How Elvis, Beethoven, Arthur Miller and Kafka narrated their own lives through art

• Have you ever wondered what goes through the mind of an author, artist or composer when they create a certain work?
• It could be defined as the efficient use of psychological theory to turn a subject’s life into a coherent and enlightening story.

Arthur Miller, Marilyn Monroe and The Crucible

• In his article The Psychology of Artistic Creativity: With Reference to Arthur Miller and The Crucible, he shared that the playwright was well aware of the personal burden he had placed in his work.
• His famous work, The Crucible, tells a story that takes place during the 17th-century trials of women accused of witchcraft in Salem, Massachusetts.
• By that time, Miller, who was married, had already met Marilyn Monroe and was fascinated by the actress.

Kafka was also a son

• In the story, a father harshly sentences his son to death by drowning, a wish that the son fulfils by throwing himself into the river.
• In his Letter to his Father, published a few years later, Kafka reproaches him precisely for the emotional abuse he suffered, among other things.

Elvis’s loneliness

• He usually did so by making mistakes in the lyrics or by laughing while singing it.
• In other words, the mistakes Elvis made seemed to have a psychological explanation behind them: Elvis was protecting himself.
• The singer was very afraid of loneliness throughout his life, and this made it difficult for him to sing the song.

Beethoven and death

• In my psychobiographical research on the figure of Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827), it was very difficult to find an obvious transfer of his story to his work.
• Beethoven suffered multiple illnesses, some more serious than others.
• Although he treated all of these with a stoic attitude, on one occasion he did believe that he was dying.