Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Artists' psychology'

This project provides a broad exploration of factors that can enhance or inhibit creative performance in professional artists, including writers, visual artists, and musicians. Potential causes of the difficulties creative clients contend with are surveyed, as well as a range of interventions to address them. The first section reviews six major factors that can impact artistic creativity (also called Big C or eminent creativity) both positively and negatively, including the relatively stable and enduring factors of artists’ personality traits, cognitive makeup, and psychopathology. This section also reviews more malleable elements of creativity that the therapist may be able to affect directly, namely, motivational orientation, mood, and environmental influences. The second section is an investigation of creative block: its antecedents, phenomenology, and proposed classifications of different types of block. The final section focuses on interventions to facilitate creative performance in artists, both those who are suffering from artist block and those who are seeking to boost their creative achievement more generally. Interventions reviewed include cognitive-behavioral, Gestalt, psychodynamic, meditative, and compassion-focused approaches. In addition, field interviews conducted with psychologists with expertise in the clinical treatment of professional artists are summarized. The project concludes with a discussion of possible reasons for the scarcity of empirical literature on the subject of creative block and potential avenues of exploration for future research.

Keywords: Arts, artists, musicians, writers, creativity, psychotherapy, self-compassion, perfectionism, self criticism.

The colloquial phrases "choke artist" and "clutch performer" are used to refer to individuals who have a tendency to falter or excel, respectively, when performing under pressure conditions. The objective of this study was to conduct a broad survey of the extant literature on the topic of performance under pressure and to offer a Critical Interpretive Synthesis (CIS) of that literature. The output of this project was multi-faceted and included an organized exposition and coarse-grained critical analysis of the literature on performance under pressure, an interpretive synthesis containing multiple suggestions for improving the literature base, and a reflexive account of the experimental use of the CIS methodology.

The critical analysis centered on a critique of the field's predominantly positivistic approach, which has produced a fragmented and ambiguous literature pervaded by enduring difficulties across the domains of conceptualization, research, theory, and practice. The interpretive synthesis was subsequently organized around the theme of advocating for a more balanced and integrative approach to both inquiry and intervention that honors the inevitable role of subjectivity in the pressure-performance relationship.

Specific suggestions for improving the literature base included incorporating a subjective self-assessment component into the operational definition of choking, complementing experimental studies with more qualitative and mixed-methods research, constructing interactional theories of choking that consider the important role of context and meaning-making, and treating athletes and performers more holistically by focusing on personal development and overall well-being in addition to teaching psychological skills.

Perhaps the most provocative suggestion to emerge from the present synthesis is that, as part of a more integrative and holistic approach to psychological training for sport and performance, the Western academic and applied sport psychology communities should begin to look beyond the relaxation and concentration benefits of Eastern mindfulness practices in order to bring into view the potentially broader benefits of the ego-transcendent functions of the spiritual traditions from which these practices derive.

The forensic artists who create suspect composite drawings of wanted criminals for law enforcement agencies are frequently exposed to the details of traumatic events. The manner and degree to which this exposure to details of violence affects the perceptions and lives of these artists comprise the basis of this phenomenological study. Interviews with 8 experienced forensic artists include inquiries about their background and training and their perceptions of the most disturbing type of crimes, and also about how they subjectively process the traumatic material received via the cognitive interviews that they conduct with victims and witnesses of violent crime. Perceptions of a more comprehensive effect of violence on society are also explored. Other pivotal aspects of this study include the manner in which memories of criminal cases are evoked, and specifically the way in which specific facial features that these artists have imaged in composites may act as triggers to these memories. The results of this inquiry reveal the varied degrees to which these forensic artists are conscious of the effects of this repeated exposure to traumatic detail. However, conscious revelations of such an impact on their lives occur frequently during the research interviews due to the narrative process of specific cases with which they had been involved. Recommended future research includes further exploration of specific facial features as triggers to traumatic memory and of the gender of the forensic artist may have on the perception of facial features and their translatable meanings within the context of a suspect composite interview.

Within pages and spreads, a reader can sometimes experience someone’s stream of consciousness. The book’s narrative, images, prose, and other components can break free from the parameters of a conventional book, unbound by the rules of formatting styles, grammar, and narrative. An artists’ book is free to be confusing, delightful, and horrifying. When creating an artists’ book to represent a dream, the difficulty of solidly recounting images and events that existed only in my mind creates a barrier between the reader and me. This barrier makes me feel inarticulate and ineffectual in that one of my main objectives as an artist is to coherently express an idea. While no medium possesses the capacity to fully transmit a dream, the artists’ book is one of the most comprehensive, artistic representations of a dream, and the parallels between experiencing a dream and experiencing a book allow for the terms “artist” and “dreamer” to shift interchangeably.

Presently, martial arts board breaking is a common constituent of the curricula found in sanctioned martial arts training programs. Despite advancements to training, sport evolution, and technological advancements, there remains a high risk for injury in martial arts board breaking. Through years of training and practice, advanced-level martial artists obtain the skills necessary to perform the board break without suffering injury. The problem statement of this research study was the following: It was not known how martial artists psychologically experience non-injury-resulting board breaks. Ten advanced-level Kajukenbo Tum Pai practitioners in the Northwest region of the United States were interviewed for this qualitative descriptive phenomenological study. The General Aggression Model, Anxiety Direction and Intensity Theory, PETTLEP Model of Motor Imagery, Model of Mental Toughness, and Buddhist Psychological Model guided the rhetoric of interview questions, and, provided the theoretical foundation for data collection in this study. Data collection consisted of in-depth, semi-structured interviews, researcher observation, and demographic questionnaire. Data were analyzed using the description phenomenological method of analysis. The results of this study uncovered a collective psychological lived experience of martial arts board breaking, which was conveyed by the following eleven key themes: pre/post event analysis, focus, distractions, physical awareness, confidence, Zen state, intensity, relief after event, imagery, self-talk, and, desire to represent Master or self. Furthermore, additional research is necessary on the psychology of competition board breaking, belt-test board breaking, and power breaking. This study may serve to enhance the mental training of martial arts curricula on board breaking.

This production thesis examines home and homelessness through various psychological lenses including depth psychology, trauma theory, and art therapy. It explores how creating a personal shrine can help an individual process emotional homelessness. It offers an example of how one might experience a psychological transformation using the creation of a shrine as a safe container and transitional object to connect with unconscious aspects of one’s personal story and examine some of the psychological elements therein. The author’s investigation of emotional homelessness and its resolution includes his own experiences of engagement with the imaginal realm and he provides an example of a three-dimensional imaginal visual tool to advance understanding of home.

This dissertation is a study of identity processes in two social domains: higher education and professional careers. Each chapter presents a distinct form of social identity and shows how it serves either as a resource to guide social participation (in the case of careers) or is a product of social participation (in higher education). "Institutional self" is a shorthand term for a pragmatic definition of identity, an ongoing process through which individuals make sense of their own capacities and trajectories as economic agents, in relation to the cues systematically produced in different environments. Each chapter of the dissertation develops a distinct conceptual model related to institutional self-formation, using empirical cases that are of interest to sociologists: the tensions of work in cultural production; formative stages of boundary-spanning careers; and college-level vocational training. Each fills gaps in the sociological research in these areas.

The data used throughout the dissertation come from 106 interviews conducted by the author with students, faculty, and graduates of one art school, Adams College of the Arts (43 students, eight faculty, and 55 graduates). The school is located in a metropolitan area on the West Coast of the United States, where interviews took place in 2012 and 2013. All participants are drawn from two academic departments at the school: Visual Design, centered on the discipline of graphic design, and Media Arts, a mix of several digital media applications. Subsequent qualitative analyses of interview transcripts were primarily inductive, involving several rounds of coding along with development of guiding questions that emerged from observed patterns in interviewees' personal accounts and detailed work histories. Each of the dissertation's three empirical chapters is presented as an independent research manuscript; introductory and concluding chapters frame the conceptual and empirical contributions of the project as a whole.

Chapter 2, "Boundary Work as Career Navigation in Design and Media," looks at how creative workers use rhetorics of creativity to justify preferences for a wide range of working arrangements. Interviewees pursue one of two distinct forms of boundary work: segmentation and integration. Segmentation involves reproducing the institutionalized opposition between artistry and commerce in the temporal and spatial arrangements of working lives. Integration breaks down the boundary, merging the opposing motivations. Each finds expression in a range of career-building practices, from maintaining separate creative projects, to becoming an entrepreneur, or leaving creative work altogether. In closing, the chapter questions the relevance of occupations as a place of sensemaking and belonging for skilled, contingent workers.

Chapter 3, "Self-Assessment and Self-Presentation in Disorderly Careers," looks at a different set of career navigation strategies, based on ongoing accounting of one's capacities in relation to the observed expectations of work roles and environments. The organization of American work has shifted fundamentally in the last few decades. Work in many skilled occupations now takes on patterns long found in creative fields: project-based work and "portfolio careers" that are disorderly, uncertain, and highly mobile. I find that young creatives continually evaluate their skills and personalities in market terms as they experience jobs in different contexts. These self-assessments lead to instrumental investment in "human capital"-both emotional and technical capacities-and self-selection into work roles based on a sense of fit with a firm, project, or industry. The chapter illuminates the experience of boundary-spanning careers, reviving an underdeveloped stream of micro-sociological career theory.

Chapter 4, "Crafting Identity: Two Approaches to Professionalization in Art School," turns to college education as a training ground in occupational identification and preparation for boundary-spanning careers. Professional training is the dominant contemporary form of higher education in America, having surpassed the arts and sciences in the number of undergraduate enrollees and graduates, yet sociologists know little about how students experience the professionalization process at the college level. I find that two departments providing artists with training in commercial art practices create distinct pedagogic cultures within the same school. One prepares students for industry-specific work roles to which students peg their future trajectories; the other cultivates general competencies that are applicable across industries, leaving students to identify likely work roles and career pathways. The analysis provides a conceptually nuanced model drawn from cultural and organizational sociology that is applicable across settings of higher education.

The dissertation concludes with a brief closing chapter that provides an overview of the contributions of each chapter and the project as a whole. It closes with questions for future research that are directly and indirectly informed by these findings that may be useful for sociologists of the arts and media, work and occupations, and culture.

In order to help child victims of bullying, a greater understanding of the psychological empowerment process was needed, especially what type of activities support the development of empowerment and how empowerment is related to mental health. Artistic expression, an activity described as therapeutic, had received little attention in regards to its role in empowerment. Thus, this exploratory case study explored the role of artistic expression in psychological empowerment with child bullying victims specifically using the Nomological Network of Psychological Empowerment model by Zimmerman (1995). The research questions of this study were: (1) in what ways can individuals experience a sense of psychological empowerment from the artistic process; (2) how can the artistic process relate to the three components of the NNPE model; and (3) how are artistic expression, psychological empowerment, and psychological healing related. The archived data of four children involved in a 14- week art therapy program in 2007 in an elementary school in Ontario, Canada was explored. For this case study various data sources, such as pre and post surveys, were examined to uncover any experiences of psychological empowerment. Qualitative content analysis, with a directed approach revealed that artistic expression in art therapy provided experiences of psychological empowerment in a myriad of ways and psychological empowerment was experienced as a cyclical process for participants. Additionally, artistic expression, psychological empowerment, and psychological healing were experienced as an interactional process. Thus, art therapy should be considered as an intervention method for children experiencing bullying. Additionally, researchers should investigate empowerment as a cyclical process and conduct longitudinal studies to determine the empowerment process over time.

What is the experience of being artistically creative, undergoing a major interruption in creativity and, finally, transitioning through that interruption to return to being creative? There is important literature on resilience, yet little mention of creativity.

This qualitative multiple case study explored the roles creativity played in resilient coping, wellness, and actualizing human potential by revealing experiences and life changes preceding, during, and following adversity. An intentional sampling yielded six adults, two males and four females, who experienced prolonged disruption lasting at least six months that impeded ordinary creative activity. Possible factors pertaining to people, conditions, and events were assessed.

Research data included: (a) participant essay response to specific questions about experiences before/during/after disruption; (b) a semi-structured qualitative interview expanding on the essay; (c) artwork relating to the three periods examined, and (d) a follow-up phone interview. Artistic expressions included poetry, writing, paintings, music, and design. Tape-recorded interviews were transcribed for thematic content analysis to identify major themes for the individual participants for the three periods that were investigated, as well as a cross-case comparison.

Seventeen major areas of importance, found in one or more of the three periods, involved: 1) creative environment; 2) creative output; 3) emotions; 4) financial status; 5) healing modalities; 6) insight/self-discovery; 7) loss; 8) perception; 9) perseverance; 10) productivity; 11) renewed passion for creativity; 12) self-esteem; 13) skill/training/talent; 14) "something higher"; 15) support; 16) time/space; and 17) utilizing creativity. Five themes, reflecting an overall pattern for participants' process, were: 1) support; 2) self-esteem; 3) perception; 4) perseverance, and 5) insight and self-discovery.

Results showed that using one's creativity was not only vital for overcoming adversity, but that creative activity itself evolved to meet the circumstances. As they persevered, the participants reported finding more universal meaning in their creations. They also gained greater self-confidence, renewed optimism, and found increased compassion and respect for self and others. Unfortunately, not everyone with adversity will recover, and by studying survivors such as these, we can learn what nurtures resilient responses.