Expressing Emotions with Art

[intjguy]

I remember hearing a famous musician say that making and playing music was her method of therapy.

But I had to wonder, if one were to express a feeling (i.e. rage, sorrow) through whatever form of art - would it feed the emotion and eventually make it bigger or would repressing it make it bigger?

Expressing emotion = increase in volume and intensity:
1. A serial killer murders someone in the lust of murderous intent. Can't stop fo' the rush.
2. An addictive personality disorder (drug [psychological] addicts, sex addicts)

Expressing emotion = decrease in volume and intensity:
1. Revenge (maybe - I don't know, do you?)
2. Lust (for guys)
3. Musicians who change genres all the fuckin' time. Assholes.

Suppressing emotion = increase:
1. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, Seung-Hui Cho
2. Lust

Suppressing emotion = decrease:
1. Greed.

[noid]

Its a way to approach art, especially find into FxxT (Ej or Ij). It correspond to the "nevrotic way" to do art that freud was speaking, a way to express fantasm.

Imo this emotionnal release is really important for some ppl, first it show an ability of symbolisation and sublimation , and accept the problematic emotion as a part of self instead of repressing it for external purpose. The trap is as you say that it can be a trap ie concentrate on 1 only possible emotion (especially Fi dom here). Imo its not, at least for me, that the emotion is bigger, its only the head cant concentrate on other type of emotion.


who is the famous musician ?

edit cuz your edit : your exemple are good, it make sense, and im interested into the repress emotion = increase.
I think this type of relation to emotion is actually the one who lead to some artistical behaviour (or pseudo artistical one), ie a family where some emotion are repressed lead to a lack of world for expressing/releasing/processing these emotion, leading perhaps to some sublimation via art.
This seem strongly correlated with the freud idea of "incomplete art" of nevrotic attitude

[WVBRY]

I think that emotions are best gotten rid of ie, decreased, when you change what it is thats causing the emotion to happen. For example if someone is rageful because they are in a situation they dont like, writing poetry might be somewhat therapuetic and make the emotion go away temporarily, but in the long run it will keep resurfacing. Killing innocent/unrelated people isnt gonna help either since that wont change the situation(though I dont know what effect that has since Ive never killed anyone before), the only way to change that negative emotion is by changing the situation provoking the emotion.

[Reuben]

I would suppose if you are channeling your emotions through art, chances are, they are made bigger while performing that particular art, but upon completion, it is reduced to healthier levels.

[intjguy]

who is the famous musician ?

The musician is Emillie Autumn.

[intjguy]

I would suppose if you are channeling your emotions through art, chances are, they are made bigger while performing that particular art, but upon completion, it is reduced to healthier levels.

Beautiful answer. They are for the time bigger because they finally have a channel to flow through.

But what happens if you don't channel the emotions through art? Do you believe they build up? I revived this thread because I still do not know the answer..

My hypothesis is that expressing the emotion expands the medium for which you can store more of the same emotion in. But expressing the emotion does fuel it out, but with time it can simply regenerate on its own until it is replaced by another.

That is one point of view. Here is another:

Don’t Feed Anger http://buddhism.about.com/od/basicbu...gs/a/anger.htm

It’s hard not to act, to remain still and silent while our emotions are screaming at us. Anger fills us with edgy energy and makes us want to do something. Pop psychology tells us to pound our fists into pillows or to scream at the walls to “work out” our anger. Thich Nhat Hanh disagrees.

“When you express your anger you think that you are getting anger out of your system, but that's not true,” he said. “When you express your anger, either verbally or with physical violence, you are feeding the seed of anger, and it becomes stronger in you.” Only understanding and compassion can neutralize anger.