Personality as Art: Artistic Approaches to Psychology by Peter Chadwick
Not everyone wants to live a rational life, or a life guided by the advice of science. Here Peter Chadwick explores Person as Artist, rather than Person as Scientist, and so establishes an alternative ideology for psychology which looks at Life as Art. Chadwick concentrates on the beauty of personality, rather than its traits and constructs, and the music of the mind, rather than its structure and function. Using artistic methods such as the biographical sketch, photography, prose, poetry, music, autobiography and stream-of-consciousness writing, he explores the momentary, the expressive, the intangible and the aesthetic aspects of personality so readily ignored in scientific analysis. By studying both the individual person in context and in detail, and by calling on the ideas of mind and self-hood of great writers, an appreciation of personality is reached that is different from, and deeper than, the generalizations of mass-population study.