266 ■ NOTES
129 The argument about how conversation helps maintain the symbolic
universe is in Berger & Luckmann (1967).
131 How poetry can be taught to ghetto children and to old people in
retirement homes without formal education is beautifully told by Koch
(1970, 1977).
132 Writing and depression. At least since the Romantic era, artists of all
types have been held to be “tortured” or “demonically impelled.” There
is reasonably good evidence that many modern artists and writers in fact
show a variety of depressive and obsessive symptoms (see, e.g., Alvarez
1973, Berman 1988, Csikszentmihalyi 1988, and Matson 1980). Re
cently much has been written also about the relationship of manic
depression and literary creativity (Andreasen 1987, Richards et al.
1988). It is very likely, however, that this relationship between psychic
entropy and artistic creativity is the result of specific cultural expecta
tions, and of the awkward structure of the artistic role, rather than
anything necessarily inherent in art or in creativity. In other words, if
to survive as an artist in a given social environment a person has to put
up with insecurity, neglect, ridicule, and a lack of commonly shared
expressive symbols, he or she is likely to show the psychic effects of these
adverse conditions. Vasari in 1550 was one of the first to express con
cern that the personality of the young Italian artists of the time, already
influenced by Mannerism, a precursor of Baroque and Romantic styles,
displayed a “certain element of savagery and madness” which made
them appear “strange and eccentric” in a way that previous artists were
not (Vasari 1550 [1959], p. 232). In earlier periods, such as the thou
sands of years of Egyptian civilization, or the Middle Ages, artists were
apparently quite pleasant and well adjusted (Hauser 1951). And of
course there are several more recent examples of great artists, like J. S.
Bach, Goethe, Dickens, or Verdi, that disprove the existence of a neces
sary link between creativity and neurosis.
Remembering the personal past. In part under the influence of Erik-
son’s psychobiographical accounts of the lives of Hitler, Gorki, Luther,
and Gandhi (1950, 1958, 1969), a concern for “personal narrative” has
become prominent in life-span developmental psychology (see Cohler
1982; Freeman 1989; Gergen &t Gergen 1983, 1984; McAdams 1985;
Robinson 1988; Sarbin 1986; and Schafer 1980). This perspective claims
that knowing how a person sees his or her own past is one of the best
ways to predict what he or she will do in the future.
132- Every home a museum. Csikszentmihalyi & Rochberg-Halton (1981)
133 studied over 300 members of three-generational families around Chi
cago, who were asked in their homes to show interviewers their favorite
objects, and to explain the reasons for cherishing them.
