The Practical Mystic

Navigating a mood disorder that's given to bursts of bliss and near suicidal depressions can be a fulltime job. Work has always given me a steady course and has seemed to come from somewhere unusually not touched by the moods. It is the connection with others, focusing upon what they need that's steadied my course. Meeting the needs of others has saved me in many ways.

One of my mentors, Christine Page, helped me understand the high end of my so-called 'illness'. She thought that the mania was the experience of sacred space and that in order to live and work successfully in the world that I would have to become a 'practical mystic'--one who could chop the wood and carry the water despite enlightenment.

Adding the twist of my own brand of exquisite mania it has sometimes become chop the water and carry the wood, but in any version, it has worked since creativity is the master brain of all such work anyway.

Becoming an art therapist was an easy choice for me. I don't really remember how it came to my first attention, but i do recall meeting an art therapy student one night in my local tavern. She was an interesting little creature in a motorcycle jacket and cropped blond hair. She rolled her own cigarettes. She was pleasant enough but not really conected, somehow aloof, not the warmth of a friendly soul i'd been used to, but i liked her, liked her detachment. She had her sights on something and i was interested.

I got into a masters psychology program at Spalding, a local private and Catholic college at that time (now, a university). Spalding was my plan b because getting into the art therapy program was tough. They only took 12 or 13. One of the professors at Spalding balked at my ambition. No! she said do psychology and read a couple of books about art therapy. That's all it will take to learn it.

I dismissed her and went on with my plan A. I had my sights on something far more interesting and powerful than the theory we were studying.

I did a great deal of preparation for my application to the Institute of Expressive Therapies (IET). It was one of 3 schools in the world at that time and 2/3 of its staff were rather famous--Sandra Kagin and Vija Lusebrink. They had published the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ECT) which became the foundational model of art therapy.

I took psychology courses and art courses. I prepared an art portfolio. I wrote about myself, went to therapy...I had my sights on something deep and compelling.