Tolerance of ambiguity, art therapy and psychiatric illness

Abstract

Tolerance of ambiguity means the ability to tolerate contradictory and incalculable informations. There is the hypothesis that a high degree of tolerance of ambiguity correlates with creativity. It is unclear how various psychiatric illnesses and psychopathological conditions affect tolerance of ambiguity. Therefore we carried out a study concerning the tolerance of ambiguity: 154 persons were systematically investigated with a standardized questionnaire (31 schizophrenic in-patients, 41 neurotic in-patients, 49 members of the staff as control group, 33 artists as control group). In addition we examined the degree of depression in the neurotic group, the anancasm score and the well-being in general. In the schizophrenic group we assessed psychotic symptoms, the positive and negative symptoms, medication, anancasm and depression. Tolerance of ambiguity decreased in the following sequence: artists - members of the staff - neurotic in-patients - schizophrenic in-patients. It became evident that in the schizophrenic group negative symptoms negatively correlates with tolerance of ambiguity. The results seem to confirm the hypothesis that there is a positive correlation between tolerance of ambiguity and creativity. In addition, the higher degree of intolerance of ambiguity in schizophrenic patients may represent a protective mechanism. Intolerance of ambiguity possibly protects from too many contradictory informations. Furthermore the necessity is confirmed that creative therapy methods should be carefully chosen to avoid irritation on the one hand and not to neglect the required training of creative basic functions on the other hand. Although our results weaken the thesis that psychiatric illness is generally associated with an increase of creativity they don't exclude that highly creative performances in some individuals are possible who are especially talented in spite of or even because of their emotional suffering.