Nowadays it seems therapists are always ‘eclectic.’ It’s useful to have many tools at your disposal but it’s important not to go crazy over trying to stuff your head with knowledge. The tools won’t end up being very useful if you haven’t internalized and mastered them. In any field, limiting the set of skills you work with enhances your creativity because you are very focused on what to do with the tools you have.
Limitations imposed upon you by fate or circumstances are no different. Someone who has lost the use of a limb learns to compensate and strengthen other bodily functions. We have a blind piano tuner, and I am always struck by his level of independence. Missing eyesight, he has developed a keen sense of hearing. He goes everywhere by himself and has not a trace of ‘victimhood’ about him. He’s very engaging and tells jokes to everyone.
Another kind of creative response to a life challenge is seeing in the limitation itself a commission and a task that’s been given to you to do. Someone with a debilitating condition lectures on pain management to fellow sufferers. Someone who has suffered a loss offers comfort to others who endured a similar experience.
There is one kind of commission that is basic to being human. This is the commission to look for ways to overcome our inborn tendencies and destructive habits we picked up along the way, as Frankl comments in the following paragraph (emphasis mine):
“A patient who was placed in a psychiatric institute after an attempted suicide answered the remonstrance of his psychotherapist: “What can I do about it? I’m just a typical Adlerian ‘only child.'” Properly understood, the ethics of individual psychology ought to require that each person free himself from the typical faults and characterological weaknesses that still infect him as the result of his rearing – free himself so completely that he will no longer bear the marks of having been an “only child” or whatever his particular situation was…” (The Doctor and the Soul, pp. 87)
In a similar way, a book of Jewish law interprets the verse (Deuteronomy 6:5) ‘And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might’ in the following manner (emphasis mine): “The rabbis explain ‘With all your heart’ [written in the plural, i.e. ‘hearts’] as referring to both your inclinations, for good and for bad. Do not claim that your inclination for bad incites you to transgress God’s will. If this were true, then why did God create [negative tendencies] to begin with? Truly, God’s intention in creating negative tendencies was to challenge us to refuse to heed or listen to it. God decreed that it should incite you to transgress God’s will so that you will use your free choice to serve God and not serve out of coercion. This is the main purpose in the creation of human beings. Through the use of this power [free choice] a human being is greater than an angel. (Aruch Hashulchan Orach Chaim 1:6)
Thus, when we access our freedom we find meaning and we become human.
Now we can understand why, after a patient of Frankl finally freed herself of her depression she said, ‘I was not a human being until you made me one.’ (The Doctor and the Soul, p. 89-90)
The ultimate creativity is creating ourselves.