The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person's Path Through Depression Book

Creative people of all kinds look for understanding, empathy, and meaning in life. That is what they do, what they work with. This fact will to lead to depression--but not because understanding, empathy, and meaning are not possible. They are simply not always on terms that are easy to accept. This depression of creative people does not have to be physiological, nor does it necessarily respond to pharmaceutical treatments.

Dr. Eric Maisel, an internationally known expert on the creative process and best-selling author, has developed a four-step plan for engaging this type of depression and moving past it. Using examples of famous creators like Vincent van Gogh and Fyodor Dostoyevsky and not-so-famous creators who have struggled with this kind of depression, he shows that despite the difficulty, creative people hold the ability to forge relationships, repair themselves, and create meaning in an utterly unique and powerful way. Dr. Maisel's approach legitimizes creative people's own instinctual beliefs that standard treatments are not the answer.

Vincent van Gogh, the icon of the tortured artist, cut off his own ear and spun out of control in his depression. Would he have benefited from Prozac or Zoloft? Possibly. Are all creative people--designers, writers, engineers, architects, dancers, others who seek to find meaning in their work--destined to end up like van Gogh? Not at all.

Men and women who seek to create meaning through their work are heroes in many ways. They have opted to matter. They lay their work as a veneer on top of the forces of meaninglessness and chaos, making them vulnerable to a unique kind of depression that often is not physiological and does not respond to pharmaceutical treatments.

The source of this depression is embedded in the creative process itself. Creative people often get depressed when they are unable to create or when their creative efforts fall short of their hopes--even when they create successfully, they can get depressed due to a lingering sense that their work only temporarily disguises life's apparent meaninglessness.

In order to counter this kind of depression, Dr. Eric Maisel says creators must become meaning experts, learning to navigate through the terrain of meaning. They must engage in a conversation with themselves about what is meaningful--and then work a plan to create that meaning. The Van Gogh Blues contains all the information one needs to have this conversation and create a personalized meaning plan.

The great news is that this can lead to liberation from depression, truly a self-created map out of depression. Despite the fact that we have no choice but to experience pain and suffering while being alive, we can choose to make sense of our time here, take it seriously, and stick to our plan to create the meaning we seek. We can force life to mean.

Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is an internationally known expert on the creative process, a creativity coach, psychotherapist, and best-selling author. His other books include Living the Writer's Life, The Creativity Book, and Sleep Thinking. He lives near San Francisco.