her experiences. For two out of three of her sons ended up becoming patients in mental hospitals. My oldest brother Marvin (the composer) spent two 3 month periods in a mental hospital at ages 16 and 17, being classified as a paranoid schizophrenic, and until his death in 2002 he was walking the streets of New York City with grandiose delusions and excessive paranoia, and went through phases where for years he would cut off all relations with me and my other older brother Freddy. My brother Freddy spent nearly two thirds of his life being in and out of mental hospitals, and has been classified as suffering from manic depressive (bipolar) disorder.

And thus this rather unusual family history finally leads to me,—and to my son Jeremy. I was the baby in the family, the hope and pride of my mother and of the Benjamin family. I’ve seldom been in therapy and never in a mental hospital and I do not consider myself to be mentally ill; but I assure you that I have had my share of mental challenges in life. However, I am also quite educated, as I have a Ph.D in mathematics and a Ph.D in psychology. I was married for 15 years and have had a number of romantic relationships in the 28 years since my divorce, as contrasted with the virtual non-establishing of any romantic relationships with women in the lives of either of my two brothers. But more than anything else, I consider myself to be a unique non-conformist individualist and experiential philosopher. Similarly, my 31-year-old actor/writer son Jeremy is most definitely a non-conformist individualist, and our respective stories that shed light on the relationship of the creative artist to mental disturbance will be told in various parts of this book.

I refer to my philosophy by the name Natural Dimension. I see it as my path in life to explore whatever becomes of interest to me—no holds barred. And what we refer to in our society as mental illness has been of primary interest to me all of my life. For many years my ex-wife Diane and I wondered about why my brothers had so many mental problems and could not function effectively in life, while I somehow managed to avoid these pitfalls. And yet my ex-wife and I both knew that potentially I could easily have followed in my brothers’ footsteps and could have become my mother’s third son to be a patient in a mental hospital. Many of my personal essays as well as my semi-autobiographical novel 1 gives tribute to my ex-wife Diane and my experience of falling in love with her when I was a junior in college at age 19, for enabling me to save myself from the unfortunate fate of my brothers. But I have had an enormous battle to continue on my path of relative mental health, especially since my divorce in 1985 when I was 35. As I now progress through my sixties, I feel relatively successful in life, both in my self-actualization as a philosopher and in my 8 year wonderful harmonious romantic relationship with the true love of my life—Dorothy. However, I know that deep inside me the vestiges of the relationship of the creative artist to mental disturbance is still very much there, and it has been continuously gnawing at me to get this book out before it is too late for me to do so. And the impetus for me to finally carry out this mission has been the monumental efforts that my son Jeremy has made for the past year to establish himself as a successful creative artist in his own right, giving full expression to his dreams of becoming a successful actor. Part 4 of this book focuses on my son’s monumental struggles, and is entitled The Creative Artist, Eccentricity, Resilience, Egocentrism, and Mental Disturbance. When you read the selected blog entries and my related comments to these entries in my son’s blog: The Journal of a Struggling Actor 2 in Part 4, I think you will see why I chose the name that I did for this part of this book.

My inquisitive mind never rests, and I have voraciously studied the writings of the leading psychologists and philosophers of our times: Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Victor Frankl, Fritz Perls, Rollo May, Thomas Szasz, Ayn Rand, Ken Wilber, Roger Walsh, R.D. Laing, Martin Buber, Alan Watts, Eric Fromm, etc. My ex-wife used to say that I would have been at home with Socrates, sitting on the steps of the Acropolis with him and his students, pondering the meaning of life. I believe I also would have been at home with Nietzsche and with Jung, and I have actually experienced being at home (literally) with philosopher Ken Wilber 3. You can easily see the philosopher in me from my book on modern religions 4, as well as from my personal experiential essays that are included in Part 2 of this book. I began writing my personal experiential essays when I found myself trapped in the mechanistic religion of Scientology and was struggling to break away from them in the 1970s 5. Scientology jolted me to ask the stars and the universe what it truly means to be human and to be alive. The answers from the universe made itself known to me, in my remembrance of my experience of falling in love with my ex-wife Diane, through the medium of the novels of Hermann Hesse, especially his novel Demian 6. I gradually got in touch with how much I wanted to accomplish something unique in my life; something which I could only achieve by being my real Self 7. And thus I established Natural Dimension Teaching Agency as a community learning center/mental health business venture from 1979 through 1985 in a number of locations in California and Massachusetts, complete with non-profit corporation status.

However, my stint as a new age businessman was quite unsuccessful, though after nearly 20 years of my corporation lying dormant, I brought it back to life in Maine in 2004 under the name of Natural Dimension Learning Center. The focus of Natural Dimension Learning Center was promoting my mathematics enrichment ideas through my number theory exploration patterns in my Numberama book 8, playing the piano at nursing homes and retirement homes, facilitating creative artist support groups, and facilitating support/discussion groups and offering counseling for ex-members and families and friends of members of spiritual cults. But once again my talents as a new age businessman leave much to be desired and I have come to terms with the fact that this is not my way to express my philosophy to the world. However, nearly 35 years ago my primary mission of Natural Dimension Teaching Agency was to formulate a radical mental health program in the community of Northampton, Massachusetts. This mental health program was focused upon patients who had been recently released from Northampton State Hospital through the Northampton Consent Degree, which involved the closing of the hospital and its replacement by community mental health facilities. As it turned out, due to not receiving funding from the Department of Mental Health, my mental health business venture did not get the opportunity to discover its merits in any kind of established way. However, the ideas I had formulated were the beginning of my philosophy of the creative artist and mental disturbance, and were at the cornerstone of my philosophy of Natural Dimension, much of which is described in my experiential essays in Parts 2 of this book, as well as in the excerpts from my semi-autobiographical novel in Part 3 9.

My own art forms of mathematics, music, and philosophy continue as I progress through my sixties, and the art forms in my family continue through my 31-year-old son Jeremy, who after nearly four years of being an engineering major at the University of Southern California, decided to follow his heart and soul. He finished up his degree as a Creative Writing major, spent a few years in Portland Oregon engaged in various acting and writing scenarios, and over a year ago moved to Los Angeles with the goal of becoming a successful Hollywood actor, as described in Part 4 of this book. Jeremy has two published novels and a collection of short stories to his credit 10, and his extreme dedication to his acting dreams coincide with his extreme eccentricities and resilience, for the making of what I believe is a striking illustrative description in Part 4 of my ideas about the relationship between the creative artist and mental disturbance (cf. [2]). Yes—Natural Dimension is alive and well, and the relationship between the creative artist and mental disturbance continues to be tremendously impactful to me.

This book is divided into five parts. Part 1 is entitled The Artistic Theory of Psychology, and describes my basic framework of viewing mental disturbance from an artistic perspective, much of which can be found in my 2008 Art and Mental Disturbance article in the Journal of Humanistic Psychology 11. Part 2: Personal Experiential Essays from Natural Dimension illustrates the main ideas in Part 1 through some personal experiential essays that I have written on the topics of creative art, education, psychology, egoism, work, and spirituality, that are part of a wider collection of essays from my unpublished book Natural Dimension (cf. [9]). Part 3: Excerpts from The Maturation of Walter Goldman further illustrates the basic ideas in Part 1 through excerpts from my semi-autobiographical novel that focuses upon my main character Walter’s experiences working as a night attendant in a mental hospital and his subsequent battle with the severely challenging forces of society that I refer to as The Reality Argument, in order to maintain and develop his own artistic nature in the world. Part 4: The Creative Artist, Eccentricity, Resiliency, Egocentrism, and Mental Disturbance: The Journal of a Struggling Actor: My Actor/Writer Son, which is by far the longest part of the book, is a particularly vivid description of the ideas in Part 1 through the ongoing struggles of my son Jeremy in his monumental journey to actualize himself as a professional actor in Hollywood. Part 5: Putting All the Pieces Together assimilates the various representations and formulations from the worlds of the creative artist and mental disturbance described in Parts 1, 2, 3, and 4, with a focus on my natural dimension creative art forms of mathematics, music, and philosophy. In the Appendix, I have included my preliminary 1980 mental health program which is at the cornerstone of my ideas for Part 1, and was the primary motivation that enabled me to formulate my philosophy of the creative artist and mental disturbance.

The following is a brief more detailed synopsis of the contents of this book. Chapter 1, entitled On Our Own, tells the story of my mental health program venture in 1980 which is at the basis of my philosophy of the creative artist and mental disturbance. In Chapter 2, I develop a new theory of psychology based upon the creative potentials that I believe are dormant within a number of people designated as mentally ill; I call this theory The Artistic Theory of Psychology. Chapter 3 views the designation of mental illness as mental disturbance from the perspective of this artistic theory, and Chapter 4 applies the therapeutic potentials inherent within intrinsically motivated humanistic education as a beneficial potential therapy program for mental disturbance viewed from an artistic perspective. Chapter 4 also describes the well-known trials and tribulations and severe challenges from society which I believe every potential successful creative artist must overcome, which I refer to as The Reality Argument, and includes a discussion of the significant benefits of resilience, which is a precursor for the illustrative descriptions of my son Jeremy’s struggling actor adventures in Part 4. Chapter 5 is a personal description of Abraham Maslow’s theory of self-actualization, with the intent of applying this at least in a partial sense to people in the context of mental disturbance. Chapter 6 describes the relationships amongst the creative artist, mental disturbance, and mysticism in the various forms of spirituality and religion. Chapter 7, which is Part 2, is a collection of 20 of my personal experiential essays on the following topics: five Natural Dimension creative art form essays, pertaining to mathematics, music, philosophy, dance, and art; my essay The Psychologist and the Artist; my essay The Treasurer, which is about my brother Freddy’s long-term life of mental disturbance; my essay The Natural Dimension and Society, which is about education and is the first essay I every wrote, four essays about egoism; four essays about work; and four essays that further illustrate my spiritual/agnostic perspective discussed in the last chapter of Part 1; these essays include On a Natural Dimension of Music: Three Years Later, On Internal, On Immortality, and Life Without Religion?

Chapter 8, which begins Part 3, and Chapter 9 is the inclusion of excerpts from the mental hospital chapters of my semi-autobiographical novel The Maturation of Walter Goldman that describe essentially my own experiences (in fictional form) of having been a mental health worker at a mental hospital in Massachusetts in 1980. Chapter 10 describes the struggles of my main character Walter in escaping from his involvement in a dangerous spiritual cult (a fictionalized version of Scientology), and Chapters 11 and 12 describe his battle with The Reality Argument and his eventual emergence as a successful creative artist, in the context of his own creative art form of pure mathematics. Chapters 13 through 23, which comprise Part 4, are illustrative descriptions of my son Jeremy’s first year in Los Angeles in his quest to actualize his dreams of becoming a successful actor in Hollywood.

Chapter 24, which begins Part 5: Putting All the Pieces Together, reflects further upon my own art forms of mathematics, music, and philosophy, how they interplay with one another as well as with my currently being in a fulfilling romantic love relationship for the past eight and a half years, and how I have been able to withstand the pressures of The Reality Argument in order to preserve my artistic nature. Chapter 25 describes some of my relevant experiences since 2005, inclusive of my Creative Artists Support Group, to comprise what I refer to as a living philosophy of the creative artist, mental disturbance, and mental health The final chapter, Chapter 26, assimilates all the previous chapters—with a focus on the factors of eccentricity, resilience, and egocentrism as vividly illustrated in Part 4 by my son Jeremy in his pursuit of his Hollywood acting dreams and experienced by me directly during my May, 2013 visiting him in LA, with a concluding statement of my philosophy of the creative artist, mental disturbance, and mental health. In the Appendix, I have included various personal letters, documents, and proposals that further describe my community mental health venture in 1980, Natural Dimension Teaching Agency, upon which my Artistic Theory of Psychology ideas in Part 1 were originally based.

PART 1

The Artistic Theory of Psychology

CHAPTER 1

On Our Own

In 1980 I was attempting to transform my idealistic community learning center in Northampton, Massachusetts, Natural Dimension Teaching Agency, into a part-time community mental health center, in response to the releasing of a large number of mental patients from Northampton State Hospital into the Northampton community. Having worked as a mental health attendant on the psychiatric wards of Northampton State Hospital on the overnight shift for six months, I was eager to offer both the philosophy and learning enrichment activities of my community learning center to these mental patients who were suddenly out in the community with very little preparation to deal with everything they would be encountering. In what follows, I give a description of the most eccentric, unusual, and brilliant Northampton State Hospital ex-mental patient who I met in this way. This ex-mental patient was also a street actor, poet, and ex-history teacher; I will refer to him by the name Patrick O’Brian 12.

I first came into contact with Patrick while I was still working at Northampton State Hospital as a night attendant. I had been attending a weekly sensitivity group at the hospital, and our group decided to show a film to the hospital staff made by a group of radical ex-mental patients; the group’s name was On Our Own. The film accurately depicted the boring monotony of everyday hospital life, and starred Patrick O’Brian, the veteran Northampton State Hospital ex-mental patient who described his experience of trying to practice his art of street theatre and of being unjustifiably locked up in Northampton State Hospital, where he was forced to take medication against his will, given shock treatments, etc, and which very much reminded me of one of my all time favorites movie: One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest 13. I knew right then and there that something was going through me—some spark of life and of cause. After the film was over, I spoke to the film promoter, John Vasconellos, who was one of the organizers and leaders of the group On Our Own and also one of the actors in the film (and who subsequently had a long career as a California State senator). I suppose if I had to pinpoint when I first decided to make my community learning center into a part-time community mental health center—this was it. Over the next year I unsuccessfully played the game put out by Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, which eventually led to my decision to close down Natural Dimension Teaching Agency and begin my career as a mathematics professor. But in this whole process I had learned much about what to do and what not to do when working with mental health clients. For I had attended a number of sessions of the On Our Own group, and I had been working very closely with one of its leading members: Al Daly (cf. [12]).

If my mental health program had been successful, Al was going to be one of the first staff members of Natural Dimension Teaching Agency, working as an outreach worker in charge of coordinating activities at the agency for mental health clients. Through Al, I eventually met the controversial personality of Patrick O’Brian. And this was an experience I shall never forget. For after inviting Al, Patrick, and a few other On Our Own members over to my agency to sit on my pillows on the floor and rap, I ended up reading one of my favorite personal essays 14. In this essay, written in 1976, I talked about my self-realization after reading Demian by Hermann Hesse (cf. [6]), and of my feeling that I could become a potential leader in the movement of humanistic psychology. Patrick took exception to the term leader, and I asked him if he could wait until I finished reading my essay before we discussed this, as reading an essay was always somewhat of an emotional experience for me (and still is), and I considered this particular essay to be one of my deepest. Patrick obliged me and respectfully waited for me to finish reading. When I finished reading my essay, I tried to explain to him and the others how I did not mean anything condescending by the term leader. Al tried to help me out by confirming how I never told anyone what to do or pressured anyone, but that I was only interested in giving people space and room to grow. I tried to explain to Patrick that I also saw him as a leader, and that leadership could be used in a positive constructive way. But Patrick did not buy this, as he said that he was merely being his self and that he was no more a leader than anyone else in the room. I still did not agree with him, as I believed that I saw through his qualities that he did not want to consciously admit to himself. But then I made the cardinal sin. I invoked my guide and hero of psychology at that time, Carl Rogers 15, to explain how one could be a leader through being a facilitator.

Well—I never would have believed that such a good innocent word could evoke the storm that it did. For Patrick O’Brian revealed to me all his inner turmoil and fury. All of a sudden I heard the screams and shouts of a wild maniac; I saw the deep green eyes of an ageless long-haired bearded man who had gone wild—peering face to face into my own eyes. Facilitator!—he screamed at me. You dare to use this word that has destroyed so much in this world. All that has been done to me in the name of facilitator and you say this word to me! If ever I had wished I could take back a word that I had said, this was the time. I saw my hopeful establishment of my innovative mental health center fading before my eyes—but what was even scarier to me, as Patrick’s intensity and anger grew and grew, I began to see even my own life potentially fading before my eyes. Patrick continued his mounting monologue: I ate shit in the hospital! Do you hear that—I ate shit! And you dare to tell me you are a facilitator! Well fuck you, man. You’re like all the rest of them—and I’ll have nothing to do with you or your fucking program. And as Patrick’s face and eyes were half an inch away from my own, I began to remember back to my prior karate lessons in case I should happen to need them. But out of the corner of one of my eyes, I could see my pictures of Einstein, Beethoven, and Hermann Hesse looking at me, and somehow I knew that what was happening was fully necessary. Out of the corner of my other eye, I could see the members of On Our Own staring at our contest, watching it like a movie—wondering if I were going to come out of it alive. I knew Al was there and I believed he would help me if it came down to a fight, and this gave me some courage. I returned Patrick’s silent stare with all the TRs from Scientology (cf. [5]) I had learned, and this seemed to calm him down a little. I instinctively understood how people were murdered on impulse, and I knew I had to be ultra careful with the tone and meaning of every word I uttered from then on.

I communicated with Patrick—I reached him. I calmly acknowledged the piercing sorrow of his experiences with psychologists who called themselves facilitators, and I apologized for using a term that upset him so much. Finally, to my utter relief and thankfulness, Patrick seemed to back down from me. He asked someone else to read something, and we all listened to some poetry from another member of the group. After a few minutes I regained some of my self-composure, but I realized that if I let everyone go with this memory of me as a leader and facilitator, my chances of having these important people in Northampton mental health support my program would be very slim indeed. For in spite of how much Patrick O’Brian protested to being called a leader, I knew that people listened to him and followed him. And I felt very frustrated at being so misunderstood by him. I knew that I was not like those facilitators he had come into contact with. And so I went back to the plate, and fearfully asked if I could read an essay about my brother who had had life-long episodes of being hospitalized in mental institutions 16. To my surprise, Patrick said Sure, as if nothing had happened before. Well, after a few minutes of sporadic conversation I read my essay, and I felt better, as did everyone else. I ended on neutral terms with Patrick O’Brian, but I learned something which would reinforce my strongest beliefs in the area of psychology and mental health. Put in very simple terms, I learned: Let them do it on their own.

Carl Rogers has given to psychology a beautiful and extraordinary gift in the simplicity and unassuming humanity of his person centered approach to psychotherapy (cf. [15]). For Rogers, whether it is one-to-one humanistic counseling or facilitating group processes 17, it is the job of the facilitator to establish a warm, supportive, and nurturing environment where people are able to emerge in their real selves. There is little that I can disapprove of in this sincere humanistic approach to therapy—except perhaps to the term therapy itself. For putting myself in the role of facilitator is making a statement about me and them. It is saying that I know more than they do; that I am healthier and more able to lead a group than anyone else in the room. There may very well be some truth to this statement on the level of day-to-day reality, but I also believe that on a deeper level we are all in this together and are inter-connected in a non-hierarchical leaderless way. What if one were to go one ste past Carl Rogers in order to truly create a totally free and open atmosphere for mental health clients? I learned that the use of my term day activities program was disapproved of by the members of On Our Own, as what they really wanted was a drop-in center. They wanted a place where they could just go and hang out whenever they felt like it, without anyone in-charge—be it leader or facilitator. And when I was most honest with my real Self 18, I must admit that this is what I wanted too. I did not want the responsibility and obligation of being at my agency every day at designated hours and organizing activities. I simply wanted to open up my space for mental health clients and then just sit back and let it happen. I wanted to spend my time in the mornings in bed—reading and writing and doing mathematics 19. Then, when I felt satiated with my internal learning activities, I wanted to saunter over to my office and be there. This rather ideal fantasized schedule for me did not exclude continuing to work with my hourly math students and piano students, as these were more structured activities which I enjoyed doing, as long as it was at a comfortable time for me. But as far as mental health was concerned, my ideas were more closely allied with those radical British psychiatrist R.D. Laing 20 than to anyone else that I knew of at the time.

A few years earlier I had seen a film called Asylum, which portrayed an experimental therapeutic community formed by R.D. Laing which consisted of schizophrenic patients and a staff of doctors and attendants. But everyone lived in their own apartments in the community, wore ordinary street clothes, and one could not tell who were patients and who were doctors, as there were no labels put on anyone in the community—neither patients nor doctors. Laing believed that these patients needed to live out their schizophrenic experiences, and that it could lead to subsequent personal growth and awareness (c.f. [20]). Laing profoundly respected people’s experiences, and he viewed mental illness as a mode of experience that we do not know enough about to label—either as completely bad or as good. I am in essential agreement with Laing, for I believe that in a fair number of cases one can view mental illness as being the artistic potential of a creative process, but an artistic potential that has been driven to destructive rather than constructive modes of expression (cf. [11], 21).

I think back to Al Daly as an example of this radical conception of mental illness as the artistic potential of a creative process, driven to destructive modes of expression. At the time that I knew him, Al was a 30-year-old man who had tried to kill himself over 15 times in his life. He was considered such a suicide risk that no mental health agency even wanted to take him when he was released from Northampton State Hospital a year before I met him. But by the time that I first discovered On Our Own, Al was one of the leading spokesmen for ex-mental patients from the hospital, attended conferences on mental health in all parts of the country, and was sought after by the local newspaper reporters in our Northampton community. Al had been attending weekly support group meetings at my agency for 7 months, and had said that he felt more comfortable at my agency than anywhere else he went (see Al’s letter of support in the Appendix). Some people say that a success with one human being is worth everything in the world, and I tend to believe this. For if my preliminary success with Al could have continued (i.e. if my mental health venture had been funded by the state), Al Daly could have become a leader of mental health programs in Northampton. And to me this is very appropriate, because Al is one of them.

Al comes from the experience of being considered a doomed human being, a suicidal paranoid schizophrenic who was totally out of touch with reality. But I saw him as a trusted colleague who I could engage in interesting and stimulating discussions with. Al was fascinated by religion and mystical experiences, and especially by extra-sensory perception and psychic phenomena. As evidenced from my Modern Religions book (cf. [4]), I was fascinated by these same things. I saw Al as an unfortunate combination of beauty, intelligence, and creative artistic potential following destructive rather than constructive paths. And Al knew that Natural Dimension Teaching Agency was a place where all of his creative energy and artistic potential was accepted, encouraged, and reinforced. His creative energy and artistic potential was accepted, encouraged, and reinforced by me and everyone else whom he came into contact with at my agency: my ex-wife Diane, my health and nutrition teacher Donna Colby (cf. [12]), and the other clients and teachers who were frequently dropping in on our meetings. And thus I had a bona fide candidate for a preliminary in-depth phenomenological study 22 of the relationship of the creative artist to mental disturbance.

My health and nutrition teacher Donna Colby was another important person in my initial efforts to establish a mental health program. I met Donna soon after I discovered On Our Own, as she had called me to ask if I would help her rehabilitate a 16-year-old girl whom she had taken an interest in. I liked the sound of Donna’s voice on the telephone; she sounded intelligent, caring, confident, and determined. I agreed to meet with both of them at my office and arranged to tutor the girl in mathematics—free of charge. The math tutoring of the girl did not work out, but I did manage to find myself quite a unique health and nutrition teacher, and a prime candidate for the assistant director of Natural Dimension Teaching Agency if my mental health program had been funded. Donna had a college degree in nutrition & health and had been in a Master’s program which she had recently dropped out of when I first met her. But what was of far greater interest to me was that I immediately recognized a mystical spiritual element to her that had an uncanny impact and force upon me.

Donna understood and believed in my ideas like no one else I had come into contact with since I had settled in Northampton over a year before I began this whole mental health community venture. She began coming to our Wednesday support group meetings, and then started her own nutrition class for Al and two other clients, which met a few times a week, doing this completely on a volunteer basis. Donna loved being involved with creating our program, and she gave me much support and encouragement at a time when I desperately needed it. I wanted Donna to be a prominent part of our mental health program, as she was exceptionally spontaneous and capable while having an authentic, unassuming and non-egocentric manner that put people at ease. She knew less than me about psychology per se, but more than me about real human contact. Donna had her own set of problems and weaknesses, in addition to her own set of strengths. She smoked and drank excessively, and she was a frustrated classical pianist. And thus Donna Colby became my candidate for non-ex-mental patient who could relate to our clients on an equal level. For like me, Donna believed in not labeling people, she had a healthy animosity toward the establishment, and she had learned to have self-control in her insanity. I saw her as the welcoming Dionysian element that I believe can be found in any real life bona fide mental health program, and I could not wait for Donna Colby to meet Patrick O’Brian.

And then there was the growing involvement of my ex-wife Diane (who was my wife at the time). At first, after I had promoted Diane from assistant director to co-director of Natural Dimension Teaching Agency, along with me, Diane was in charge of the community education program and I was in charge of the mental health program. But when we unexpectedly got rejected for funding by the Department of Mental Health after having been led to believe that our program would be approved, Diane and I knew that we had to go for all we were worth to avoid closing down our agency. We therefore combined our efforts in everything involved with the agency, and we became the bona fide husband and wife team that we had the potential to be. Diane joined me in all of our mental health meetings, our communications with other agencies, and in our intense efforts at fundraising. But most important of all, Diane represented the necessary ingredient of intelligent understanding and logical connection to reality, as we balanced each other very well. I was more crazy than she was, and she was more normal than I was. Together we had quite the attractive combination, for everyone seems to want a touch of insanity, but they want to know that this madness is in control and will not hurt them. And this is what Diane and Iwere capable of giving to our community. I helped Diane to be a bit more crazy, and she helped me to learn how to be a bit more normal; and our initial coming together/falling in love had enabled me to formulate my philosophy of Natural Dimension (cf. [14]).

And there were also a number of less major figures in our preliminary mental health program who had much potential to blossom into central figures in the hoped for development of the program. There was a French and Russian teacher, Jackie Locke, who had recently been coming to our meetings and helping us through the difficult crisis with DMH (Department Of Mental Health) at a time when Donna was taken up with having to work at a clothing store for minimum wage in order to support herself. There was Peter Thompson, a client only second to Al in his involvement with the agency. Peter was an unusually talented person who had played the violin in a symphony orchestra, but had been in the hospital on and off for the past 25 years and had received over a hundred electroshock treatments. Peter was a middle-aged man of 50 who was very difficult for me to understand why he had been hospitalized in the first place. Peter had an intelligent and logical mind, and had an interest in pursuing his undeveloped abilities in mathematics; he initially began studying intermediate Russian with Jackie.

Lastly I must mention our benefactor, our pride and joy of upper middle class America, Joyce Hill. Joyce was the mother of an 11-year-old boy whom Diane and I had been tutoring for six months, Diane in English and me in mathematics. We had done a very impressive job with her son, and his confidence and abilities had gone way up. We had gotten to know Joyce fairly well; she took our silk-screening course that Fall and was generally exceptionally enthusiastic and supportive of our whole agency. It turned out that Joyce herself had been a patient in a mental hospital a few years back, and she was now engaged in suing that hospital for mistreatment, in a suit that involved over a million dollars. When I sensed that we might not get the DMH grant, Diane and I asked Joyce if she could help us out financially, and she and her husband immediately gave us a loan of $3,000, with a five year interest free term in which to pay it back. Joyce was interested in being part of our support group and gradually becoming more involved in the development of our program.

And this was the beginning of our preliminary program: seven people who believed in the experience of being human without labels: me, my ex-wife Diane, Al Daly, Donna Colby, Jackie Locke, Joyce Hill, and Peter Thompson—with the extra added feature of perhaps our being joined occasionally by none other than Patrick O’Brian himself. We were the central people involved in the formulation of our hoped for mental health program, but we were central only because we had taken the initial human efforts and struggles to form and create our drop-in center. This is the only reason that we were central; not because we were necessarily more capable or more knowledgeable than others. And notice I am now saying we instead of I. Yes—it was I who originally came up with the incipient idea for our program. And I do believe that all constructive significant events in life spring from the creative idea, which is also the role of the bona fide philosopher in society 23. I take pride in knowing that I founded Natural Dimension Teaching Agency, and I also take pride in knowing that 33 years later after its initial incorporation in 1980, my non-profit corporation is still in existence under the name Natural Dimension Learning Center. But I knew back in 1980, at the time that I was attempting to form this community mental health center, that I had to remove myself form the place of power as soon as it was feasible for me to do so. My first step was sharing all agency decisions with Diane, as we became equal co-directors of the agency. I fully expected to be evolving toward a group decision making body that was governed by consensus as much as possible, and by the natural process of communication amongst individuals without labels. I trusted the process that was forming—it was a process without a therapist or a facilitator; it was a natural dimension; it was on our own.

As it turned out, there was a satisfying subsequent event that followed my initial dramatic encounter with Patrick O’Brian that I have described above, which occurred five months after my initial intense encounter with him. I had no contact with Patrick for five months after our initial encounter, and then one day, out of the clear blue sky, he popped into my office—bare-chested with a flower in his mouth and a book of poetry. I was working with a math student at the time, and Patrick calmly and sincerely asked me to continue doing what I was doing. This did not seem like the same Patrick O’Brian I had devastatingly remembered; he seemed so much calmer and