Josef Ulrich - Unlocking Your Self-Healing Potential: A Journey Back to Health Through Authenticity, Self-determination and Creativity

In my work as an art therapist, I have often met people who have suffered a life-threatening illness that, astonishingly, does not end as predicted. During their illness these people often seem to develop a striking degree of creativity.

Thirty years ago, these meetings led me to wonder whether there might be a connection between a persons creativity and the strength of their immune system, between their inner being and their bodys life forces. Do processes of the psyche have an affinity with those of the immune system? Was it possible, I wondered, that an authentic and self-determined life could act as a model for the immune system, thus preventing illnesses or supporting their cure? Perhaps authenticity and self-determination could unlock powers of self-regeneration we never even dream of, by directing people back to the originating, intrinsic impulses underlying their lives?

My experience now tells me this is so. I believe people develop special capacities as they engage in stages of the creative process.

People in crisis situations report that their mental or spiritual outlook enabled them to survive. Victor Frankl, as we know, found in the concentration camp where he was incarcerated that ultimate freedom resides in our inner stance toward whatever situation we face.

Despite 27 years of imprisonment, Nelson Mandela never succumbed to hatred or the desire for revenge. He used this time to work toward the goal of peaceful co-existence in South Africa. For many years he kept recalling and repeating the poem Invictus by William Ernest Henley,

Another well-known figure is the British physicist and astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, who contracted amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Despite a body that had been more or less unviable for decades, he developed an extraordinary power of mental activity, which sustained him for decades and gave his vivid, humorous spirit a dwelling.

Modern medicine, which has proven of inestimable value in many fields, has nevertheless given rise to the idea of patients as passive victims of their illness. Disease is portrayed as giving rise to symptoms that must be medically suppressed or eradicated. Holding these assumptions, it is easy to lose sight of the patient as an active and vital contributor to their cure.

Some readers, on hearing this talk of creativity, might well think that it is not one of their gifts. Many patients come to my art therapy sessions convinced they cannot paint. But in fact, this bears no relation to lifes reality. As so often, a fixed idea about ourselves intrudes and paralyses possibilities. The potential for creativity in every single person means simply that anyone can shape and configure their world. As Albert Steffen puts it:

To be an artist in this sense is possible for all people in every walk of life as long as they themselves grasp the transformative initiative. This does not have to be by using material substance formed into an artwork, or words, or music, or colour. It can also be a friendship, a work relationship, an illness, a misfortune or a blow of fate. Nothing is beyond reach of the artistic impulse, oneself least of all. Accordingly, being an artist means becoming fully human in the truest sense.

Creative forces do not have to be expressed on paper. What I do with my patients could be called art therapy in the mind. In our minds we paint our thoughts, concerns and anxieties, as well as our intimations of joy, our confidence and trust. By so doing we are co-creators of the reality we experience. Our thoughts have a decisive effect on how our life develops, and often also on the course of an illness.

Health and illness are both always present inside us. Over the last thirty years I have been privileged to meet thousands of patients, and while many of them, in the view of medicine, had the same condition, the same diagnosis, each and every one of them had their own particular path and journey. I met people whom doctors believed should no longer be alive, let alone able to recover, while others suddenly and unexpectedly died. And there were people who died happily and with gratitude in their hearts, whereas for others it seemed very difficult to let go and find peace. I can assure you that each of them was more than their illness: each one was, and is, a human being.