I'm very interested in both psychotherapy and avant-garde art and music, as well as mental health. When I was in psychiatric hospital as a diagnosed patient in 2000, I met a guy called James who was a patient from another ward, and who used to come down into the smoking room in our ward, to chat with the other diagnosed patients. Some of the psychiatric nurses let him do this, because they considered that he was very intelligent and good at mixing with people, and that this might help himself and others. This was good that some of the psychiatric nurses, realised that sometimes as psychiatric diagnosed patients, we can sometimes help and understand each other a lot better than the psychiatrists or other professionals can.
James told me about a friend of his, who was locked up in psychiatric hospital, because in his words, the guy was "too avant-garde for the system and considered mad". This made me think about what the connections are, between the avant-garde and so-called madness. Are having strange ideas necessarily mad?, or can they be a form of avant-garde art and thinking? I'm not saying that madness doesn't exist, but that sometimes the avant-garde and madness can go together or be combined, and that sometimes the avant-garde is a separate thing but which gets misdiagnosed as madness.
In 2004, I had psychotherapy for a year, from two different female psychotherapists, and which helped me tremendously. The first psychotherapist was a very creative thinker, and from some of my own way of thinking that was considered mad, and from her personal way of thinking as a psychotherapist, I realised that there were some similarities.
One major similarity, was that we both had a way of thinking which involved overlapping contexts of meaning, interpretation, and knowledge. I would say a sentence or a word to the psychotherapist, and she would go off onto a stream of metaphors and would ask questions in relation to them.
For example, if I said that I had dreamt about a cave, the psychotherapist asked me if I had hidden or empty feelings, or had I caved in. If I said there was treasure in the cave, she'd say that maybe I had treasured thoughts, that I was treasured by others, or that I was holding something back. Her metaphorical way of thinking, was similar to the metaphorical way of thinking, of a diagnosed manic-depressive or schizophrenic.
The female psychotherapist, would also interpret things that I was saying to her, as if I was saying this to my friends and family, and I interpreted some of her remarks and questions in much the same way. There were therefore overlapping contexts of relatedness in meaning. This was also similar to the way that I interpreted hearing voices, as overlapping situation contexts, of talking with people in different times or different circumstances, but jumbled up with another present context or situation.
One aspect, technique, or method of the avant-garde, is to put very ordinary, mundane, or simple things into an unusual or extraordinary context. This is a method used my many avant-garde artists and musicians and also used in some comedy. It is also used in some psychotherapy.
Another method used in avant-garde art and music, is to put one context of meaning, conversation, or theory, along side or over and above another very different context of meaning, conversation, or theory, and to associate and compare the two as if they are related, when they are not related in an obvious or direct way. This can be simply an art form, or it can be a more scientific method. It can also be political.
I sometimes notice that this can be the nature of much ordinary everyday conversation to some extent, and also the language or method that a lot of diagnosed mad people make use of, especially when talking to one another. In this respect, mad conversation is not that different to everyday ordinary conversation, although the overlapping contexts are more exaggerated or prominent.
The methods of avant-garde art and thinking, can very easily be misinterpreted as madness, especially seeing as anything which is "out of context" is seen as mad in psychiatry and mental health.
However, all these avant-garde methods and approaches, are both more creative and scientific than very conventional methods, lead to a better and wider understanding, and make for a much more sane perspective and a firmer grasp of reality. They also enable us to form an awareness of details, apply other models to these details, and to filter the details down into simple ideas, relate them to another context, put them into a coherent whole, and apply a new understanding of their meaning and significance.
This article is written from an avant-garde approach, and which combines my simplicity with my treasured borderline genius.
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