All Chess Players, Artists?

Marcel Duchamp, a celebrity artist, painter, writer, and chess player in the 1920s, once wrote:

“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art - and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position ... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

Chess is psychological too, not just art.

I was already in my early teens when I first learned chess. A lonely, angry teenager. That was me.

Adjacent to our family house then lived a couple of uncles. One of them I played chess with almost every day for months. 

I could remember how happy I was playing chess with this uncle, with the background music of The Bee Gees and the Beatles!

In my elementary years, I was restless, even got involved in fistfight with a classmate.

But when chess came, I got a different flow. Somehow the game tamed me to be more psychologically disciplined and analytical of my choices.

Now as a psychotherapist, I’d have opportunities to do chess psychotherapy with some clients.

Like such as ones from Italy or India, where both the psychology and the art of the game contributed to their unique process of healing and wholeness.

#chesspsychotherapy

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