Robert Bly theorizes that each of us carries around a metaphorical bag containing all the parts of us that are frowned upon by “mainstream” society. This is a Jungian theory based on Jung’s archetype of the shadow. According to Bly, we spend the first twenty years of our lives stuffing things into this bag, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to retrieve those things and become “whole” again. This process starts almost immediately after birth. Since as children we want badly to be accepted by our parents, we attempt to suppress aspects of our personalities that they do not approve of. As we grow older, it is our peers, not our parents, who cause us to put more and more into the bag. By the time we are twenty, we are burdened by the weight of a huge bag containing things that are part of ourselves, but that we ignore in order to be accepted by those around us.

A major problem with that, according to Bly, is that by the time we realize that maybe those things should be allowed to come out (maybe fifteen years later), we cannot handle them. This is because while they are in the bag, these parts of us regress and become hostile, almost taking on a life of their own. Most people cannot deal with the things they try to let out, so they end up staying in the bag.

Now, how does this relate to the link between madness and artistic genius? Let’s focus first on the word mad. Some people, myself included, believe that many people who are labeled mad by society are not really crazy at all. Instead, they are viewed as mad and dangerous because there is something different and scary about them. They have not put into their bags many of the parts of themselves that society tries to ignore. I don’t even think that we have to think of mad in psychiatric terms. In this case, the word mad simply means that the person has, as a significant part of their personality, one or more part that society thinks should have long ago been placed in their bag. When they let these parts of themselves be seen by the world, the world is horrified that they would dare act that way, and since society as a whole is not capable of confronting these things so directly, their answer is to, in a manner of speaking, stuff the mad people into a bag.

Artistic genius, then, can be related to madness in this way: the people we call mad often suffer scorn and rejection because they have those parts of themselves that are shunned by society. They feel alienated and tormented, even if they are not locked up, and have to find a way to release their frustration. Some find that art can be a way to release emotions, and sometimes the subject matter of the art represents, whether consciously or not, their frustration with particular things that society thinks ought to be put into their bags. Then something interesting happens. Mainstream society sees the art, recognizes on some level that the art addresses the contents of society’s bag, and calls the artist a genius. This is because the artist has found a way to say something in a way they could handle. As Bly said, most people are unable to face their bags directly, as the contents have now been in the bag long enough to be too barbaric and hostile. But the artist manages to say the same thing in a way that is not automatically rejected by all of the “sane” people.

This is the way in which “mad” people with “artistic genius” help the rest of us start to deal with a part of ourselves that has been in the bag for twenty years. Bly refers to this as rebalancing ourselves. He believes that society needs to work toward finding that balance. The bag we carry around with us, similar to Jung’s concept of the shadow, results in us projecting some its contents onto others in our lives. For example, a man may project his suppressed feminine side onto a woman. These projections are unhealthy, especially in today’s age of mass media. In Bly’s words, “projections without personal contact can damage the person receiving them.” The projections we all make are detrimental to society. Part of rebalancing ourselves includes dealing with the contents of the bag and claiming back those projections. Because of this artists serve an important role in helping society maintain its “sanity.” (The irony is beautiful, isn’t it? The mad help the sane stay sane!)

I like the way we can use Bly’s theory to help understand the link between madness and artistic genius. It gives real insight into why the art done by mad people is seen as “genius” by the rest of society. Since it is apparent that it is unhealthy to have a large bag dragging behind us, it follows that the “mad” people are actually healthier and better off than the rest of us. In this way, it can be (and has been) said that maybe the ones we call mad are saner than the rest of us. Emily Dickinson referred to this in the poem we studied in class: “MUCH madness is divinest sense to a discerning eye; much sense the starkest madness.” The people who we had labeled mad are geniuses because they do something for us that we couldn’t do by ourselves. Although not all artists were seen as completely mad, many of them do fit our liberal working definition of mad in that they brought to light things that most people had stuffed in their bags.

One issue that has nearly always been taboo, obviously, is sex. A great many artists throughout history have used art to bring aspects of sex and sexuality to light that had been ignored before. Manet’s Olympia and Luncheon on the Grass were considered very controversial, because unlike many painters before them, they made no attempt to hide the fact that nakedness was about sexuality and not some heavenly Venus-like beauty. One critic called Luncheon “a young man’s practical joke – a shameful, open sore.” And while Manet may not have been labeled as mad, he was definitely viewed as dangerous because of his art. But the works helped society to confront the fact that this is how things really are, and that it is unhealthy to pretend sexuality doesn’t exist.

A similar issue that also has resided in the bag for most of history is violence, specifically sexual violence, against women. Although it is a bit less true today than before, society has always tried to avoid confronting sexual violence. Recently, artists have tried to drag this issue out of the bag, some subtly, some shockingly. A contemporary example is a series of photographs by Annie Leibovitz that show with brutal honesty women who had been beaten. Leibovitz wants to draw our attention to a subject that is uncomfortable to most of us, because if we don’t deal with the problem, it will only get worse.

This next part is not really a philosophical argument, but I think it’s important nonetheless. Another reason I tend to like Bly’s theory has to do with my own personality. I identified closely with Bly’s description of “soft males” who have managed to cultivate their feminine sides. It almost seemed like he was talking about me when he described them. I have never ended a relationship with a woman, and I am very good at “empathy, listening to others’ pain, [and] going with the flow.” But because of this, I often don’t feel comfortable around most men. I would like to be a photographer, and I think I might be good at that because I don’t always feel totally in tune with society. I feel that maybe if I’m really good at it, I could use artistic photography to help men confront their feminine sides. I think one of the major problems in society today is that men try to act tough and not back down in any situation. They do not want to show any vulnerability, out of fear that other men will see them as weak. Men have been conditioned since childhood to believe that sensitivity equates to weakness. This becomes a problem in their relationships with women, because they are unable to be sensitive and compassionate. Slightly off-topic, it really bothers me that the conservative right maintains that gay couples are not fit to be parents, because I credit my mother, who is a lesbian, for allowing me to cultivate my feminine side. I truly believe I will be better served in my relationship with my wife because I had two “moms” in the same household, and was not forced to shove my “inner woman” into the bag.

Now some people may say that society is actually better off because those dangerous parts of ourselves are hidden away in the bag. They say that hiding those things allows our society to function rationally, that the fabric our society is built on would fall apart if we released some of those things from the bag. And in some ways, I suppose that is actually true. Could you imagine what would happen in our current society if everyone just started speaking their mind on every sexual impulse they had? We couldn’t handle it. But I think that’s likely because our collective sexuality has been in that bag so long that it is truly, to use Bly’s words, barbaric and hostile. Things might be completely different if sexuality had never been placed in the bag. But we can’t just release something from the bag all at once. That’s why I believe that art is so important to society. It allows us to quickly peek into the bag and remember what’s there, without letting the whole bag loose to catastrophic consequences.