9/08/2012

Phillip Romero And His Approach To Art

By Lessie Christian


Phillip Romero has written about art but he is trained as a medical doctor and practices child and family psychiatry. Such a profession entails intensive training in western scientific method. This proceeds from the premise that logic and inductive reasoning based on empirical observation are the basic way in which doctors arrive at the conclusion that inform their work. .

It appears that the doctor, author and teacher is able to reconcile what must be regarded as conflicting impulses, practices and theories. As a scientist he must be interested in activities that have practical outcomes such as cures. Scientists often see practical outcomes as the motivation for doing things. Artists, however, seem to be motivated by different needs that cannot easily be explained in terms of concrete outcomes.

Romero is one scientist who has squarely faced the indisputable fact that art has been a reality in the survival and evolution life on the planet since the earliest times. The motivation behind the creative impulse seems to account for a reality in the human psyche and yet it cannot be accounted for in the same way that scientific endeavor is. Scientists work towards measurable and concrete outcomes but artists do not seem to have the same motivation. A drawing on a cave wall may have beauty as an outcome but this is ethereal and immeasurable.

If 'consilience' is an abstract noun meaning 'a unity of knowledge', then the adjective 'consilient' probably describes an approach that uses different branches of evidence to arrive at the same conclusion. For example the new science of kinaesthetics might use scientific methods to arrive at the same principles that the art of ballet has been practicing since well before someone thought of extending 'physical training' into 'kinaesthetics'.

Rat races exist in the academic world where prestige and reputation are built up in various narrow disciplines. The success of scientists can depend on how many papers are published in reputable journals. Things that disrupt the race to be uppermost in particular field can be viciously attacked. Students are taught to use specific methods and specific registers of words. If they depart from the language of the discipline they can face relegation.

One of the greatest benefits of the Internet is that it has diminished to the ability of academics to hide in ivory towers, shooting arrows at intruders who have not been through the accepted initiation rites. Freedom of information and the facilities to browse freely through wide fields of knowledge has pushed consilient approaches forward.

When John Bowlby first introduced his theory of attachment he was attacked by his peers who perceived that he was not following the prescribed methods of his field. However, his theories gained credence. Now it is seen how infants and even adults are shaped intellectually by close associations. Biochemical analysis of brain tissue might come to the same conclusion as other disciplines, such as art and religion.

Phillip Romero employs a consilient approach in his quest to explain how art is an imperative in human survival. Psychiatric methods, artistic techniques and even religious practice are integrated in the development of closely reasoned conclusions about how art is an imperative in human survival.




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