By Your aesthetic self also builds your personality and your identity. Because every book you read, music you listen to, painting you admire or verse you write participates in your definition and even mediates your psychological well-being.
Can our interest in art promote psychological well-being? The answer is yes. We should all develop an “aesthetic self” capable of appreciating not only the beauty of music, painting, literature or sculpture. Being part of these manifestations, being active creators, would mediate a multitude of cognitive and emotional processes capable of transforming us.
The writer Graham Greene said that writing is a kind of therapy. He also wondered what people who do not write, compose or paint do to deal with melancholy, panic or everyday madness. Few things are truer. What’s more, something we also know from psychology is that aesthetics (related to artistic expression) builds our personality .
We are what we are passionate about, the music we listen to and every book we read. It never hurts to continue exploring types of art, literary genres and letting ourselves be seduced by the beautiful architectural works of our world. The truth is that in each artistic manifestation we can continue discovering ourselves as human beings.
“Art should comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
-Banksy-
What is the “aesthetic self”?
Psychology, like any behavioral science, conceives the formation of identity as the conjunction of multiple variables. The most common are our relationship with the social environment, education, the internal evaluation of our experiences, self-regulation of emotions, the sociocultural context, etc.
Part of the identity we build and the way we relate to others has to do with our personal aesthetic (artistic) preferences . It’s easy to understand. Many of the friendships and relationships we forge are created by sharing common preferences: movies, series, books, music…
The self is a multifaceted psychological construct: it has many faces, one of which is the aesthetic self, the one related to the artistic universe. Our relationship with these cultural “artifacts” of society are mirrors in which we reflect ourselves ; in a way, they are prisms through which we see and understand life.
The aesthetic self is just as important as the moral or ideological self.
In 2020 , Humboldt University of Berlin conducted a revealing study in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania and the Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in Science. It shows that aesthetics are just as relevant as moral issues, political ideologies, religious orientation, and even our food tastes.
In other words, the aesthetic self and our connection to the artistic universe is part of who we are and who we feel. It drives our behavior, our relationships, and defines our self-image. We cannot deny the evidence. Most of us invest time, emotions, and resources to engage in aesthetic experiences .
We go to concerts, art galleries, the cinema, the theatre, lectures by our favourite directors and even organise ourselves into fan groups around artistic figures or movements that we are passionate about. As David Lynch points out , art doesn’t change anything, art changes you.
The aesthetic self also integrates a system of values and guides our goals and life experiences in many ways. Many of us would not be the same person if we had not read certain books, listened to certain songs or watched certain films or series.
Aesthetic emotions: the sensations that admiring the beauty of art conveys to us
As the composer Arnold Schoenberg pointed out, aesthetic emotion transcends the tangible, the contingent and the relative. It goes beyond the stable and the known and enters into the states of the secret, the mysterious and the absolute. In other words, if there is anything that defines the human being, it is the ability to experience an emotional response to the beauty of art in any of its forms.
In this way, the aesthetic self is also expressed and constructed, through the emotional impact that music , poetry, literature, and stories adapted to a film or television series arouse in us. Rafael Bisquerra, a doctor in Educational Sciences and a reference in the field of emotions, highlights that few sensations are more pleasurable and edifying for our psychological well-being.
“Only through art can we emerge from ourselves and know what others see.”
-Marcel Proust-
Art, the driving force for psychological well-being
Developing an aesthetic self boosts psychological well-being. Few vocations are as rewarding as making art a canvas on which to pour out thoughts or a blank page on which to transcribe feelings and needs. Art liberates, accompanies and heals us in many cases.
Let us recall, for example, the theoretical model of well-being proposed by Martin Seligman (PERMA) in which he highlighted art as a field for happiness and mental balance. Music, photography, visual arts or cinema are indisputable resources for the prevention and promotion of health and psychological well-being .
However, as we pointed out at the beginning, it is not enough to be a passive witness to these expressions. The aesthetic self is also an active and creative self that dares to shape its own art in multiple ways . Let us not hesitate, let us look for our channel, our tool and instrument with which to explore and express ourselves.
As Edvard Munch said: “Art is born from joy and pain, especially from pain. It grows from human lives…”