Blog 10

This week’s reading explores a different kind of altered state from the drug-induced consciousness that we have been discussing recently. Chapter 9 sheds a different light on how we view “sickness” in our culture, from mental illness to physical disease. Hughes explores these different forms of sickness and their affect on creative consciousness.

In our culture, mental issues are seen by most people in a negative way. We want to separate and label these “abnormal” people and keep them in control. A vast number of the US population is diagnosed with some kind of disorder and given medication (which a lot of the time is misdiagnosed) in order to make them fit to work in our society. According to WeBeFit.com, approximately 44% of Americans are on some kind of prescription drug(s), which most of the time have side affects that are worse than the condition itself. Prescription drugs have proven effective in taming the condition, but limit a person’s emotional and cognitive range which inhibits the creative process. Hughes points out the ways in which physical illness and mental suffering nourishes creativity. He references many famous literary scholars, poets, painters, musicians, philosophers as having suffered from many kinds of disorders that enabled them to explore their complex inner world. One thing that famous creative minds seem to have in common is the way in which they interact with the rest of the world. Many of them explore their painful experiences and structure those experiences in ways that communicate through many different forms.