The psychopathology of everyday art: a quantitative Study - World ...

talent and therefore do not fit in with other reports. The purpose of this analysis was
to examine the commonalities between 29 studies of artists and investigate possible
generalisation. The impressionistic interpretations of pictures or studies about artists
were summarised (case summaries table 3, appendix 2); 18 were case studies and 11
discussions. There were 2 types of discussion:
(1) Whether or how work was creative or aesthetic, and
(2) that it illustrated mental illness:
The main focus was on illustration of psychosis or depression (15 studies) and
of how psychosis affected or enhanced creativity of the mentally ill. 20 studies reported
that mental illness had a positive effect on the creativity or art of the subject and all
implied that the practice of art had a 'healing effect', by which they meant that the
practise of art was seen to relieve the artist of a mental burden. Descriptions were poor
but generally some expression of emotion and some form of catharsis was reported. 6
studies reported no effect and only one reported a negative effect. They differ from the
usual case study in that:
no other type of medical writing used so little information; and
what was used was selected, or adopted a subjective view of the product of
mental illness as a separate issue.
These works were assumed to deviate from a standard of normal, but, at the same time,
perfectly normal modern art was also shown to possess the same attributes that were
described as indications of psychopathology. All studies here concentrated on illustrated
diagnostic indications of dissolution, fragmentation or disorder of thought and
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