The Oxford Handbook of Mental Health and Contemporary Western Aesthetics

Human flourishing depends upon the mental health of the individuals. Throughout history, various cultural traditions have established and practiced diverse strategies to maintain their community members' mental health, treat their mental illness, and enhance their well-being. They range from spiritual disciplines, religious rituals, and philosophical training, to communal activities, educational instructions, and community support. It is noteworthy that aesthetic objects and activities are frequently integrated into these strategies. They include visual arts, music, dance, story-telling, theatre, and occasions and events made special by certain foods, drinks, decorations, clothes, and fragrance.
This long-held and widely-practiced integration of aesthetics into promotion of mental health testifies to the power of the aesthetic to affect the well-being of humans and their communities. The world's major philosophies and religious traditions have recognized this power of the aesthetic. For example, Plato's proposed censorship of the arts in his utopian Republic indicates his acknowledgement of, and a respect for, the power of the arts to mold the citizens' psyche and character. Confucianism also utilizes arts and rituals to promote moral virtues. Finally, Buddhism teaches the cultivation of mindful practice for human flourishing by developing an alternative relationship with present-moment experience such as suffering and distress. Today, the most dominant methods of treating mental illness in the West are psychotherapy, psychology, and psychiatry, methodologies and practices established and developed in Europe since the nineteenth century. Ever since the birth of art and poetry, its purpose has been to inspire, stir and move people.
This handbook addresses the valuable role aesthetics plays in psychotherapy and psychiatry exploring both theory and practice.

Martin Poltrum is a Philosopher, Psychotherapist and Professor of Psychotherapy at Sigmund Freud University Vienna (SFU). He studied Philosophy and Education in Innsbruck, Vienna and Seville, with a 2003 Doctoral degree in Philosophy, 2014 Habilitation in Psychotherapy Science at SFU. He is Head of the Doctoral Programme in Psychotherapy Science and Deputy Head of the Institute for Behavioural Addictions and Addiction Research at SFU, as well as a teaching therapist for Existential Analysis at Danube University Krems. He is the publisher of Rausch - Vienna Journal for Addiction Treatment. His research and teaching activities are in the field of addiction and at the interface of philosophy, psychotherapy, ethics, aesthetics and medical humanities.
Michael Musalek is a Specialist for Psychiatry and Psychotherapeutic Medicine, Psychotherapist. He is Full Professor and Chair of Dept. General Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Sigmund Freud , Vienna and Director of the Institute for Social Aesthetics and Mental Health at the Sigmund Freud University Vienna and Berlin. He has published more than 350 scientific publications and is editor and scientific board member of various scientific and clinical journals. His main scientific fields of interests are social aesthetics, phenomenology of mental disorders, theoretical and clinical psychopathology, clinical diagnostics and treatment research, psychosomatics and medical humanities.
Kathleen Galvin is a Professor in Nursing having held positions at University of Hull, and University of Bournemouth before her current role at the University of Brighton. She completed her PhD at the University of Manchester focused on development of nursing practice in the promotion of health. She is a member of Academia Europea and holds visiting positions in Scandinavia and Canada. Her academic project concerns a contribution to philosophically informed theoretical insights for care, the focus is to build upon lifeworld oriented work.
Yuriko Saito received a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA. She taught a variety of philosophy courses at the Rhode Island School of Design, USA, from 1981-2018. Her research areas are everyday aesthetics, Japanese aesthetics, and environmental aesthetics. Her work in these areas has appeared in numerous journal articles and book chapters, encyclopedia entries, and three monographs. She has also lectured widely both within the US and outside, which included Austria, China, Finland, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Spain, and The Netherlands. She is the Editor of Contemporary Aesthetics, the first online, open-access, peer-reviewed journal in aesthetics.

- SECTION I: INTRODUCTION - 1: Martin Poltrum, Yuriko Saito, Michael Musalek, Kathleen Galvin, Helena Fox: Why Aesthetics Matters in Mental Health - 2: K.W.M Fulford, Anna Bergqvist: The Participatory Turn in Museum Curation as a Model for Persons-centred Clinical Care - 3: Meryam Schouler-Ocak: Positive Psychiatry and Mental Health - SECTION II: HISTORICAL BACKGROUND AND BASIC IDEAS - 4: Angela Hobbs: Platonic Proportions: Beauty, Harmony and the Good Life - 5: Paul van Tongeren: Nietzsche's Healing Art of Transfiguration - 6: Thomas Leddy: John Dewey's Aesthetic Theory and Mental Health - 7: Robert Wicks: The Place of Health in Foucault's Aesthetic of Existence - 8: Johan Frederik Hartle: Frankfurt School Aesthetics. The Aesthetic Dialectics of Mental Health - 9: Eugene Hughes, Arnold Berleant: Aesthetic Engagement as a Pathway to Mental Health and Wellbeing - SECTION III: ENVIRONMENTAL AESTHETICS AND WELLBEING - 10: Yuriko Saito: Everyday Aesthetics and the Good Life - 11: M?d?lina Diaconu: Sensible Wellbeing. Environmental Aesthetics and Multisensory Perception - 12: Sherri Irvin: On the Wellbeing of Aesthetic Beings - 13: Arto Haapala: On Enjoying What There Is: The Aesthetics of Presence - 14: Isis Brook: Gardening and the Power of Engagement with Nature for Mental Wellbeing - 15: Sanna Lehtinen: Aesthetic Choice in the Age of Ecological Awareness - 16: Salem Al Qudwa: Everyday Aesthetics and Resilience - 17: Ian Kidd: Everyday Aesthetics, Happiness, and Depression - SECTION IV: SOCIAL AESTHETICS AND MENTAL HEALTH - 18: Sébastien Arviset: Imaginary World-Making in Adaptation and Therapy - 19: Guenda Bernegger: Spatial and Narrative Atmospheres: Social Aesthetic Perspectives - 20: Michael Musalek, Oliver Scheibenbogen: Applied Social Aesthetics in Clinical Practice: The Will to Beauty and its Impact on Mental Health - 21: Lazare Benaroyo: 'Inquiry on Hospitality, Compassion and "Antlitz" by Emmanuel Levinas' - 22: Michael Laney, John Z. Sadler: Philosophical Aesthetics in Psychiatric Practice and Education - 23: Werdie van Staden: Unleashing Therapeutic Gain by Deploying Social Aesthetic Values in Co-Producing Healthcare Decisions - 24: Giovanni Stanghellini, George Ikkos: Images of Care: 'To the Things Themselves!' - SECTION V: LITERATURE, STORYTELLING, MOVIES AND MENTAL ILLNESS - 25: Dietrich v. Engelhardt: Mental Illness in Literature between Phenomenology and Symbolism - 26: Dietrich v. Engelhardt: Bibliotherapy or of the Healing Power of Reading in the Context of Cultural History - 27: Katharina Fürholzer, Julia Pröll: An Aesthetics of Relating and its (Therapeutic) Potentials: A Transcultural Perspective on Literature, Storytelling and the Power of the (Spoken) Word - 28: Erzsébet Strausz: 'Everyone has a story': Aesthetic Experiences of Storytelling in The Strangers Project - 29: Sal Anderson, Dolly Sen: 'Film is Psychosis': Filmmakers with Lived Experience - 30: Martin Poltrum: Cinema Therapy - The Film as a Medicine. From the Silent Film Era to the Present Day - 31: Martin Poltrum: Connoisseurs of the Soul, Psycho Villains. Psychotherapists, Psychologists and Psychiatrists in Feature Films and Series - 32: Martin Poltrum: Mental Disorders in Feature Films - Addiction, Suicide, Delusion, Psychosis and Schizophrenia - 33: Alison L. Kahn: Imaging Children's Realities in Films: Visual Anthropological Approaches and Representations of Emotions in Childhood - SECTION VI: PSYCHOPATHOLOGY, ART AND CREATIVITY - 34: Kathleen Galvin: Well-being through the poet's speaking - 35: Shelley Sacks: Social-Aesthetic Strategies for a Change of Heart - 35: Tania L. Abramson, Paul R. Abramson: Bodily Aesthetics: Challenging damaging imaginaries of the body - Kathleen Lennon Art and Trauma: An Aesthetic Journey - 37: Rachel Starr and Jonathan Smith: The Psychology of Art-Viewing: Insights from Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis - 38: Timo Storck, Rainer Holm-Hadulla: Psychoanalysis as an Art of Meeting the Other: Now Moments, Moving along and the possibility of change - 39: Julian C. Hughes: The aesthetics of dementia - 40: Christina Reading, Jess Moriarty: Supporting a motivated creative practice: workshops to aid creative wellbeing - 41: Hilary Moss: Aesthetic experience and aesthetic deprivation in hospitals - SECTION VII: AESTHETIC EXPERIENCE IN THE CLINIC. PERSPECTIVES AND REFLECTIONS FROM PRACTICE - 42: Alan Cribb, Graham Pullin: Aesthetics for everyday quality: enriching healthcare improvement debates - 43: Louise Younie: Developing clinician in-sight into practice through the aesthetic lens - 44: Helena Fox: Aesthetic Experience in the Everyday Clinical Work of Healthcare Practitioners: A Practice-Based Description - 45: Sue Stuart-Smith: Gardens and Human Flourishing - 46: Charlie Blowers: The Moving Pieces Approach: Poetic Space, Embodied Creativity, Polarity, and Performances as Aspects of Aesthetic Experience - 47: Femi Oyebode: Aesthetics and the Clinical Encounter. Perfect moment and Privileged Moments - 48: Andrew West: An Exploration of the Aesthetic Moment in the Clinical Encounter using Free Musical Improvisation as a Model - 49: Jacinta Tan, Carolyn Nahman, Kiran Chitale and Stephen Anderson: Creative arts, aesthetic experience and the therapeutic connection in eating disorders - 50: Ariel Dempsey: Theological Aesthetics and Clinical Care