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Art as Liberation: How a Viennese Psychiatric Institute Became a Sanctuary for Creativity

Art and mental illness have always intersected. Perhaps the best example is Vincent Van Gogh, whose psychologically charged work reflected his inner demons. Most of us are familiar with the story of Van Gogh cutting off part of his ear.

You may not know that he did it in response to feeling abandoned by Gaugin, whom Van Gogh had invited to start an artist colony in France. Initially idyllic, Gaugin and Van Gogh lived and worked side by side in a little yellow house in Arles, France. His friend's erratic behavior soon troubled Gaugin and he announced he was leaving.

The threat of his friend's imminent departure perhaps triggered in Van Gogh a deep agony, and he reacted by severing a part of himself.

Ear in hand, Van Gogh walked to his local brothel and asked a young woman to keep it safe for him. He remembered nothing of the incident, and while his friendship with Gaugin remained somewhat intact, it was never the same.

Van Gogh's mental state was clear in his art. Even he saw it, remarking to a friend in one of his last letters before ending his life by suicide:

Art has long tried to make sense of troubled states (See: The Rorschach Test). And troubled states have long influenced art.

In 1898, on the outskirts of Vienna, Austria, a psychiatric institute called the Maria Gugging Psychiatric Clinic opened its doors.

The institute had a particularly troubling past. Forty-two years after its founding, the Nazis used the site for their involuntary euthanasia program, Aktion T4. This program called for experimenting and exterminating people with mental or physical disabilities. The Nazis abused and murdered hundreds of people with mental health conditions at Gugging.

That the clinic survived and then thrived is a miracle unto itself.

In the 1950s, Dr. Leo Navratil was a psychiatrist at the clinic. To better understand his patients, he inadvertently created a way to humanize mental illness, expand therapeutic forms, and contribute to the Art Brut movement.

Devoted to his work, he read and researched ways to help his unresponsive patients. After reading Karen Machover's book, Personality Projection in the Drawing of the Human Figure, he created a nonverbal measure to assess and diagnose personality and mental states. He asked his patients to draw a person.

What his patients did in response forever changed the landscape of mental health care.

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