Why Beauty Matters. The Transformational Experiences of Art and Music upon the Human Soul

Seminar paper from the year 2012 in the subject Psychology - Media Psychology, Liverpool John Moores University (Art and Design Academy), course: Academic Conference, language: English, abstract: Beauty takes our breath away. We come to rest, are silenced, and in awe. When beauty opens our hearts, our capacity to care for what is just and true enlarges. The triumvirate of western values - truth, beauty, and goodness - has long served as the foundation for positive human development. The experience of beauty takes us deep within ourselves to the most intimate sense of who we are and what we have endured. Beauty is the ultimate attractor and healer. It transcends us by pulling us out of ourselves and generates us to heal, repair, and move forward. Beauty in its many forms has profound neurological and psychological impact upon us. Artistic expression, and flow stimulate the growth of new brain cells in the cerebral cortex. Such experiences raise physiological levels in the immune, the endocrine, and the nervous systems. 'Emotions play out in the theatre of the body. Feelings play out in the theatre of the mind.' As a significant psychologically transcendent experience, this arousal increases well-being, optimism, and resilience. Optimism is directly correlated with improved health. Drama, music, and art have the capacity to build and sustain resilience because creative engagement and participation is directly correlated with an overall positive impact on health, morale, and loneliness. This essays draws on some theoretical perspectives and research as they inform an understanding of the power of beauty and its transformational affect on the human psyche and development.

Cyrus Manasseh is a guitarist, philosopher and musicologist. He teaches in universities and privately as a higher education consultant. Prof. Cyrus Manasseh PhD is also a Freelance Researcher and author of the books 'The Lead Guitarist'; 'The Island Library'; and 'The Problematic of Video Art in the Museum 1968-90'. He is an international scholar and has presented his ideas in a number of countries. He is author of numerous essays and scientific articles in the field of art history, film, music. architecture, video, museums, evolving media and theatre-drama. His published essays and articles include: 'The Words of Gandhi and How the Libertarian Collectivist Anti-individualistic Post-Modern Turn has Shaped our World,' 'Against Roland Barthes. Why Ibsen's "A Doll's House" is Not a Feminist Text, but a Humanist one,' 'Revising Animation Genres: Jan Svankmajer, Tim Burton and James Cameron and the Study of Myth,' 'Cinema and Mass Media in Modernity. Walter Benjamin and the Reproducible Image,' 'The Problem with the Influence of the Moving Image in Society Today, the Alter-Modern and the Disappearance of a Focus on the Internal', The Art Museum in the 19th Century J. J. Winckelmann's Influence on the Establishing of the Classical Paradigm of the Art Museum; Art without the Aesthetic? Defining Conceptual & Post-Conceptual Practices'; 'Art, Language & Machines: Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia & Raymond Roussel' and many others. He has presented his research at international academic forums in London, Sydney, Perth, Venice, Prague and Harvard where he was session chair and has lectured and has taught extensively in Italian, Irish and Australian Universities and Colleges. He was a finalist for the International Award for Excellence in the Constructed Environment Journal Writers Award Annual Prize for the academic essay 'An Inquiry into the Design and the Aesthetics of the Venice Biennale Pavilions and Film'. He is particularly focused on the problematic of post-modernism for culture and society. His novels 'The Lead Guitarist' and 'The Island Library' are currently available.