Ingemar Lindh:
Therapy and Creativity

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INGEMAR LINDH, festival conference, Porsgrunn, Norway, June 5th 1997, upon a comment on his preceding speech from a member of the audience:- 'The extensive need for therapy in society is a symptom of lack of opportunities to be creative':

"Why do we need therapy?

I think it's quite simple. It's that we have given a name to a kind of activity that in fact should be normal. There is a very common confusion in our use of language also. As I said in the course here today, when we start to transform what is a phenomenon, a thing, into a concept, we get lost. And this we do very often, and we loose,... and we can't understand anything, it's impossible.

What is there? You say communication. Everybody in theatre speak about communication. We should work on communication. Yeah. Very good.

But what we don't notice is that we already put in 'communication' a moral value. Which we means, we say we should work on good communication. Because communication is always there. Even if I go out now, and lock myself into the toilet, and you sit here, we will have a very strong relationship. You will wait for me, and I will never come out. It will be very precise communication. But we do it to a concept, so we say -- we can also value it -- it's a good communication."

"WITH therapy it's the same thing, and we err when we start to borrow terminology from science. Medical science, specifically, have this problem that when they come to know a phenomena in a human being, it's already pathological. As with a car. You never take the car to the mechanic before it breaks down. And when it doesn't work, we start to notice that there is something wrong. Before everything is fine. Therapy is one of those things. You start to go in therapy, or do therapy, when there is something wrong.

If you do it immediately, that life is an exercise, life and an exercise is therapy in the sense that I am trying to use that specific activity, training, whatever, exercises, in order to grow. When the activities we are doing every day loose the function of not only producing a product, of being both the product and the process, they loose the therapeutic function. And when you have too many of those activities that turn out to be, on the spiritual level, nonsense, you need to replace them with nonsense activity and consider them as valuable.

We know that we can do anything as therapy or spiritual exercises. You can sit in a lotus, or you can climb the mountain, or you can do art, or tai chi, or whatever. Or knitting. As long as your way of seeing it is integrating all the parts. We speak very nostalgically about the old society, but perhaps there is something true in it. Because the necessity on the first level, that the bloody potato should come up, and not down, and they already there give me a certain joy.

I can imagine that there are people cultivating potatoes, and never eat potatoes. Because the cultivation is already enough. And then you eat them, but it's a part of your activity. Because when you go there you have to meditate otherwise you become crazy. And then you use the time, and the fatigue, as an instrument. Because how do I come to meditation? It's to renounce. Not to give up, but to give in. Which means to abandon myself. This is necessary, so I don't ask any questions.

That is the same with the indispensable. I do it, I abandon myself to it, and when it's done, I can reflect. But not before."

"NORMALLY, what might be wrong with modern therapy, is that you try to reflect before. And you have no basis for your reflection, because you haven't done anything. And it becomes even more a kind of frustration.

Our brain is an expert on building up frustrations. It's probably the best instrument. Because the brain is not doing the thing. It's speculating on the thing. When I say creativity, it is therapy, but life therapy. And I think there can be a big danger in inventing a substitute. Because we will always feel that there is a lack on the other side.

I do this only for therapy, and it has no other meaning, and I will loose all the equivalence that we need. That eating bread is a spiritual activity. But also because I need bread. And because it's good. If it's nice, the sandwich is already feeding me. If it smells good, it's already feeding me. Perhaps I'm not hungry, but still bread smells good."

"SO do my own acts influence me, or do I only want to influence the world? Do I want to be a manipulator of the world? Or do I do this because it feeds me?"

Replies to questions and comments from the audience after the main speech:

• The extensive need for therapy in society, as a symptom of lack of opportunities to be creative.
  
  
• You say you want a society were people are creative. How about those that does not dare to be creative?
  
  
• In a discussion you have said an actor cannot be another person. But can you use a play to gain understanding into another person?
  
  
• How do you work at the Institute for Scenic Art (Institutet för Scenkonst), and what do you aim at with your work?