Art and chemical influence

The doctors of modern medicine and the psychologists of today are coming more and more to the conclusion that actions, thoughts, and moods of human beings are the direct responses to the influence of what chemicals are in our brains at any given time. We are talking here about the natural chemical balance of the brain or the use of anti-depressant medications used to bring about the natural balance. THIS IS BIG... They say our response to any stimuli is determined by the chemicals in our brain at any given time. If our responses are chemical, what implications does this have on the idea of creativity. Is there no such thing? I always believed my creative thoughts were lead by my internal dialogue, a sort of questions and reflections and hopefully answers process, a what-if process more than a trial & error. How do I understand concepts like imagination, nostalgia, melancholy? Could we really cure artist's block and writer's block with a few anti-depressants? And this doesn't even take into account the mind-altering drugs known to exist today. This idea leaves me with more questions about the creative process and the function of the artistic mind. What do you think?

This surprises anyone? I thought the concept of an ethereal 'mind' over a brain comprised of chemical agents went out with the concept of a soul and god. My friend recently wrote on the implications of brain-switching/consciousness in a philosophy paper, and the sum-up was that the closer we get to being simply chemical machines whose actions are predetermined by a history, a chemical state, and stimuli the more we can less describe our existence through conventional language, and the more necessity exists for more complicated ideas and terminologies to describe our situation.

Pete

Well you can't take a sponge and dump a chemical on it and have it 'think', there has to be an underlying structure of biological networks, which are in a sense chemical but more fundamentally physical.

-snip-

A lot! But how a chemical receptor behaves is dependant on the structure that exists for it. This is why different people behave differently with the same drug, or without drugs as well as chems.

I don't believe understanding underlying physical processes disproves any ambigous word applied to it, just like taste buds and thermodynamics don't disprove a tasty cup of coffee.

Most antidepressants directly or indirectly increase serotonin, which is mainly an inhibitory neurotransmitter. Drugs like Prozac, act as mild but constant CNS depressants in serotonin using neurons. This can help if a persons artist block stems from obsessive depressed thoughts or creativity for them exists in different neural networks than serotonin ones.

Or five thousand years ago... Read up on SOMA and the large number of psychedelic and recreational drugs known to the middle east before and during the time of Jesus, as well as many abortificants too.

Bryn

And vice versa (we gotta learn a bit more about THAT pathway, though).

it's not THAT simple ...

servus

martin adler

Sharon,

You might consider mental illnesses whose genetic origins are now being discovered. Genetic origins mean differences in genes, which translates to differences in proteins (enzymes), which effectively means differences in neurotransmitters and the other chemicals you write about.

One excellent book devoted to exploring the connection between artistic creativity and bipolar disease (also called manic depression) is Kay Redfield Jamison's 'Touched with Fire'. It's available in paperback. Part of her book is devoted to case studies of well known writers and artists. You can read her or do your own research. Virginia Woolf's journals, also available in paperback, are quite revealing. [ethical question: Her personal journals for sale in bookstores - what would Mrs. Woolf think? Did she ever intend them to be publically read? I must admit to a bit of guilt when I read through them.]

Treatments of chemical imbalances in the brain are becoming available. Lithium carbonate is one of the most widely used ones. Question: Assuming that a strong link exists between chemical imbalances (manifested as mental illness) and creativity, what will become of creativity if we can successfully treat away all mental illness by using drugs to correct those imbalances? No Van Gogh? No Pollock? No Munch? No Woolf? And think about it from the artist's point of view

At the end of the day our minds are made up of a very complex circuit of electrical signals and chemical signals, so adjusting the chemical balance in the brain is going to have a major effect on your thoughts, the same as taking a soldering iron to your Pentium (I speak metaphorically as I don't think you can get soldering irons that small!) will change your computer's performance.

I'd heard that anti-depressants like Prozac can hinder artistic creativity, can anyone else elaborate on/disprove this? Meanwhile my experience with people who use controlled substances (which is a lot of people) is that the effect they have on them varies depending on what they are mentally - if they couldn't handle it they ended up screwed, those that could handle it are fine. Bear in mind the influence of Burroughs on contemporary literature and also bear in mind the amount of drugs he took...

Personally I think a lot of artistic vision comes from an ability to see things differently to most people (whether chemically stimulated or not), for example Bacon's agonised, mutated figures, Dali's surreal distorted objects and landscapes, the new Natwest adverts (UK) or Buggy G. Riphead's computer-manipulated images are hardly what your average Joe would see if looking at the world. To this end I feel that chemical stimulants are just another tool, effective if only used carefully.

-james
www.twisted-animator.co.uk/

I think that if you take an uncreative person and give them drugs, you will have an uncreative person with different thoughts than usual.

I think if you take a creative person and give them drugs (controlled or not), they are going to either have a great creative outburst, or they are going to feel a lessening of their creative abilities.

I'm on Prozac and I'd say that it only change my creative abilities in that I have more energy than I did before.

I agree.

I think that in the long term extensive use of chemicals doesn't have such a wonderful effect on creativity ... - I don't think all artists will be so glad to give up creativity crisis

People haven't given up on god!

God and the soul are a bunch of chemical switches?

Nice philosophy but it doesn't hold either as a scientific theory or a philosophical one that gets us anywhere that we aren't already.

I think the thousands of yet unidentified brain chems lead to the obvious conclusion 'it is very complex.'

Bryn

I think it's about balance. I'm sure some people can get great benefits from narcotics, but at the end of the day it's hard to produce any decent work if you're wasted all the time. I'm willing to bet that most creative individuals like Burroughs & co. did most of the donkey work whilst straight. Drugs didn't exactly do Basquiat much good, except kill him off before his 15 minutes of fame ran out.

-james

drugs or chemicals can't get you beyond mind and matter - meditation can. this is the real difference.

peace.