The common wisdom of therapy has it that obsessions are always bad things.  As a feature of its namesake disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or as a feature of some other disorder, an obsession is a sign of trouble and a problem to be eliminated. 

But the main reason therapists find themselves obliged to consider obsessions invariably negative has to do with language: an obsession is invariably negative because clinicians have defined it as negative.

Clinicians define “obsession” in the following way: an obsession is an intrusive thought, it is recurrent, it is unwanted, and it is inappropriate.

Defined this way, it is obviously always unwelcome. But suppose a person is caught up thinking day and night about her current painting or about the direction she wants to take her art? 

Thoughts about painting “intrude” as she balances her checkbook or prepares her shopping list.  She can hardly wait to get to her studio and her rhythms are more like Picasso’s on painting jags than like the rhythms of a “normal” person. 

This artist is obsessed in an everyday sense of the word--and more than happy to be so!

But a clinician has no word to employ to describe her state.  He may call it anything from a passion to a preoccupation to a sublimation, even though it is exactly an obsession. 

He can’t call this welcome (albeit edgy) state an obsession, because he has caused “obsession” to be stand for something invariably negative.

Clinicians have talked themselves out of the chance to discuss the real and important differences between positive obsessions and negative obsessions by defining away the possibility that obsessions might ever be desirable. 

In 1877 the German psychiatrist Karl Westphal defined “obsession” as follows: “Obsessions are thoughts which come to the foreground of consciousness in spite of and contrary to the will of the patient, and which he is unable to suppress although he recognizes them as abnormal and not characteristic of himself.” 

If only he had said “negative obsessions” and not “obsessions,” the door might have remained open for a more rounded, sensible examination of what it means to be obsessed.

Negative obsessions (like fearing that your door isn’t locked and checking it a hundred times a day, or fearing that your hands aren’t clean and washing them over and over again) are a horror. 

No one would want them or no one needs them.  Positive obsessions, by contrast, are the fruit of a creator’s efforts to make meaning.  Without positive obsessions, life is dull, dreary, and meaningless. 

Because we rarely consider the distinction between positive obsessions and negative ones, we’ve thrown the baby out with the bath water and missed the chance to think about the value of positive obsessions and--as they are valuable--what would help a creator nurture them.

What exactly do I mean by a positive obsession? 

A fair working definition is as follows: positive obsessions are insistent, recurrent thoughts or sets of thoughts, pressurized in feel, that are extremely difficult to ignore, that compel one to act, and that connect to one’s goals and values as an active meaning-maker and authentic human being. 

For Van Gogh, for a period of time, sunflowers obsessed him.  For Dostoevsky, for decades, the question of whether an innocent--a “saintly man”--could survive in the real world haunted and obsessed him.  

Georgia O’Keeffe obsessed about how to represent the desert, thrilling herself when her imagery of bleached bones satisfied her for a time. 

It is no accident or coincidence that effective artists harbor preoccupations that rise to the level of positive obsession.

I train creativity coaches.  During each training I provide trainees with clients whom they see at no charge. These clients are men and women in the arts who have written to me and want help breaking through blocks and manifesting their creative potential. 

In the past few years I’ve heard from hundreds of people who want to work with a coach-in-training.  In order to become a client, they are obliged to tell me a little bit about themselves.

More often than not a significant part of their problem is that they are not obsessed with their current creative project.  They could take it or leave it -- so they leave it.

I’m convinced that their lack of motivation is in large measure the result of this absence of positive obsessions.

Most creators -- and all would-be creators -- simply aren’t obsessed enough. 

For an artist, the absence of positive obsessions leads to long periods of blockage, repetitive work that bores the artist himself, and existential ailments of all sorts.

What is a creator to do?  The long answer requires more space than I have here, but the short answer is that he must take himself more seriously in the realm of meaning. 

He must reconvince himself--or convince himself for the first time--that his creative efforts matter, not cosmically and not as mere ego massage but as a primary way that he will make personal meaning during his time on earth. 

If he will not “force life to mean,” as the German novelist Herman Hesse expressed it, positive obsessions will stay assiduously away.

For a contemporary intelligent, sensitive person, it may well make more sense to opt for a life of positive obsessions that flow from personal choices about the meanings of life than to attempt to live a more modest and less satisfying normal-looking life that produces dissatisfaction and boredom. 

After all, no one can say how normal ought to be defined.  In what sense is it normal to work at a job that constricts you and bores you rather than risking everything on a life that challenges you, even as it frustrates you? 

Much of what we call normal behavior is simply based on fear.  Indeed, the average person might even prefer a negative obsession, despite its horrors, to a positive obsession rooted in excitement, passion, and active meaning-making, so wild and unafraid would he feel if he were obsessed that way.

Even though I am stating my premise clearly, that negative obsessions are a true negative for everyone and that positive obsessions are a blessing, at least for creators, I know that some readers will write to me and chastise me for advocating on behalf of obsessions, so horrible have obsessions made their life. 

What they will mean, however, is that negative obsessions have harmed them--a point I am entirely agreeing with beforehand.

Since not everyone has experienced positive obsessions, this confusion is natural.  People who have not experienced positive obsessions and who have only experienced negative ones can be forgiven for seeing all obsessions as negative, since that has been their entire experience.

This very brief discussion leaves a great deal out, including whether negative obsessions are caused one way, perhaps as genetic expression, biological difference, or because of a rigid upbringing, and positive obsessions an entirely different way, arising as the fruit of a conscious decision to matter and to make personal meaning. 

It’s high time that we explored these two phenomena so as to understand their similarities and differences.

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From Eric Maisel's Creativity Newsletter #28, October, 2002 - see his site ericmaisel.com to subscribe, and to learn about his creativity coaching books and resources.

Eric Maisel, Ph.D. holds Master's degrees in Creative Writing and Counseling, and a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology. He is a California licensed marriage and family therapist, a creativity coach and trainer of creativity coaches, and teaches through lectures, workshops, and teleseminars.

Dr. Maisel is widely regarded as America's foremost creativity coach and has taught thousands of creative and performing artists how to incorporate Ten Zen Second mindfulness techniques into their creativity practice. See his site EricMaisel.com for ebooks and more information on his work.

Eric Maisel, Ph.D., is the author of more than thirty books - some titles at right >

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