О ПРОФИЛАКТИЧЕСКОМ ЗНАЧЕНИИ ХУДОЖЕСТВЕННОГО ТВОРЧЕСТВА

Abstract

There is a wide-spread opinion that creativity is connected to some deviations from the psychic norm. However, the author of the article considers creativity exactly as a norm, as a condition for individual’s psychological and even mental health and as a manifestation of it. But what is meant is not the statistic norm according to which something is normal if it is encountered often enough under given conditions, but the axiological norm which means “the best of what can be achieved”, the total actualization of really existing human abilities. It is stated in the article that creative gift in a broad sense, considered as “the inner activity of the soul” (V.V. Zenkovsky), is not an elite but a generic feature of a human being. Such interpretation of creativity is based on various sources: from biblical anthropology to humanistic psychology as well as therapeutic and pedagogical practice. Therefore blockage of this inner energy, creative deprivation that is wide-spread, for particular, in traditional school education contradicts the very nature of a human and hence may cause dangerous consequences for psychic and psychosomatic health of children (depression, depersonalization, feeling of meaninglessness of life) as well as push them to so-called “risk zones” (drug addiction, alcoholism, juvenile delinquency, suicidal tendencies). It is pointed out that the optimal way of early children’s familiarization with creative experience as it is, with generation and realization of their own ideas, is creative production in one art form or another. The author presents data which prove that proper participation in the artistic creation provides efficient protection against many psychological deviations and social evils. It is declared that besides the art therapy that is used by those people who already need therapeutic help, it is necessary to develop art prophylaxis as general, commonly available, creationoriented artistic education.