CREATIVE MINDS: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights by Dennis Palumbo

Creative individuals navigate the fine line between solitude and loneliness, discovering how isolation can fuel artistic expression or lead to despair.

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“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”

-Louise Nevelson


In the early-1960s, a British film was released called “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner.” It was a predictably dreary, angst-ridden story about a rebellious loner trying to find his place in an unforgiving society.

This column might just as well be called “The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Artist,” because one of the issues creative patients often struggle with is the sheer loneliness that is required by most artistic endeavors. Whether the patients are just trying to realize some creative dream, or they are successful veterans in their respective fields, they are usually in it for the long haul. In other words, they plan to “go the distance.” Or as one of my creative patients put it, for a true artist, such loneliness, or what feels like self-imposed isolation, is “the cost of doing business.”

Even film and TV directors, orchestra conductors and the like, whose creative efforts involve working with others, spend many hours alone in preparation for those admittedly group-oriented endeavors. Regardless, my interest here is in those creative patients—writers, painters, composers, designers, etc—whose workday is characterized by being alone. Alone with their thoughts, alone with their creative concerns, alone with their doubts and fears and hopes—and, literally, alone in the sense that there is rarely anyone else in the room.

Now for many creative patients, this time alone is a wonderful luxury, a period of grace bestowed on artists that frees them to focus on their work. They are liberated from the noise of the outside world—the emotional demands of others, the burdens of everyday responsibilities, the endless cacophony of worrisome world events. What one person experiences as loneliness, another appreciates for its most profound aspects: it is quiet, usually unhurried, and blissfully unpopulated.

As novelist Saul Bellow once remarked about writing, it can possess “a stillness that characterizes prayer.” For many artists, regardless of their particular field, this is demonstrably true.

But not every artist experiences those long hours alone as either inspiring or profound. For them, there is only the aching emptiness and despair that loneliness can invite, particularly when the creative work is not going well. In such cases, as I have seen in my practice, loneliness can give birth to a set of painfully familiar (usually family of origin-based) meanings. An artist suffering from crippling loneliness is subject to doubts about their talent, questions about the validity of the project they are engaged upon, and vulnerable to the heightened suspicion that they were not cut out to be artists in the first place.

In such instances, the desire to pursue a creative career is, to paraphrase one of my patients, “either a blessing you’ve been cursed with or a curse you’ve been blessed with.” This ambivalence about endeavoring to be an artist lies at the heart of many a creative patient, regardless of level of outward success.

I know this from personal experience, having been a Hollywood screenwriter for many years before becoming a psychotherapist. Writing—for both veterans and those just starting—is time-consuming, frequently frustrating, often terror-inspiring, and bad for your posture. Its other prominent features include long hours of typing, frequent intervals of staring at a blank page or screen, and no guarantee whatsoever that anything you produce will be worth the effort. In addition to which, in the words of screenwriter Ben Hecht, “fun is the enemy.”

Which reminds me of a novelist patient of mine, the author of a successful series of thrillers, who once complained: “I can’t go in that room anymore. It’s so damned quiet.” Divorced, his children grown and flown, he worked alone in his office at home.

“I mean, writing these damn things is hard enough.” He shook his head. "Plus, it’s so lonely in there by myself.”

“It can be,” I said. “But let me suggest something. Maybe you’re not in there by yourself. You share that room with the memory of every person you’ve ever encountered—parents, teachers, friends and enemies…”

He frowned. “Listen, my office is eight-by-ten feet. If anybody else is skulking around in there, I sure as hell don’t see ‘em.”

“You know what I mean. Besides, in one sense loneliness can just mean being disconnected. Not just from others, but from your interior self. You carry a whole world of feelings, experiences and fantasies inside you. Maybe if you let them out, and explored them fully, the office wouldn’t feel so lonely.”

He didn’t buy this approach. Nor any of the others I offered. We returned to this issue again and again in therapy. Some days his loneliness overwhelmed him, leaving him lethargic and unmotivated. Yet at other times a patch of solid writing made him so excited, so anxious to get back to “that room” that he actually felt lonely—in essence, disconnected—when he was not writing.

Over my years in practice, I have seen many creative patients wrestle with this issue. Especially when contrasted with its seemingly adjacent (though quite dissimilar) circumstance—the solitude necessary for most artistic efforts. And there is a difference. Loneliness is usually experienced as a loss of connectedness, either with oneself or others; an interior emptiness that can feel both soul-crushing and self-invalidating. As opposed to solitude, which can inspire a felt sense of coming into contact with yourself, taking ownership of your interior world. Which, paradoxically, seems expansive rather than inhibiting.

As a well-known conceptual artist once explained it to me in session, “I only live in the solitude of work, God help me. It’s everywhere else that I feel uneasy, like I’m faking it. Because I am.”

Obviously not a “people person” (her own words), our clinical work lay elsewhere. But there was no question in her mind (nor in mine) of the value of solitude when it came to her art. In fact, many artists have noted the value, if not the necessity, of solitude, both in their work and for personal growth.

For example, Leonardo da Vinci said, “If you are alone, you belong entirely to yourself.”

And according to May Sarton, the distinction was clear: “Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self.”

Rilke was even more blunt. “What is necessary, after all, is only this: solitude, vast inner solitude.”

When working with creative patients, particularly those for whom loneliness is a salient, presenting concern, our job as clinicians is to help them reframe the meaning of their experience in terms of solitude. For one thing, it can be empowering to choose solitude in pursuance of your artistic goals, as opposed to seeing loneliness as a condition imposed upon you merely because you are alone. In which case, loneliness thus feels like a punishment for the mistake of attempting to be an artist; in contrast, choosing solitude can support the experience of feeling proactive and self-affirming.

Moreover, as I have written about elsewhere, I believe it is crucial for any creative person to have a positive, engaged relationship with their process. If you can help patients see that the choice of solitude supports the requirements of that process, is in fact a necessary aspect of it, its benefits become self-evident.

As Henri Poincare said, “to invent is to choose.” So, I feel it is vital that the creative patient embrace the solitude of artistic endeavor as a choice. Conceptualized this way, solitude then is not mere isolation. It is a return to the self, a reacquaintance with the patient’s inner world, including both its turmoil and its riches. The darkness and light from which creativity is birthed. Admittedly, such a commitment to solitude can risk an occasional slide into loneliness, a disquieting sense of isolation. That “cost of doing business” that my patient above mentioned. A price every artist pays at some time or another.

Which brings to mind a somewhat snarky quote attributed to Jean-Paul Sartre: “If you’re lonely when you’re alone, you’re in bad company.”

But that is a topic for another column.

Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.

via psychiatrictimes.com

The Inspiration Trap by Dennis Palumbo

 "The Inspiration Trap": the belief that a special talent or knowledge or divine gift—something outside of the artist—is necessary.

CREATIVE MINDS: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights

“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”

-Louise Nevelson

When discussing the origins of creativity, the idea I hate the most is that of inspiration. In my clinical work with creative patients, I have found it to be soul-killing for artists of all stripes and at all levels of professional success.

Like the quote by Mary Chase, when asked how she got the idea for her famous play, “Harvey.” Her reply? “I looked up from the breakfast table one morning and there he was.”

This is the kind of story that gives new (and not so new) artists acute and potentially shaming grief: the belief that brilliant ideas just “come to you,” that the lucky few are visited by the spirit of creativity and originality. Even Shakespeare, in his prologue to “Henry V” implores the gods to inspire him: “O for a Muse of Fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention…”

Most of our creative patients, when having breakfast, rarely encounter an invisible 6-foot rabbit, or a Muse of Fire, for that matter. Most encounter the empty canvas, the blank computer screen, the inert, unhelpful lump of modeling clay.

The idea of inspiration, as it is commonly understood, does a great deal of damage to those of our creative patients who succumb to its siren song. For one thing, it devalues craft, which I believe is the most important attribute to be cultivated by every artist. It also reinforces the notion that the creative patients themselves are somehow not enough. That some special talent or knowledge or divine gift—something outside of the artist—is necessary. I call this “The Inspiration Trap.”

It is an understandable misconception, since the word inspiration—from the Latin inspirare, which means “to breathe into”—certainly reinforces the notion that a creative burst comes from the outside of a person; that a divine spark animates the literary, musical, or visual artist, leading to new and innovative work.

Conceptualized in this way, inspiration, by its very nature, cannot be grasped or looked for, and certainly not commanded to show up. (Though many artists give it a try. Hence the various rituals I have heard from creative patients when starting work, everything from earnest prayer to vigorous hand-washing to wearing “lucky” socks. More than 1 writer patient has pointed out to me that Jack Kerouac famously made the Sign of the Cross before sitting down at the keyboard.)

This conception of inspiration can do tremendous damage to our creative patients. I have known artists to give up halfway through a beloved project because they “no longer feel inspired.” (As if you are always supposed to feel good about what you are working on! In my previous career as a Hollywood screenwriter, this was rarely the case.)

Then there was a composer patient of mine who consistently refused to begin a new orchestral piece until he “heard the goddam Muse,” which meant he spent more time listening for that elusive, ethereal helpmate than risking the possibility of composing badly.

(Which reminds me of an old Zen Buddhist story about a monk who patiently tilled the soil in his garden for 20 years, hoping to attain enlightenment. Then, 1 day, his hoe struck a small rock in the dirt and he heard a soft “ping.” Suddenly, he was enlightened. So then the question is, did hearing the “ping” bring him to the state of enlightenment, or was it rather the 20 years of sustained effort tilling the soil that prepared him to recognize and understand the significance of that soft sound when it happened?)

What the 2 aforementioned patients fail to grasp is that— like the experience of the monk in the story—the artistic struggle is, and has always been, something of a grind. It requires persistence, which means one usually spends more time slogging through the valleys of frustration than standing at the peaks of fulfillment. To put it bluntly, if inspiration is going to strike at all, it will emerge unbidden; embedded, I believe, in the deepening levels of craft the artist develops. As most professional artists—and creative types in all fields—seem to understand.

For example, the novelist Albert Morovia said, “I pray for inspiration…but I work at the typewriter four hours a day.”

Writer Peter De Vries goes him one better: “I only write when I’m inspired, so I see to it that I’m inspired at 9 o’clock every morning.”

In other words, good creative work results from the doing itself. As Pablo Picasso said, “Action is the foundational key to all success.” In a similar vein, he reminds us that “inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.”

Or as I often tell my writer patients, “Writing begets writing.” As doing any creative task tends to beget more of the same. Conversely, not working while waiting for inspiration to strike begets more work undone and, ultimately, unfinished. In such instances, there’s very little difference between waiting for inspiration and procrastination.

Of course, leave it to an engineer and entrepreneur, Nolan Bushnell, to cut to the chase: “The ultimate inspiration is the deadline.”

Pragmatic as that comment may seem, I think the best way to help our creative patients wedded to the idea of inspiration, and often therefore its shaming byproduct, is to challenge the underlying meaning they assign to this belief. By which I mean the notion that they themselves are untalented, fooling themselves, or simply fated not to succeed.

Usually, this meaning is birthed in critical or shaming childhood dynamics, which the patient believes they can only transcend by means of a sort of inspirational jump-start. (Frequently, when hearing of another artist’s seemingly “overnight success,” these patients usually attribute it to some inspirational notion the artist suddenly had. Rather than the fact that most “overnight successes” are the result of years of toil, false starts, and bitter disappointments.) As well as that most fickle of gods, luck.

Though, as golfer Ben Hogan once remarked, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.”

Maybe that is a clue as to how we might reframe inspiration, both for ourselves as clinicians and for our creative patients. What if we conceptualize inspiration as the lucky idea or notion that sometimes emerges as a result of a determined constancy in our work, a love of the practice of the artistic project itself. After all, we can love people who sometimes disappoint us. Perhaps we can extend to our creative work that same loyalty and regard.

Given the shifting winds of fortune that accompany any creative person’s life, the smart money is on craft, practice and the love of doing the thing. If luck—or inspiration—shows up, so much the better.

Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.

Via Psychiatric Times

 

Former screen writer and current psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo talks about procrastination, the dangerous myth of inspiration, and why writer's block is good news.  

 Listen at Apple Dennis Palumbo – Writer's Block is Good News and Other Surprises

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Writing while the World is on Fire - An Interview with Dennis Palumbo

 

You can listen to it here

How do you keep doing creative work when the world is falling apart around you? To sift through the despair and doubt, John welcomes back legendary Scriptnotes guest, writer-turned-psychotherapist Dennis Palumbo. They discuss the many feelings that catastrophic events can bring up in artists, the personal narratives that often inform those feelings, and how to keep moving forward when you feel like the band on the Titanic.

In our bonus segment for premium members, Dennis guides us through the best examples and worst mistakes of portraying therapists on screen.

DENNIS PALUMBO, MA, MFT, is a licensed psychotherapist in private practice who specializes in creative issues. He co-wrote the award-winning My Favorite Year screenplay and other films and TV—Consulting Producer on Hulu's The Patient and author of the Daniel Rinaldi Mysteries.

via Scriptnotes

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE Features Dennis Palumbo's Fail Better

 “Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”

-Louise Nevelson

I have always been struck by this line from Worstward Ho, Samuel Beckett’s 1983 novella: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

As a therapist and writer, I believe the wording sums up accurately both the clinician’s and the artist’s experience. It captures the struggles, uncertainty, and much-needed indefatigability of both professions.

Perhaps, more prosaically, this same sentiment was expressed by Albert Einstein. Once, when asked how he worked, he replied, “I grope.”

As I acknowledged in my book, Writing From the Inside Out, “Not an attractive word, grope. Sounds too much like lope, or dope, or mope. As an image, groping has associations with unpleasant activities like stumbling around in the dark, feeling blindly with your fingers, or enduring a series of false starts and wrong turns. It sounds unprofessional, almost haphazard, and too susceptible to the whims of luck and circumstance.”

I have taken the liberty of quoting from a book of mine, as well as from Einstein and Beckett, to preface my discussion of an issue that sometimes confronts clinicians treating a creative patient. Ensnared by anxiety while working on a difficult project, the patient often asks their clinician—sometimes only implicitly—for guidelines or a technique for addressing the new work’s problems, and so quelling the doubts and fears it has birthed. In my experience, such patients are not only looking for pragmatic suggestions for alleviating their concerns but need help coping with the shame they associate with having such difficulties.

In other words, and in the minds of many creative patients, real artists do not grope. They plan, reflect, ponder, conceptualize, synthesize, outline, embellish… create. Their work is the result of craft, inspiration, thought, and insight. To be blunt, a real artist knows what the hell they are doing.

This gnawing belief holds true for many creatives, whether writers, painters, musicians, or designers. It also holds true for many clinicians, whether therapists, psychologists, psychiatrists, or social workers.

In a previous column, I suggested that 1 of the root causes of procrastination is a fear of shameful self-exposure. In my view, a creative patient’s difficulties with a project, and their belief that there is some technique that offers a solution, evokes a similar shame. There must be a way to solve these problems, they think, and if I were a true artist, a real professional, I would know what that way is.

So much for, “Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

I recall a session some years back with a writer patient struggling with the plot details of his first novel. He had published a few essays and a number of short stories, but working out the narrative issues of this complicated novel was seemingly beyond him.

“There must be some technique that every novelist knows,” he said plaintively. “Some rule. I guess I just don’t know what it is.”

Based on what we had explored previously about his childhood experience with a demanding and pedantic father, knowing (and the rules, facts, andexperience this knowledge was built on)was acore value in defining one’s worth—and thus one’s worthiness to be loved. (Reminding me of something I had heard during my years as a Hollywood screenwriter, concerning the actor Steve McQueen’s description of the only type of character he would play: “I’m not the guy that learns; I’m the guy that knows.”)

Given the similar ethos fueling my patient’s shame, my mentioning Einstein’s quote about groping did not do much to allay his concerns. So I tried to elaborate.

“I think what the quote suggests is that a professional person’s view of their work include in it the reality that all artistic effort, in a sense, is a groping toward something.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“Let me put it this way: A writer like yourself, a real craftsperson, should know that the tools of creative preparation—plot construction, reflection on theme and content, an understanding of how to devise realistic characters—these tools have been developed for one reason only: to enable them to grope.”

I spread my hands, in an attempt to come off as less pedantic myself. “It’s only logical, right? The higher your skill level and experience, the more likely you are to break away from the known way of doing things. That kind of exploration has uncertainty built into it.”

My patient nodded. “That reminds me of something I read. What the cellist Pablo Casals said. ‘Learn the notes and forget about them.’ Are you talking about something like that?”

“Pretty much. It’s only when you reach a high level of competence that you’re finally able to grope. Like where you are with your novel. Given your past experience and talent, a new project like that only gets harder, not easier. You find that you’re demanding even more of yourself.”

“Lucky me.” He gave me a wry grin. “Well, shit, if it was good enough for Einstein…”

Sessions like these reveal how often creative patients fear Beckett’s notion of “failing better,” and yearn for models or guidelines, not merely to quell their anxiety but to counter the shame underlying it. Even veteran artists need the validation that confirms they “know what they are doing,” though the wisest among them know that is not the sole prerequisite for doing good work. That happy outcome requires risk, accident. As an actor patient once explained it to me, “Rehearse like crazy, then wait for the mistakes.”

In my 30+ years of practice, I have come to believe that what is true for my creative patients is true for clinicians. Too often we adhere to conventional dogma when it comes to treating patients, relying too readily on the dictums of diagnostic categories or the claims of personality theory. Knowledge of these things is crucial, of course, but since I feel that therapeutic work is both a science and an art, we have to be careful not to rely so much on the profession’s orthodoxy that we are blinded to the wisdom of our own instincts, the potential for our own unique approach to a patient’s issues. Which inevitably entails risk.

A book that had a profound influence on my thinking in this regard, written many years ago by philosopher William Barrett, was The Illusion of Technique. As the title infers, it is a ringing defense of creativity as a spontaneous reaction against the false sense of security promised by reliance on rigid structures, belief systems, and techniques.

In other words, a closed system of thought is a dead system. Equally true, I believe, for both creative patients and their therapists.

Again, an anecdote from Einstein’s life: when a student complained about his difficulties with math, Einstein replied, “Don’t worry about your troubles with mathematics. I can assure you mine are far worse.”

Another allusion, no doubt, to the reality of struggle, uncertainty—groping, if you will—as the price of any worthy creative endeavor. After all, as my author patient said, if it was good enough for Einstein…

via Ellery Queen

ELLERY QUEEN’S MYSTERY MAGAZINE Features Dennis Palumbo's "The Patient" and My Patients!

 

“The Patient” and My Patients (by Dennis Palumbo, M.A., MFT)

Dennis Palumbo, M.A., MFT is a writer and licensed psychotherapist in private practice, specializing in creative issues, primarily in the entertainment industry. His award-winning series of mystery thrillers—Mirror Image, Fever Dream, Night Terrors, Phantom Limb, Head Wounds and the latest, Panic Attack—feature psychologist and trauma expert Daniel Rinaldi. He’s also the author of Writing From the Inside Out, as well as a collection of mystery short stories, From Crime to Crime. Recently he served as Consulting Producer on the Hulu limited series The Patient, and here (in an article first published in the journal Capital Psychiatry) he tells us about how the play out of the television crime drama affected his real-life patients.

After seventeen years as a Hollywood screenwriter (the film My Favorite Year; the sitcom Welcome Back, Kotter, etc.), I retired from show business and have been a licensed psychotherapist in private practice for over thirty years. During this time, my writing has been confined to articles and reviews, as well as a series of mystery novels whose protagonist is a psychologist. My point is, it’s been so long since I was a dues-paying member of the Hollywood industry that I was quite surprised to hear from the team of Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg. Writers of the award-winning TV series The Americans, they’d reached out to me to act as advisor on a new show they were developing. Called The Patient, it was about a serial killer who kidnaps and holds hostage a well-known therapist, in hopes that he can “cure” the killer of his homicidal urges.

Apparently, my former career as a script writer and my current one as a therapist prompted them to see me as a reasonable person to act as consultant on the new series. Essentially, what they wanted was for me to vet each episode’s scripts for clinical accuracy and to “make sure the therapist sounded like a therapist”—or as much like one as possible given the bizarre circumstances of the show’s premise.

Over the coming months, I did my best to keep the narrative within the range of plausibility, including suggesting the occasional line of dialogue or therapeutic interpretation.  Just as we were finishing the script for the last episode, it was announced that Steve Carell had been cast as the therapist. A wonderful actor, he’d been given a salt-and-pepper beard and glasses. Whether or not it was conscious on the writers’ part, he looked somewhat like me. Which, at the time, I just found amusing.

My working relationship with Fields and Weisberg was one of the most pleasant professional experiences of my life. Moreover, the two writers were very gracious about my contribution when doing PR interviews leading up to the series premiere.  During one such interview, when writing up the story for Newsweek, the reporter off-handedly mentioned that Carell’s character looked like me.

It wasn’t until the series began airing on Hulu that the ramifications of this became apparent in my therapy practice. A number of patients who’d begun watching the show pointed out that Carell’s therapist character looked a lot like me, and on occasion even sounded like me. (No surprise, since I’d suggested some of the therapeutic comments the therapist made.) Naturally, I had to process this with these patients, some of whom were quite upset at seeing the therapist chained to a bed, helpless. More than one half-jokingly worried that the series’ premise would give “some crazy person” the idea of kidnapping me. Did I feel I was in danger? they asked. I answered honestly that I didn’t, while privately wondering why I’d never even entertained that idea when working on the show.

Moreover, had I been unforgivably clueless in not anticipating this reaction from my patients? I reminded myself that Steve Carell hadn’t been cast until the series’ scripts were almost finished, that I had no idea he’d be playing the therapist, and certainly no idea how they were going to make him look. Yet I still felt pangs of remorse for the distress the show’s depiction of the therapist was causing for some of my patients.

As the weeks went on, and episode after episode aired, it became obvious that seeing an avatar of their therapist was upsetting to a number of my patients. Of equal interest during sessions was the reaction of those patients who found the whole thing amusing, or at least presented it as such. They even joked with me about the series’ story-telling: why didn’t the therapist try harder to escape? Why didn’t he just refuse to talk to the serial killer? Is this how you would react in this situation, Dennis?

Of course, the narrative choices displayed on-screen were made by the show’s writers, not me. I was merely the consultant. But this didn’t matter. What did matter, and what ended up being of real clinical interest (and value) was what some patients’ transferential connection to the therapist character and the story revealed about both their own core issues and their relationship with me. As Robert Stolorow has reiterated, there is only subjectivity and context; in this unusual situation, there was a patient’s subjective experience of me in the context of our therapeutic relationship, and then a kind of meta-subjectivity/context experience through the narrative of a TV series.

(SPOILER ALERT: I’m going to discuss the series’ final episode)

For a select few of my patients, as I’d expected, it was the series’ final episode that elicited the strongest reaction. Not only does the therapist fail to escape, he’s strangled to death on-screen by the serial-killer patient. This horrible murder is hardly ameliorated by the killer’s decision to send an anonymous letter to the therapist’s family, telling them where they can find the body so it can have a proper funeral. The last time we see the serial killer, he’s the one chained to the bed, his mother holding the key to the chain’s lock. Since she’s known all along about her son’s activities, we’re left to wonder if/when she’ll release him to potentially kill again.   

A couple patients revealed that they’d cried at the end, one of them pointing an accusing finger at me and saying, “You better not fucking die!” Again, said half-jokingly. And yet, not. The few others who’d stayed with the show all the way to the end were angry at both the series’ writers and at me. Their reactions ranged from disbelief (“How could they end a show like that? How come the killer gets away with it?”)  to frustration (“That’s not fair to the viewers. We deserved a better ending.”) to simple creative criticism (“I hate ambiguous endings.”).

As difficult as the sessions were with these patients over the course of the series’ run (including my own guilt at having put them through it), some of the clinical work that arose from our discussions was quite beneficial. A greater understanding of the contextual nature of our therapist/patient relationship undoubtably occurred. Moreover, we often reached a deeper understanding of the dependency/resentment dynamic at work in the therapeutic dyad. And, in one or two cases, the discussion regarding the show was a springboard to a more energized, proactive engagement on the patient’s part.

Still, I have somewhat mixed feelings about my participation in the series. It was often an exhilarating experience, due primarily to the talent, receptivity and warmth of both Joel Fields and Joe Weisberg. And while I regret the distress that the lead character’s words and looks evoked in a few of my patients, I also felt this similarity led to real forward progress in our work together.  A potential disjunction becoming a fruitful conjunction.

That said, if I’m ever asked to consult on another series, my only hope is that the lead character looks like someone else.

via Something is going to happen 

Guest Post: Shame Is a Deep Well by Dennis Palumbo

Procrastination: how to conceptualize it for both creative patients and their clinicians.

CREATIVE MINDS: Psychotherapeutic Approaches and Insights

“Art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind.”

-Louise Nevelson

In the inaugural entry in this column, I addressed the issue of creative blocks, specifically focusing on writers' block. And while being blocked is common to most creatives at some point in their work (due to the fact that, frankly, making good art is hard), I posited that it was the self-invalidating meanings that the patient associates with being blocked that amplifies their distress. These meanings can run the gamut from self-recriminating beliefs about oneself as a person or an artist, to lacerating comparisons between oneself and the imagined ease of creative execution available to others.

In this column, I want to address a similar, though distinct, creative difficulty; namely, procrastination. To suggest ways to conceptualize it for both creative patients and, in a similar way, their clinicians.

Two personal associations with procrastination might serve as guideposts; the first is from my work in advertising on the East Coast. A lifetime ago, I was a young copywriter at an ad agency. One night, invited to dinner by one of the firm’s biggest and most successful clients, I excused myself to use the bathroom, which was at the end of a broad upstairs hallway. To my surprise, taking up most of the space on one of the walls was a colorful logo—the familiar image from the current Nike shoes ad. Atop the image were the equally-familiar words: “Just do it!”

Later, when I mentioned this huge wall graphic to our client, he said that he wanted something that he had see every morning and every night to keep him inspired and motivated. Further, he believed that adherence to this simple exhortation had contributed to his business success.

The second association I have with the concept of procrastination derives from the fact that, despite being a full-time therapist in private practice, I have moonlighted over the years as a mystery author. The very first line of my debut mystery novel, Mirror Image, is "Shame is a deep well."

Why these 2 distinct (and distinctly different) associations? In the first case, it is because “Just do it!” is what many artists struggling with procrastination routinely tell themselves; or, just as often, are told by others, from spouses to colleagues to seemingly more motivated friends. This despite the fact that telling a procrastinator to "just do it" is as helpful as telling a depressed person to "cheer up," and a distraught or grieving person to "get over it."

Admonitions to merely "stop procrastinating and get on with it," whether in answer to the hectoring voice in one's own head or the barely-concealed frustration of intimates, rarely addresses the issue. In fact, if anything, it reaffirms that which, in my view, underlies most instances of procrastination: shame.

Or, to put it more clearly, fear of shameful self-exposure. As I have seen in over 30 years treating creative patients of all stripes struggling with procrastination, such shame is indeed a deep well.

In my studies on the subject, I have read various explanations as to the root causes of procrastination, from simple anxiety to low self-confidence, from a lack of motivation to do unpleasant tasks to merely a tendency to ruminate. In my view, and in both my personal and clinical experience, these concepts woefully miss the mark. They rely on a conventional and unconvincing set of assumptions about the procrastinator, and, frankly, seem to be a “blame the victim” response to the issue. (Not to mention the fact that many individuals are willing to do any number of unpleasant tasks to avoid confronting their reluctance to start or continue their creative project.)

If, as I will try to argue, procrastination is primarily a function of the fear of shameful self-exposure, what makes it so insidious and how many forms does this fear take? What makes treating the creative patient grappling with procrastination so difficult is that the underlying shame has myriad origins. As H.L. Mencken noted, “There is always an easy solution to every human problem—neat, plausible and wrong.” Just as there is no one-size-fits-all approach to creative blocks, there is no uniform approach to dealing with procrastination. Not without narrowing in on the shame, and the possible meanings that birthed that shame.

Which is not to say that there are not a range of similar issues behind procrastination. Over the years, I have treated many PhD candidates from a variety of fields as they struggle to finish their dissertations and defend their paper before their committee. It is a common joke among academics that often these candidates take many years to complete their work, always seeking new sources to support their thesis, always revising it whenever a new book or study appears that might provide additional ammunition for their argument.

Even the terminology invites suspicion. These candidates do not present their work to the committee; they defend it, a position that practically invites the possibility of shameful self-exposure.

In fact, one such patient, a PhD candidate who had spent years researching and writing her thesis in anthropology (ie, procrastinating), explained it with wry self-awareness.

“Did you ever see that movie, Defending Your Life, with Albert Brooks?” she asked. “That’s what I feel like I’m doing. I have to defend my life choices, my ambitions. If I don’t get my PhD, I’ve failed. After all these years, I’m…”

“Exposed?” I offered.

“Exposed, revealed. Whatever you want to call it.”

And no wonder. Between submitting a dissertation and then having to defend it before the empaneled committee, many candidates experience an understandable parental transference with those judging them. That is why the treatment for these patients involves a thorough exploration of how their particular families of origin invoked and embedded iron-clad ideas around success and failure, self-worth and self-recrimination. And how these conceptual myths affect the patient’s belief in their intrinsic lovability.

In cases with such patients, it is necessary to unearth and examine these core beliefs around one’s worth, and then help them challenge their veracity, their very legitimacy. Letting some much-needed air into their shame.

But not every procrastinating creative patient’s issues are so easily uncovered. For example, I once had a novelist patient whose first book was roundly praised by critics, though its sales were poor. Now, midway through his second novel, he found himself procrastinating. He was constantly doing research online, writing reviews of other books, engaging in lengthy email arguments with friends and colleagues. Early in our work together, he assured me that though he had stopped work on the new book, at least he was pounding the keyboard every day, churning out these other written pieces.

“Maybe I’m priming the pump,” he explained. “Getting myself up to start work again.”

When I asked if, given the first novel’s poor reception by the reading public, he was worried this new book might suffer a similar fate, he smiled sardonically.

“I wish.”

A surprising answer. “What does that mean?” I asked.

“Look, I haven’t mentioned it, but my editor loved the early chapters of the new book. Then he got the publisher excited, and their PR people, and well…” At this point, he looked practically embarrassed. “Everybody says this new book is a potential best-seller. There’re already rumblings in the publishing world about what a splash the book will make. They’re talking magazine covers, movie deals. Hell, I just heard that Oprah might have me on her show to talk about the book.”

“And this is bad…how?”

His answer was one I would never have guessed. Though I knew he had grown up in a poor household in the early 60s in Brooklyn, and that his late father, a factory janitor, was a rabid socialist, constantly deriding American wealth and class inequality, my patient had never described specifically what his childhood with his father had been like. As a small boy, he had trudged to various rallies, in parks and meeting halls all over the city, listening to his father railing passionately against “the big shots,” the ones with the power, the wealthy and entitled men who ruled under capitalism.

“He was crazy, my old man,” my patient said quietly. “But I loved him…and respected him. And believed in what he preached. That’s why, when my first novel flew under the radar, when nobody but the critics liked it, I felt…I don’t know…comfortable. A working stiff. Poor, struggling. Noble, even.”

By then, I’d gotten it.

“So if this new book becomes a huge success, if you make a lot of money and gain recognition…”

He nodded, miserable. “Don’t you see? Magazine covers, real money? In my father’s eyes, it’d mean I’d become a big shot. Some privileged asshole, riding in limos, giving interviews. I mean, it makes me sick. Just the thought of it…”

That is what had birthed his shame. His fear of being exposed as someone striving to attain status, money, influence—the kind of man his beloved father despised. And as painful as this revelation was, it gave us something to work with.

As mentioned, most creative patients’ procrastination comes from more easily recognized origins. However, over my 30-some years treating artists (and would-be artists) from a variety of fields, I have learned that until the meanings underlying the reluctance to start or continue with a project are explored in reference to each patient’s particular personal history, the source of the shame is elusive.

But what is an artist but someone willing to expose what is in their mind and heart? What is creativity delivered to the general marketplace but a desire (or even compulsion) to communicate these things to others?

I once had a classical musician patient who procrastinated on a piece he was commissioned to compose. His procrastination was particularly painful, since he feared (and was convinced) that his lack of musical talent would be exposed, not only to the world but to himself. Meanwhile, at the same time, he was trying (as he had for years) to disavow his love of music. To refute his desire to make music. In a constant war with himself.

“Believe me, I get Jesus in the garden that night,” he’d said once. “I mean, let this fucking cup pass away from me.”

Afraid to start the work, and furious with himself that the work was his calling.

I had another case in which my patient, a journeyman screenwriter, routinely procrastinated with each writing assignment due to his shame at being exposed as a mediocre, though financially successful, artist.

“Let’s face it, I’m no Billy Wilder or Robert Towne,” he’d complain, mentioning 2 noted, award-winning screenwriters.

“Because those jobs are taken,” I replied. “By those people. As an artist, comparing yourself to others is a fool’s game. I think it was Hemingway who said to his fellow writers, ‘Forget it, Shakespeare got there first and better, so just get on with it.’”

He smirked. “Boy, you know a lot of quotes.”

I had to agree. There is some kind of megabyte file full of quotes by well-known creatives in my head. It is not always useful.

“Here’s the thing,” he said after a pause. “And it’s so simple even you’ll get it, though there’s nothing you can do about it. I’m Salieri and I want to be Mozart. End of story.”

(An interesting side note: I’ve had many artists from different fields use the “Salieri and Mozart” analogy in terms of assessing their work, except for musicians, like in the previous example. Curious.)

Anyway, as it turned out, it was not the end of the story for this patient. That did not come until we explored his relationship with his mother, whose ambitions for her son were the background noise of his childhood. Her stated goal for him: to win an Oscar and for her to be especially thanked during his acceptance speech, an example of which she actually wrote out for him as a template when he was still in middle school.

“Seriously?” I stared at him.

“True story. I’d wanted to write movies since I was a kid, and she’d loved the movies since she was a kid, so my ambition became hers. It was all she dreamed about. She calls me every year, after the Oscars are on TV, and we share her disappointment.” A rueful laugh. “Kind of a bonding thing.”

The pain in his eyes, despite the familiar screenwriter’s ironic bitterness, showed me how deeply his anticipatory shame was. How it infused every new writing assignment. No wonder he procrastinated. Who would want to launch on another project whose result would invariably fall short of the stated goal? So our work going forward was about reframing that goal, plotting out a journey toward loving the work for its own sake. Even in the brutal machinery of the entertainment business. Because, as I have written elsewhere, many people come to Hollywood in search of an approving parent. And it is the worst place to find one.

In my experience, when treating a creative person struggling with procrastination, it is particularly valuable to look at the issue through the prism of shame. What does the artistic person fear to expose, to others or even to themself? No matter the actual outcome. No matter how successful the person may be in their career.

I am reminded of another patient, a costume designer with years of experience and accolades behind her, still burdened by procrastination. When I asked her about it, she said, “Because even if they love my work, they never love it enough.”

A sheet of shame reddened her face. Clues to her self-concept, and its possible origins, began to present themselves. A deep well, indeed.

Mr Palumbo is a licensed psychotherapist and author in Los Angeles. His email address for correspondence is dpalumbo181@aol.com.

via Psychiatric Times