The uses of delight


	Alan Bodnar, Ph.D. is the Co-Director of Psychology Training at Westborough State Hospital, Mass. and a consultant in the field of leadership development.

By Alan Bodnar, Ph.D.

It might have been any family outing, a three-year old girl and her mother picking up the child's aunt at her house and taking her to a gathering of the extended clan. They might have been going to celebrate someone's birthday or Memorial Day or the Fourth of July. The scene of two adult sisters smiling at a little girl in the arms of one of them beside a white, clapboard house, on a bright spring day might have come from a Norman Rockwell painting. To the naīve observer, this tableau might have been all of this, but at the hospital, we knew the rest of a story that was so much richer, sadder and more complicated. The aunt was recovering from a relapse of schizophrenia and her sister, child in tow, was bringing her to the hospice where their father lay dying.

Although I knew the gravity of their mission, I could only smile at the family as I passed them on steps of the residence, colluding with the happy image they portrayed. The little girl in her mother's arms was pointing at a building across the street and excitedly explaining or inquiring something of her smiling companions. The immediacy of delight trumps the reality of grief every time.

This is as it should be; it gets us through the hard times. A few days later, in the living room of another hospital residence, a woman was trying to ignore voices that had plagued her since her college days. She shook her head and blocked her ears with her hands to no avail. Her medication, which had given her significant though not complete relief, had recently been decreased because years of toxic side-effects were beginning to take an irreversible toll on her health. "These voices," she said, "have ruined my life and brought me nothing but pain." "And what brings you pleasure?" returned a psychology intern. Without hesitation, the woman smiled and answered, "My flowers." She had planted bulbs in the front of the house last fall, fretting over mistakes she might have made. Were they deep enough? Spaced far enough part? Did the soil provide the proper nutrients or should she have added supplements? The answers to her questions came in the first weeks of May when a warm spell coaxed a row of hyacinths out of the ground. We all took delight in the colorful addition to the front yard of the residence but no one more than the proud gardener.

If the immediacy of delight trumps the reality of grief, then why should we be content to encounter joy by chance? Whether the experience of delight is truly healing or merely distracting is of little consequence compared to the alternative of living with the misery and confusion of psychosis.

Treatment aimed at improving the quality of life puts the emphasis on promoting health and wellness instead of just coping with the symptoms of mental illness. In the field of mental health, these ideas have been championed by rehabilitation specialists, notably occupational and expressive arts therapists as well as a growing number of psychologists.

It is no surprise that art, music, poetry, and fiction thrive in mental hospitals. The arts are accessible to all because the need to express oneself is irrepressible and the means of doing so can be adapted for use by people of all levels of ability. For many people, participation in the creative process brings about feelings of accomplishment, satisfaction and ultimately integration of nameless and dimly perceived aspects of experience into an enlarged concept of a more competent self.

A growing body of research in cognitive psychology is elevating the importance of our emotions, not as forces interfering with our ability to make logical decisions, but as the essential fuel for the engine of rational thought. Our hunches and intuitions are reclaiming their rightful place as the unconscious product of complex analyses too large and quickly done to be accessible to awareness. Anything that puts us in touch with this storehouse of information can only expand our options for living full and satisfying lives.

Our patients teach us that these delights are to be found not only in creative endeavors narrowly construed as the province of the arts, but in any human activity or experience that arouses our interest or engages our quest for meaning. The curiosity of a child, spring flowers planted with hope in the fall and honest work of any kind can provide a welcome distraction from the challenges of coping with mental illness.

Remaining open to opportunities to experience joy is not an overly optimistic attempt to replace pain with pleasure. Pain is part of the human condition and the mindless pursuit of pleasure is the death of delight. Pain will always be with us, but it doesn't always have to take center stage. While there is nothing we can do to produce joy on demand, we can put ourselves in situations where it is more likely to take us by surprise. Whether living well means managing symptoms of major mental illness or getting the most out of every day, we can only go so far by starving our nightmares without also feeding our dreams.

The uses of delight (June 2007 Issue)

By Alan Bodnar, Ph.D.

The uses of delight
(June 2007 Issue)