[Creativity and art from the psychopathologic view].

Abstract

From the beginning of this century, two principal directions have opened up for research dealing with pictorial expression in the psychiatric context. The two are represented in the approaches of Mohr in Germany and Péja in France. Where the former saw objects of negative value, the symptoms of an illness, the latter felt himself to be in the presence of authentic creative products. Over the last twenty years, the crystallisation of theoretical views has taken place under the dominant influence of the work of Navratil. This essay attempts a concise account of this development, so as to give as coherent a picture as possible of the relations between, on the one hand, creativity and artistic activity in the general sense, and on the other, the pictorial expression of psychiatric patients. Nowadays many regard psychotic art as art pure and simple. Current research is gravitating away from the "psychopathology of creativity" in the direction of the "psychology of creativity", thereby following Prinzhorn's lead. This positive evaluation of the creative act points not only to a change in the way we approach the artistic products of psychotic or brain-damaged patients, but also to a new attitude towards the patients themselves.