Collage Art Book Review: The Psyche’s Gifts: Art, Art Making, and the Journey from Mental Illness to Mental Wellness

In the art book “The Psyche’s Gifts: Art, Art Making, and the Journey from Mental Illness,” artist Corinne Lightweaver features a series of artworks that reflect her personal experience of living with mental illness, including depression and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Working from her unconscious, she uses techniques of paper collage to access, reveal, and artistically document her journey. After creating her artworks, she reviews them, learns from them, and writes about them. Through sharing her work, she hopes to spark personal and public conversations about mental illness, reduce stigma, and encourage those who suffer from it to find treatment.

The role of art making in healing is increasingly capturing the medical profession’s imagination and the general public’s interest. What are the possibilities for using the art making process to heal the body and the mind and to communicate the inner experience?

More medical schools now offer programming in narrative medicine, as well as opportunities to hear directly from, and view the art of, artist patients. The profession of art therapy is also gaining more visibility, while lay people are also offering workshops in using creativity for better mental health.

Psychoanalyst Shari Saperstein, PsyD, introduces the artist in the Foreword and provides a context and framework through which to view and understand Lightweaver’s art.

Having lived with depression and obsessive compulsive disorder for more than a quarter century, Lightweaver has learned coping mechanisms?including art?that keep mental illness at bay for most of the time. The internal experience of mental illness is difficult to describe, but the collage-making process gives Lightweaver uncommon access to her unconscious, allowing her to reveal her journey and shed light on the experience. The 38 color illustrations in this book explore and depict one person’s experience, but the themes are deeply universal and the book’s message of resilience and healing is uplifting for anyone.