The Challenge of Art to Psychology by Seymour B. Sarason (review)

CURRENT LITERATURE Book Review Panel: RudolfAmheim, Eva Belik,John Bowlt,john W Cooper, Igor V. Dolenko, Elmer Duncan, Robert S. Lansdon, Alan Lee,Joy Tumer Luke, David Pariser, Clifford Pickover,J William Shank, David Topper, Stephen Wilson. THE CHALLENGE OF ART TO PSYCHOLOGY by Seymour B. Sarason. Yale Univ. Press, New Haven, CT, U.S.A., 1990. 188 pp. Trade, $25.00. ISBN: 0-300-04754-1. Reviewed Uy RudolfAmheim, 1050 Wall St., Apt. 6D, Ann Arbor, MI 48105, U.S.A. In at least two most welcome ways this book goes beyond what it announces in its title. It reaches beyond psychology and beyond art. Seymour Sarason, a clinical psychologist at Yale, has come to see that a neglect of art, of which his fellow professionals can be accused, is due to an even more threatening deficiency of our modern civilization quite in general; and he also realizes that art as commonly defined is only the peak of a much broader human capacity. Art, not limited to what is shown in museums and taught in art schools, is to be understood as the mind's urge to understand, to discover, to invent, to make real, to give meaningful shape-an urge active in all human beings from infancy to old age. It is a blessing granted to all of us, but also widely neglected. In the arts, this neglect shows in a lack of their appreciation in the schools. Even more scandalously , it has led to the suppression of the 'creative' responses in education quite in general. The message is not new to the readers of this review but very much in need of effective proclamation throughout our society, and Sarason is eminently suited to this role. Not only has long professional experience acquainted him as an educator and therapist with the most blatant evidence of the neglect his book denounces , he himself has suffered from this deprivation in his upbringing and professional training. Throughout his book, he confesses to this lack with an engaging modesty, especially as to his ignorance of the arts. He thereby makes himself a convincing advocate of his cause. Not surprisingly, Sarason was struck by a revelation when a fortunate coincidence led him to an exceptionally creative art educator, whom he calls "the most extraordinary person I have ever known". Himself a specialist of mental retardation, Sarason happened to spend some time working at the Southbury Training School in Connecticut. Henry Schaefer-Simmern, an art educator from Germany, had come to this country with the conviction that the need and ability to be active in the visual media is a universal human attribute , and he was remarkably successful in obtaining impressive results with children, adults of all ages, and the socially and mentally deprived . A deep respect for the productive mind of every human being let him show in his work with the retarded at Southbury that images of genuine imagination and formal integrity could be obtained by individuals of whom society expected the least. The results, works of moving simplicity but also great beauty, are an important part ofSchaefer-Simmern's book The Unfolding ofArtistic Activity [1]. Since this book deserves a much broader audience than it has had, Sarasori's ample quotations from it should open the eyes of many whose attention to its message is badly needed. The style of the works produced by Schaefer-Simmern's students shares the finest qualities of folk art and misnamed 'primitive' art. But it also makes it easier to focus the discussion on matters of formal order, to which Schaefer-Simmern tended to limit his interpretations. Like many artists, he preferred to talk only about what can be concretely perceived and to leave matters of meaning and expression to what is surely essential but more readily sensed than known. In educational practice, this approach works to the extent that students whose minds are set free will endow their organized shapes spontaneously with the resonance of what their experience of life has taught them. But it will leave any account of art's vital function greatly deficient. Schaefer-Simmern's extreme formalism in talking about art conveyed a heightened sensitivity for visual relations-a lesson...