John Dewey’s Aesthetic Theory and Mental Health

Abstract

Abstract Although Dewey and his interpreters hardly mention ‘mental health’, neurosis, psychosis, or manic or depressive behaviour in relation to aesthetics, important connections can be made from various angles associated with various concepts, for example: democracy, education, art education, happiness, utopia, and the art of living. Positive aesthetic experience can be seen as providing an important basis for mental health. Particularly important is the juncture of Dewey and Freud As early as 1960, Morton Levitt found significant similarities between Feud and Dewey, often in relation to aesthetics. The literature on art therapy is another location of cross-fertilization between the theory and mental health and aesthetics. Dewey is most famously associated with theories of education, and particularly with art education. His concept of “integral experience” can provide the basis for a theory of human flourishing and hence of mental health. He holds that wrong education leads to aesthetically bad consequences, whereas right education is conducive to mental health and development. Such figures in contemporary aesthetics as Coddington, Garrison, Johnson, Shusterman, Saito, and Stroud provide valuable comparisons between the pragmatist and psychoanalytic traditions. The contemporary movement of positive psychology in Csikszentmihalyi, and earlier in Maslow, also has an affinity to Dewey’s aesthetics.