The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression

February 24, 2008 | By Doug In van Gogh |

The Van Gogh Blues: The Creative Person’s Path Through Depression

Creative people will experience depression—that’s a given. It’s a given because they are regularly confronted by doubts about the meaningfulness of their efforts. Theirs is a kind of depression that does not respond to pharmaceutical treatment. What’s required is healing in the realm of meaning.

In this groundbreaking book, Eric Maisel teaches creative people how to handle these recurrent crises of meaning and how to successfully manage the anxieties of the creative process. Using examples both from the lives of famous creators such as van Gogh and from his own creativity coaching practice, Maisel explains that despite their inevitable difficulties, creative people possess the ability to forge relationships, repair themselves, and find meaning in their work and their lives. Maisel presents a step-by-step plan to help creative people handle their special brand of depression and rediscover the reasons they are driven to create in the first place.

Customer Review: Simple, profound and totally on the ball
The Van Gogh Blues by Eric Maisel is profoundly insightful and written in a style that offers respectful gentle support along with practical, hands-on instructions for handling the blues along with a good mix of supporting data for those who want to learn more. It’s a gentle, wise resource that should be at the top of the list of resources to share with anyone who gets depressed, at any level, whether they call themselves creative or not. Any thinking person can get depressed and the help in this book can be used by everyone.