About the Spiritual Care and Art project

01.9.2020 to 31.10.2021 with Prof. Dr. Lydia Maidl

Funded by the Bavarian State Ministry of Health and Care

Spiritual Care

Artistic offerings have by now gained importance in therapy, rehabilitation, hospices, etc., as well as a counterbalance to working life. Mostly this is about people's own creative processes. The significance of the reception of art (of looking at pictures, of listening to music, of the effect of architecture) has been and continues to be studied as well (e.g. the particular effect of the music of Mozart or Bach) and has been drawn on in education and, in a first tentative way, in therapy too. Just as the great effectiveness of inner images is documented in psychotherapeutic work, outer images are significant too (modern neurology shows that inner and outer images develop a similar valency).

In Erich Schickling's work, a striking use of colour and form is joined with subjects to which a particular existential significance attaches: subjects from ancient mythology and from the Bible. The philosopher Hans Blumenberg in particular pointed to the existential significance of myth with „Arbeit am Mythos“ (1979). That myth cannot be transposed into clear, non-pictorial language is for Blumenberg the truly decisive point here. It is precisely the polyvalence of myth that gives it its richness and makes it open to interpretation and application in the most varied crises and situations. Therapeutically, the myth of Orpheus (in its narrative power) has been drawn on in addiction therapy, for example (the „Orpheusprogramm“ of the psychiatrist and psychotherapist Michael Musalek, Vienna)

The Erich Schickling Stiftung

At the Schickling Foundation, the 2018 seminar „Heilsame Kunst. Spiritual Care in Musik, Malerei und Architektur“, in cooperation with the Hochschule für Philosophie München (Prof. Dr. med. Eckhard Frick sj) and the LMU München (Prof. Dr. theol. Lydia Maidl), was a first step towards exploring the connections between spirituality, health and art in this place, also with multireligious and multicultural sensitivity.

The Schickling Foundation reaches out into the public sphere and is perceived as a special place where you can draw strength and, through the encounter with art, gain orientation in a holistic sense.

Text and project management: Prof. Dr. Lydia Maidl (Tübingen/Munich)