The Artistic Talent

The
Artistic
Talent
Massimo Schinco, Italy Co-director at
Milan Center of Family Therapy’s
School and Clinical Center

introducing myself
www.massimoschinco.it
I’m a psychologist and a psychotherapist, working with individuals and families
I’m also a supervisor in social services for children
I’m Co – director of the School of Systemic Psychotherapy and Clinical Center at the
Milan Center of Family Therapy
I also teach at the Conservatory of Music, Cuneo and lead learning groups at the
University of Pavia
I’m a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams. I’m currently
serving as a Member of the Board of Directors
I’m an amateur musician and I play violin in the Orchestra Sinfonica Amatoriale
Italiana. I’m a Member of the Board of Directors of the Orchestra
as an author, I focus on creative change. My last book is “The Composer’s Dream”,
published by Pari Publishing

lecturing on the subject of the artistic talent is
one of the most difficult task I’ve been assigned
for a conference up to now
the subject we are trying to focus on is highly
elusive

listen, for example, to what Federico Fellini
once said about “understanding” a film or its
realization

I don’t like the idea of
“understanding” a film. I
don’t believe that rational
understanding is an
essential element in the
reception of a work of art
don’t tell me
what I’m doing!
I don’t want to know

artists seem to be disturbed from an excess of
conscious knowledge on what they do and
why they do it
in the meantime they need to be at the top
of awareness and mastery for what concerns
the technical aspects of their arts

sometimes they are
proud and settled
about their mastery,
like Giuseppe Verdi
and sometimes, on the
contrary, they never
are, like Edward Grieg

beyond the urge coming from scientific
curiosity, it can be useful for educational
purposes to investigate the artistic talent
and this mainly to avoid educational mistakes
that could create harsh suffering

“the power of vocation”
(the young man, whose father - an
organ player - directed toward a
career as a musician, gets up
stealthily in the middle of the night
to devote himself to his beloved
studies of bookkeping)
(cartoon by Giuseppe Novello)

now I’ll try to outline a few features of the
artistic talent that I consider as fundamental
in order to do so I’ll draw in many ways from
different sources: scholars, authors, musicians,
painters, writers … it’s impossible to mention
them all …

first, my valued patients
whose not few were and are artists
a number of
colleagues
and friends that
I hold in high esteem
my friends musicians
to whom I don’t know how to begin to say
“thank you” for what they taught and teach me

finally a patched community that I have in my mind today

#1 FOCUS

“what on earth will people say?”
(the poet just found that at pg. 27
in his new book of verse was printed
“YOU” instead of “THOU”)
(cartoon by Giuseppe Novello)

both outward and inward artists direct their focus in
a quite different way than usually “average
persons” do
on the one hand their focus seems to be directed in
a child-like way (“childhood realism” according
with JeanPiaget)

on the other hand their focus seems to be rooted
“somewhere else” in respect to the world of
ordinary perception
in other words artists’ perception appears to be
directed as if the artists’ mind were in touch with
other, not ordinary levels of reality

this condition can be described in several different ways
according with different Authors
“the thought underlying music”
(Barenboim)
“the not-reified reality beyond
the thought and behind beauty itself“
(Celibidache after Schiller)
“unfolding of implicate
and generative orders” (Bohm)
“processes of actualization
in the potential stream
of consciousness” (Manousakis)

this condition puts the artist in a condition very
akin to a “yes/no” attitude about action
when the artist’s intuition is captured by a stimulus,
she/he tends to go directly to action (Bergson)
re-elaboration and reflection, when they are
done, are done afterwards and usually
experienced as wearisome and painful
relationships are not easy for artists (and for those
who live close to them …)

#2 THIN BOUNDARIES

the field of consciousness and the
quality of its functioning can be
described in terms of boundaries
creative persons show themselves as
featuring “thin boundaries” among the
different areas of their sensitivity,
imageries, logical thinking
they show an enhanced continuity
between wake and dream states

metaphorically speaking it is as if they were more
“porous” both for what concerns the inner and
the outer world
this condition makes them sensitive, socially
more vulnerable and often in the need of
defending themselves
e.g. they can develop narcissistic attitude to
defend themselves or, conversely, join stiff
organizations and/or ideological systems

while an artist grows mature, she/he more and
more needs intermissions of silence and
apparent unproductiveness
these processes take place mainly under the
threshold of conscious awareness
they might be peaceful or painful and
wearisome and last for years

they might take with themselves the
need of “finding shelter “ in some
form of temporary pathology
the strife itself can lead to pathology
when the latter is treated without
taking in account the frame that
gives meaning to it, this can lead it to
chronicity or to other iatrogenic
disasters

#3 VICINITY TO CHAOS

creativity implies vicinity to chaos
in personal identity
in mental health
in cognitive pathways
in the process of creation itself

chaos is not necessarily a nasty word
of course chaos can derive from the
drive to dismantle pre-existing structures
but chaos also means a complexity
whose degree is near to infinity
artists might go back-and-forth between
these two form of vicinity to chaos

#4 ABDUCTION

artists feel their commitment as a form of
doom
they feel that they have a duty to devote
themselves to their arts
they share this feeling with scientists and
mystics
they feel as they were abducted
and actually they are

#5 MASTERY

in order to survive vicinity to chaos and to perform
the duties of their artistic vocation artists must
develop mastery at the highest level they can
reach
like Giuseppe Verdi used to say:
“out of hard work and indefatigable study
I learned to force notes in accord with my will”

once arrived to this level of mastery, an artist feels
free and allows her/himself to
“forget technique”
(nonetheless never gives up to study …)

#6 TAKING TO THE LIMIT/MOOD OSCILLATIONS

“a part of my personality is obsessed with pushing
things to the limit. It can be of great use when my
obsession is funneled into constructive thoughts
or creativity, but it can be destructive as well,
mentally, physically or spiritually. I guess this is
what happens to an artist who,
when he feels his mood swaying – something we all suffer from, when
we are creative – instead of facing reality being aware that this is an
opportunity of creation, turns himself to something that will switch that
mood off and stop that irritation. And this can be drinking, heroin, or
anything else.
One doesn’t want to face that creative urge, because he knows the
self-exploration that shall be undertaken, the suffering that shall be
carried on. This happens mainly, or in a quite painful way, to artists.
Until they do not understand what it is that does this to them, they will
keep doing something to kill this.”
(from Robert Palmer’s interview to Eric Clapton on Rolling Stone Magazine, 1985)

this condition might facilitate the onset of
depression, bipolar disorder or addictions
but should NOT misunderstood as a pathological
condition in itself

artists, whether they like it or not, use to hang out at
the darkness underneath and before the stage

#7 PARTICIPATION AND STRIFE FOR ONENESS

though artists might feel the need of isolation
or, because of their peculiar sensitivity, may find
painful obstacles to an ordinary social adaptation,
feeling lonely, abandoned, depressed, hostile
though their artistic language might be weird,
unusual, difficult to understand
artists are NOT isolated creatures

the first task for an artist, the first harsh obstacle to
overcome is to find a language and companions
“When someone else’s truth is the same
as your truth, and he seems to be saying
it just for you, that’s great. I read my
books at night, like that, under the quilt
with overheating reading lamp. Reading
all that good lines while suffocating.
It was magic.”
from Charles Bukowski’s “Ham on Rye”

artists are expressions of the reality itself, at a level
where everything and everyone are less separate
than they ordinarily appear
they are genuine
manifestations of what
Montague Ullman used to
call “the stuff of reality”
they explicate in a shared
language implicate
generative orders of the
reality itself

artists are out of control
they often are trickster and
matchless generators of resilience
artists safeguard, nourish and
repair what the French
philosopher Gabriel Marcel
called “the infrahuman fabric”
for better or for worse they speak on behalf of
the living community beyond any kind of
boundaries due to politics, religions, ideologies,
gender and racial discrimination

#8 PASSION FOR REALITY AND GRIEF

artists share with mystics and
scientists a compelling attraction
for reality
and share with them also the deep
feeling that reality lies beyond
appearency
the artists’ way to reality is peculiar
they invent it, using refined forms of
delusion to transcend the delusion
itself

in this their path is different both from scientists’ and
mystics’
scientists look after theories and demonstrations
mystics try to purify, even to anullate their mind in
their seek for true
artists are spellbound by their own cipher of active
imagination
living thus all their life in paradoxical condition

meanwhile not necessarily scientists feel
compassion for human grief and pain
though by different means mystics and artists do so
artists are always in touch with grief and pain
this is because artists are in touch with life in all its
manifestations

imagine the sea
no sea would be possible without the
bottom
imagine that the sea is life
and the bottom is grief
where life is, there will also be grief
no matters how many miles below
grief is there anyway

now and then waters retire or get dry
so the bottom come to the surface
maybe a telluric movement upsets the bottom
and grief resurfaces violently
it might be your grief or someone else’s
grief is always there

humankind needs help to give a
beautiful voice
both to life and to grief
it is a basic and inescapable human
need
for this, artists often pay a high price
this is what they are committed to do

I want to thank these wonderful persons for inviting
me today out of a shared passion for life and for
the strife of humankind

and thanks to you all for your attention
dedicated to Sergiu Celibidache (1912 – 1996)

The Artistic Talent

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