THE artist and psychologist Ed Adams began his private psychology practice in New Jersey more than 20 years ago. “What I realized was there was a dearth of resources for men,” he says. “Men tended to be isolated and not really often connected to other men, at least in a meaningful way.”

   About 18 years ago, Mr. Adams developed a specialty in working with men’s issues, founding Men Mentoring Men, a nonprofit in Somerville and Lambertville dedicated to expanding the idea of masculinity and the idea that men can come together to talk in a safe, shame-free environment.

   ”When that happens — when men aren’t with women or are by themselves — a lot of important experiences happen,” Mr. Adams says.

   He wanted to create a space where men who didn’t need conventional therapy could explore their lives and discover ways to become happier and more satisfied. Later he founded the Creative Man Institute on the premise that men who think from a creative perspective are primed to achieve these goals.

   CMI will host a workshop, On Becoming a Happier Man, Nov. 14 in Princeton. Participants will leave with an “individual happiness plan” designed to lead them to greater creativity, enjoyment and effectiveness in their lives.

   ”The workshop is a way of taking what I’ve learned as a clinician, from Men Mentoring Men, and as a professional artist and synthesizing them so that it has a larger outreach,” Mr. Adams says.

   When Mr. Adams talks about creativity, he doesn’t necessarily mean making art but viewing every action as a creative force. With that comes the ability to shape relationships, he says. A father, for example, can choose to create a relationship with his child that instills confidence or creates fear. “Every moment becomes a possibility of creating a mood,” Mr. Adams says. “When a man looks at himself as dynamic, it’s an energizing force.”

   There are several tendencies, personal and interpersonal, at play that keep men from their potential, Mr. Adams says, such as how men often narrowly define themselves. If a man considers his primary role to be a breadwinner, for example, he may devote the majority of his time to work rather than his marriage or family or outside activities. “Men so narrowly define themselves in terms of a role that they try to get all their satisfaction out of a few activities,” Mr. Adams says. “They sustain a disconnect from things they’re passionate about.”

   Difficulties expressing feelings, thoughts, needs and passions compounds this disconnect. “Another major issue is the difficulty men have expressing themselves from their interior point of view,” he says. “There’s not a language many men have to describe those pieces of themselves. The workshop help create a language, the way we talk.”

   Even if a man has a social network, it may not provide adequate support or a deep level of interaction. The social network of men tends to stick to surface topics like sports — “very guarded stuff,” Mr. Adams says — that can make a person feel contained or trapped.

   Mr. Adams also believes men are acutely susceptible to shame. “Shame is, I think, an emotional rust that happens inside of a man when he feels he’s inadequate,” he says. “He’s not making enough, he’s not satisfying his family enough, he’s not making his wife happy enough. He lives inside a sense of shame. A man has a kind of radar screen operating 24/7 sensing shame.”

   The experience of being a professional artist has helped Mr. Adams learn about the process of creativity. He maintained the E.M. Adams Gallery in New Hope, Pa., for some 20 years before recently giving it up. He works primarily in sculpture and oil painting. His public sculptures are displayed in New Hope, Parsippany and at the Robert Wood Johnson Hospital in New Brunswick. In 1992 Mr. Adams was commissioned to create a bust of Oscar Schindler as a gift for Steven Spielberg, in appreciation of his movie Schindler’s List.

   Creating art “is not a small part of my life,” Mr. Adams says. “That whole notion or process of creating something, in my instance creating with my hands and my head, really informed the process of creating the Creative Man Institute.”

   He advises artists facing a blank canvas to just start painting and allow the work to emerge. “There’s going to be a process itself that will unfold,” he says. “There’s a dynamic process of creating as it’s happening. The workshop helps men with their own interactions to create ideas and directions. It’s a very dynamic process.”

   Mr. Adams describes the current cultural moment as being without vision for men, who are left to decipher the changing message of what it means to be masculine. “What our culture has done is to contain men and to confuse them,” he says.

The Creative Man Institute hosts On Becoming a Happier Man at the Nassau Inn, Princeton, Nov. 14, 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. $175, $160 if registered before Nov. 7; 908-707-8118; www.creativemaninstitute.com