HTA-0612: Eric Maisel — Artists and Depression

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Summary

Henry interviews psychotherapist and creativity coach Eric Maisel about depression among artists and creative professionals.

Full Transcript

00:00
Welcome back, Ron for Newsweekend. Boy, I just found out something about our guest.

00:04
It's hard to believe. It has nothing to do with the subject. But ladies and gentlemen,

00:07
Eric Maisel doesn't even own a cell phone, ladies and gentlemen.

00:10
I'm trying to be the last person in the world without a cell phone.

00:13
Well, not only is he one of the most unusual people in the world, truly unique,

00:19
but he is the author of a book called The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person's Path Through Depression.

00:26
And the gist of this is that people who are creative do have a tendency, as we know, many, many cases, to be little nuts.

00:37
Okay?

00:37
So why is that, first of all?

00:39
Well, I think we're talking specifically about depression.

00:42
Well, I'm just kidding.

00:43
Yes.

00:44
And I think they tend to be depressed because it's existential depression they're suffering from.

00:49
Namely, they decide that they want to hold meaning afloat for the world.

00:53
They want to be the cultural witnesses, the cultural actors.

00:57
And so because they want to keep meaning afloat, when they have difficulty doing that,

01:01
and all of us as creative people do have difficulty doing that,

01:04
then the meaning seems to drain out of their lives,

01:07
and the depression they experience is this existential depression.

01:11
So I think 100% of creative people are going to experience this kind of depression,

01:16
at least sometimes in their life.

01:18
But they've created something, and sometimes, I mean, I can understand

01:23
And when you do something, it's like, oh, man, I just wasted a lot of time.

01:26
It stinks.

01:27
But it doesn't apply to whether it's good or bad.

01:30
Some of the most oppressed people are successful.

01:32
But the dirty little secret is if you spend three years writing a novel,

01:35
you may end up with a successful novel.

01:37
And at that split second, you may feel like you've done something meaningful.

01:41
But for those 1,000 days, virtually 700 or 800 of those days,

01:46
you're just slogging along, struggling, not really believing in your novel

01:49
because here you are faced with a bad paragraph that you're trying to revise.

01:53
So most of the time you're not experiencing life as successful or meaningful,

01:58
even though you know that down the road you will have done something that's meaningful.

02:03
And that's one of the tricks.

02:04
That's one of the tricks in maintaining meaning,

02:06
is reminding yourself that even though today is hard,

02:10
you're working towards something that you're going to experience as meaningful.

02:13
But Van Gogh was successful at this point,

02:18
although he never quite acknowledged it, and he was jealous of others.

02:21
Right. Well, he was successful at painting, but not successful at keeping meaning afloat.

02:25
Right. So, I mean, he and Gauguin were having these problems.

02:28
So he went into a terrible depression, even though he was...

02:33
But that was his second depression. His first depression. He was a pastor first,

02:37
and he was too vehement as a pastor, and he was fired.

02:40
So he tried to make meaning as a religious person first, was fired,

02:44
had a meaning crisis then, almost committed suicide,

02:47
then tried to make it by painting to sustain meaning.

02:51
Couldn't do it there.

02:52
The secret is we need relationships as well as our creative art.

02:55
That's the headline here.

02:57
Okay.

02:57
So now that we've stated the problem,

03:01
let's go ahead and talk about how a creative person can deal with that very problem.

03:06
You've created something.

03:07
You're feeling lousy about it.

03:09
Where do you start?

03:10
Well, for one thing, since we're talking about existential depression,

03:13
we have to not forget that depression might be something else like biological depression.

03:18
So if you're deeply blue, you need a medical workup.

03:20
You need to make sure that we're talking about the same depression.

03:23
Well, excuse me, but most doctors these days, your average doctor, I doubt, can tell the difference.

03:28
Absolutely, but you're going to the doctor to see if maybe antidepressants are going to help you.

03:33
Because if you're severely depressed, you sort of don't want to stubbornly not check in to the medical community to see if that might.

03:39
But let's say you've done all of that.

03:41
let's say you've done the home remedies like exercise and sunlight

03:44
and all the other things we know help with depression

03:47
then i think you want to look at the existential depression issue

03:50
and the starting place there is to remind yourself that you matter and that your

03:54
efforts matter to you

03:56
because i think that's the piece of negative self-talk that's going on in a

03:59
creative person's mind

04:00
day in and day out they're telling themselves

04:03
not that talented it doesn't matter that much whether this poem gets published

04:07
et cetera et cetera

04:08
they're talking themselves into the crisis

04:11
You want to get a grip on your mind, as the Buddha said, you want to get a grip on your mind and say new things to yourself, say different things to yourself that remind you that you are able to make meaning in your life.

04:22
We have 40 seconds for you to explain the concept that you want people to find versus, I'm sorry, to make versus find meaning.

04:31
Yeah, I think we've had a metaphor for a long time of seeking meaning and finding meaning.

04:35
And a lot of people need to go out looking for meaning.

04:38
And I think it's time we stop thinking that way.

04:41
and had a paradigm shift toward making meaning,

04:44
that we know enough already, we know what our principles are,

04:46
we know what our work is,

04:47
and we should just assert that we're going to make meaning

04:50
rather than talk ourselves into the position

04:52
that we're going to have to find meaning somewhere out there in the world.

04:56
So Eric Maisel is going to be appearing on Friday,

05:00
7 p.m. at Book Passage, Tamil Vista Boulevard in Cordo Madera,

05:03
at 415-927-0960, bookpassage.com,

05:08
And the book is called the Van Gogh blues we've been discussing.

05:12
Do we say Van Gogh?

05:12
The Van Gogh blues.

05:13
Van Gogh.

05:14
You say Van Gogh and I say Van Gogh.

05:17
And Marty and Isabel say it any way they like.

05:19
Say it's time to go.

05:21
Or it's time to go.

05:50
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