Tag: psychology

Molding oneself psychologically is nothing but focusing on objectives to be reached by effort through conscious stimulation. Molding oneself, even though it may be seen as perfecting, correcting, or transforming oneself, in short, involves a process in which the conscious struggles for affirmation. It defines priorities, proposes action, monitors itself, and, in time, gets what it wants. The problem, however, is that the human mind is more effective the more focused it works. This gives it a hard limitation: for effectiveness, it has to concentrate on specific ends, it has to focus the action. Thus it triumphs, but triumphs in a reduced part of its scope. With time, the effort becomes a habit, conscious action becomes automatic, opening space for new focuses to be defined. But time is limited for it… In short: it can mold itself, but in a molding that defines its prominences, the highlights that are most important to it—and it has to resign itself to its own limitations, knowing that it will necessarily have to deal with an uncomfortable and atrophied part of itself.

It is curious to note how most of the modern “discoveries” have nothing to do with discoveries. In the field of psychology, it is hard to find anything relevant that is not already outlined—and often better outlined—in the works of Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, not to mention the oriental texts. But Dostoevsky’s “polar bear challenge,” or Nietzsche’s observation that “the best ideas come by walking,” rather than being immediately grasped by intuition, had to wait a century for them to be properly validated by idle experimentation. The misery of this time is that it demands that everything bear its distinctive stamp; otherwise it is worthless. So it seems that efforts are directed more at stroking a collective vanity than at widening the extent of what can be called man’s knowledge.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover the conclusions that neuroscience has reached through encephalography. They all corroborate what, from experience, I have defined as the ideal working methodology. And there is much, much to conjecture… Neuroscientists tell us that, in the state of normal activity of the brain, when awake, there is a predominance in the emission of waves called beta, as well as in the execution of activities that require high concentration. On the other hand, in a state of relaxation, reflexive or meditative, there may be a predominance in the brain in the emission of waves of lower frequency, the so-called alpha waves. The most interesting—although it is not a novelty—is that neuroscientists have noticed a relationship between the emission of alpha waves and several brain manifestations, such as creativity. These observations come in support of the following theory: in art, there are two distinct moments of the creative process: ideation and realization. It is presumable that while realizing the work, the artist’s brain predominates in the emission of beta waves, since it is strongly concentrated on the details of what it is creating. It is not, therefore, the moment when the best ideas for the work will shine, if the observations of neuroscience are correct. Therefore, it is necessary for the artist to define a distinct moment to conceive them, or, in other words, to distribute the brain effort in stages in order to exploit it more intelligently. Neuroscientists have not said what I repeat: creativity does not function, in the brain, as the execution of precise tasks; this means that one cannot obtain immediate results and with the same regularity when stimulating it. But one can certainly stimulate it in a methodical way, letting it work in its own time. This is why for the artist whose routine regularly encloses semi-meditative states, creative explosions are very far from manifestations of God.