Balancing Between Sensitization and Repression: The Role of Opium in the Life and Art of Edgar Allan Poe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Abstract

The creative process contains both conscious and unconscious work. Therefore, artists have to face their unconscious processes and work with emotional material that is difficult to keep under control in the course of artistic creation. Bringing these contents of consciousness to the surface needs special sensitivity and special control functions while working with them. Considering these mechanisms, psychoactive substance can serve a double function in the case of artists. On the one hand, chemical substances may enhance the artists’ sensitivity. On the other hand, they can help moderate the hypersensitivity and repress extreme emotions and burdensome contents of consciousness. The authors posit how the use of opiates could have influenced the life and creative work of Edgar Allan Poe and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

RESUME

Balancement entre la sensation et sa répression: Le rôle de l'opium dans la vie et les oeuvres d'Edgar Allan Poe et Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Le processus de création contient à la fois des activités consciente et inconsciente. Par conséquent, les artistes ont à faire face aux matériaux bruts de l’ inconscient et à travailler avec des émotions qui leur sont difficiles d’être gardées sous contrôle durant le processus de la création artistique. Il faut avoir une sensibilité spécifique pour conscientiser ces matériaux créatifs et en contrôler l'expression. Considérant ces mécanismes, l'activité psychique nécessite une double fonction dans le cas des artistes. D'une part, les substances chimiques peuvent exacerber la sensibilité artistique. D'autre part, elles contribuent à modérer l'hypersensibilité et à réduire les émotions extrêmes ainsi que les contenus pesants de la conscience. Les auteurs ont étudié comment l'utilisation des opiacés peut influencer la vie et le travail créatif d'Edgar Allan Poe et Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

RESUMEN

Balancear entre sensibilisacion y repression: El papel del opium en la vida y arte de Edgar Allan Poe y Samuel Taylor Coleridge

El proceso creativo contiene trabajo conciente e inconciente. Por esta razon, los artistas tienen que afrontar sus procesos y su trabajo inconcientes con un material emocional que es dificil de controlar durante la creacion artistica. Para llevar al superficie estos contenidos concientes se necesita una sensibilidad especial, mientras que para trabajar con ellos se necesita funciones especiales de control. Considerando estos mecanismos, las sustancias psicoactivas tienen funcion doble en el caso de los artistas. Da un lado las sustancias quimicas pueden estimular la sensibilidad del artista, dal otro lado pueden moderar la hipersensibilidad y reprimir emociones extremas y contenidos concientes pesados. Los autores nos presentan como el uso del opiates habia podido influir en la vida y arte de Edgar Allan Poe y Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

Keywords :

• opium
• creative process
• art
• literature
• Poe
• Coleridge
• dependence
• unconscious

THE AUTHORS

Fruzsina Iszáj is a Ph.D. student at the Personality and Health Psychology Doctoral Program, Eötvös Lóránd University. She is doing her doctoral dissertation on the relationship between the artistic creative process and psychoactive substance use. In addition to this, her main fields of interests are the various altered states of consciousness and psychoses.

Zsolt Demetrovics is a Clinical Psychologist and Cultural Anthropologist and has a Ph.D. in health psychology. He is the Head of the Institutional Group on Addiction Research at the Institute of Psychology, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary. His primary research is focused on the psychological characteristics and background of legal and illegal substance use and behavioral addictions.

Notes

The reader is reminded that it is necessary to distinguish between a psychoactive substance's complex pharmacological actions, which are an outcome of a range of multidimensional conditions and processes, and a user's “drug experience,” which is the outcome of the interactions between the active “drug's” actions, the user, and the setting from a micro to macro level (see Zinberg, 1984).

The reader is referred to Hill's criteria for causation, which were developed in order to help assist researchers and clinicians determine if risk factors were causes of a particular disease or outcomes or merely associated (Hill, 1965).