he had long-term schizophrenia. She sought help. But every time she recovered, she relapsed. After reading about RD Laing, a British psychiatrist, she got in touch with him. Laing got her into his clinic in the renowned Kingsley Hall building in London. Laing used to practice what is now known as the anti-psychiatry movement—a captivating and contentious approach to quite a scandalous treatment. He managed to get her off all the prescribed medication. She soon began to deteriorate, losing all of her abilities and even maintaining her personal cleanliness. She began to roll around in her excrement and play with it. At this time, Laing instructed the employees to give her the painting brushes and canvases. She not only began to recover from her psychotic episode after this intervention, but she also displayed effervescent artistic skills—a previously undiscovered gift. Today, she is renowned throughout the world as Mary Barnes, a painter whose work has garnered positive reviews for the most part. She has written on her path from the breakdown of her mental health to her eventual rehabilitation. She and Dr Joseph Berke have co-authored her narrative.

What does Mary’s story teach us about the relationship in general between mental health and the arts? How did she get better? Was the untapped artistic potential the cause of her ailment; and did painting become her therapy? Was her mental health issue caused by her suppressed talent? Her brother was diagnosed with the same ailment, but he never made a full recovery. What do doctors say about genetic predisposition?

Mary is not the first one to reveal this mysterious relationship between arts and mental health. A number of revered artists were well-known for having long-term mental health issues. About Michelangelo’s mental state, we are aware. Who can forget The Scream, the iconic painting by Edvard Munch? It’s not necessary to be an expert to deduce that work of art is a remarkable portrayal of extreme anxiety and paranoia. Any psychology student with training in art analysis can identify symptoms of confusion and obsessive-compulsive disorder in Vincent van Gogh’s Garden of the Asylum.

More than 5,000 paintings depicting people with mental health issues are owned by the UK’s Adamson Collection Trust. Without a doubt, several of them are masterpieces. We see a similar situation if we consider other literary genres. It has been suggested that the authors of Ulysses, Dubliner and Finnegan’s Wake suffered from thought disorder, which is evident in his technique known as Stream of Consciousness. Nader Shah’s invasion in 1793 had a profound impact on our own Khudaye Sukhan Meer Taqi Meer. He was forced to flee to Lucknow and lose a great number of his friends and family. He was evidently sad and disturbed by this move, the death of his loved ones, the lack of recognition he had hoped for and his contempt for Lucknow’s literary circles. In 1810, he overdosed on medication and died.

To better understand the complex relationship between art and mental health, we may simply divide our effort into four categories.

Examining the creations of artistic masters who experienced mental health issues is one method of learning about the relationship between art and mental health.

Secondly, via the literary work and artistic creations created by individuals with mental health diagnoses.

Thirdly, by reading about the case studies of people who used art therapy to overcome mental health issues.

The fourth, and less common method is to have the participant sketch some figures as part of a personality assessment. The person does not have to be an accomplished artist, but the way various figures are drawn can aid a clinician in determining the personality type and, if present, in ruling out underlying pathological trends.

Regardless of how one approaches understanding the relationship between the arts and psychological phenomena, there is undeniably a complex, multifaceted and profound relationship. But the primacy question is still relevant and a little complicated. You might discover that Freud made a comment in this area that, in his view, validates the value of literature above the study of psychology as a science. “Everywhere I go I find a poet has been there before me.” Even though Freud never stated it explicitly, he was of the opinion that poets and artists were expressing and grasping feelings long before psychology. His scholarly though controversial writings on Italian painter Leonardo Da Vinci and Russian author Fyodor Dostoevsky validate his belief that mental health-related issues find a covert manifestation in artistic efforts.

Andre Breton’s surrealism movement provided individual expression in challenging sociopolitical contexts a new dimension. In his book New Surrealism, Akhter Ahsen made the case that surrealism might be a helpful tool for releasing mental images into consciousness. It is confirmed that it is possible for artistic and literary endeavours to convey unconscious or unknown psychological material; instead, communication is most effective when there is suffering.

Both the Freudian attempt to interpret the works of art geniuses and the surrealist movement’s effort confirm that a possible expression of unconscious or unknown psychological material in creative endeavours of arts and literature is not only possible but communicates better in distress. The world’s current sociopolitical conditions are both brutal and difficult to comprehend. However, they undoubtedly have an impact on human consciousness and produce emotional results. Again, these results can inevitably elicit both pathological and creative reactions. Despite this, literature and the arts can accommodate both pathological and creative reactions. In contrast to psychology, here the pathological responses are assessed based not on normalcy or abnormality but rather on the beauty and grandeur of expression, which ultimately establishes the superiority of literature and the arts over science.

The writer is a clinical psychologist. He lives and works in Ireland and can be reached at akhtaralisyed@gmail.com