Creativity and Mental Illness

[OnlyByMoonlight]

As writers, I'm sure you all have heard the common thought that there is a correlation between creativity or genius and mental illness. As a writer and someone who has been diagnosed with 3 disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, I wonder what all of your thoughts are on the matter? You think its true or just a myth?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

There is a correlation but it's not one-for-one. Just because one is creative is no diagnosis that the same person is emotionally disordered. Many years ago there was an article in Scientific American showing that while only 1.5% of Americans could be diagnosed as bipolar, the percentage among artists, especially those of the first rank, was ten times that. Note, however, that 85% of artists can still be considered 'normal'.

At about the same time I started taking studio art classes and while there I noted the large number of gay and lesbian students. It made me wonder if there might be a correlation between same-sex attraction and creativity. I am, however, unaware of any well designed studies of that subject.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

The genuine mentally ill are too disorganized to be creative. But! One person in 10,000 makes it to the NFL, so anythings possible BUT NOT LIKELY.

Now, just having dissed the wackos, people with strong psychopathological deviancy scores on the MMPI are creative. Theyre not psychopaths theyre novelty seekers. And creativity is the essence of novelty. They'll try anything once, and they take chances.

All pixies and fairies do is flutter and prance.

 

[Lisa Summers]

All pixies and fairies do is flutter and prance.

JBJ, I have a serious question for you.

Have you written any stories here? If so, where might they be found?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JBJ, I have a serious question for you.

Have you written any stories here? If so, where might they be found?

I dont post my stories on LIT.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

ANyone who hasn't a condition listed in the DSM - IV is too boring to know.

 

[auslit]

I dont post my stories on LIT.

where might you post them?

 

[Handley_Page]

As writers, I'm sure you all have heard the common thought that there is a correlation between creativity or genius and mental illness. As a writer and someone who has been diagnosed with 3 disorders from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, I wonder what all of your thoughts are on the matter? You think its true or just a myth?

I think it is limited (?) to illness like manic depression, where the highs and lows are very wide apart. I'm thinking of Vincent van Gough, or Spike Milligan. Quite how the problems are/were caused is a different matter.

But no, it is not, as a rough guide, a myth.

 

[voluptuary_manque]

I think it is limited (?) to illness like manic depression, where the highs and lows are very wide apart. I'm thinking of Vincent van Gough, or Spike Milligan. Quite how the problems are/were caused is a different matter.

But no, it is not, as a rough guide, a myth.

Shoot, the list is endless.

Mark Twain
Mark Rothko
Schumann
Gustav Mahler . . .

 

[auslit]

I think it is limited (?) to illness like manic depression, where the highs and lows are very wide apart. I'm thinking of Vincent van Gough, or Spike Milligan. Quite how the problems are/were caused is a different matter.

But no, it is not, as a rough guide, a myth.

i think you'll find illness like autism and psychosis caused from drugs to also be popular

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

I think it is limited (?) to illness like manic depression, where the highs and lows are very wide apart. I'm thinking of Vincent van Gough, or Spike Milligan. Quite how the problems are/were caused is a different matter.

But no, it is not, as a rough guide, a myth.

Like I said, one person in 10,000 gets to play for the NFL, and I imagine on bipolar in 10,000 is functional enough to be creative. BUT MOST OF THE TIME THEY CANT APPLY THEIR MAKEUP RIGHT. If you see a woman who looks like she stepped out of a little kid's coloring book...she's bipolar.

 

[rgraham666]

And there you have it folks. Proof positive that metal illness and creativity are not linked.

 

[Nirvanadragones]

Touched with fire - an amazing book.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touched_with_Fire

 

[3113]

But no, it is not, as a rough guide, a myth.

I agree. It's a way for writers to make themselves sound more tortured and special ("I'm mad, I tell you! You'll never understand what's in my head!") or get away with being selfish assholes ("I'm an artist and therefore crazy, and so you must excuse my irresponsible behavior..."). But really, it correlates only in that we hear more about artists who cut off their ears or toss themselves in a river. Their stories get more press. Consider that the ranks of "normal" writers includes: Shakespeare--so far as we know, not depressed, not bi-polar, described as a happy, good, average guy. Dickens had a rough childhood that left him with some emotional scars, but he was also a solid, normal guy. Jane Austen, pretty darn normal. George Eliot--incredibly smart...and normal. Keats---normal, Shelly normal except for being eccentric enough to be a vegetarian at a time when it was thought weird. Tennyson--sensitive, but normal, lived to age ninety.

The list goes on and on. And here's a question--what about people who just had rough lives? Louisa May Alcott had a weird upbringing and a very rough life, but she was hardly insane. Yet she was one of the most prolific and best selling authors of her day. A dramatic life doesn't mean that the person was mentally ill. And I have to also object to the idea of any disorder meaning a person isn't "normal." Depression is exceedingly common, as is alcoholism, and, we're finding, also mild bi-polar disorders. If the person is able to function in the world, if they're usually clear headed and don't end up in an insane asylum or jumping off a bridge, can't we say that they were relatively normal? F. Scott Fitzgerald was an alcoholic, but it was his wife who ended up in the mental institution (and rightly so--schizophrenic)...and it is he who is remembered as the artist, not she.

I'm sorry, but I just don't buy that insanity = artistic genius or artistic genius = insane person. Has it happened/can it happen? Of course. One of my fave authors, Philip K. Dick was a paranoid schizophrenic, no question about it. And he was a genius. But I think for the most part that the mad, brooding poet is a romantic fantasy. Look at most of the writers that you read in the here and now...how many are writing their books in insane asylums (J.K. Rowling, perhaps?)...or have ever checked themselves into one? Almost none, I'd venture to guess.

So if the majority haven't been insane, or severely mentally ill, if only a small minority fit the bill, why associate madness with artistic merit?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Blame it on Freud (that fatuous, self-inflated asshole!). His portrait of the nutzy artist is based on his psychoanalysis (voodoo-hoodoo) of Gustav Mahler who actually was nuts.

 

[3113]

Blame it on Freud (that fatuous, self-inflated asshole!). His portrait of the nutzy artist is based on his psychoanalysis (voodoo-hoodoo) of Gustav Mahler who actually was nuts.

Well, that was Freud all over. Made all of his assumptions about human psychology from small, unrepresentative samples (middle class germans raised in the 19th century); and that's only counting the times he might have been "right" and not completely wrong.

 

[jomar]

All I know is I was gettin' Grammy's left and right but once I got sober and the depression lifted my country music career went to shit.

 

[3113]

All I know is I was gettin' Grammy's left and right but once I got sober and the depression lifted my country music career went to shit.

Country Music is it's own category. In that instance, I'd say that Mental Illness is a must...

 

[Boxlicker101]

Country Music is it's own category. In that instance, I'd say that Mental Illness is a must...

If you include alcoholism and drug addiction as mental illnesses.

 

[3113]

If you include alcoholism and drug addiction as mental illnesses.

Country singers have to be a little mentally ill--just look at what their songs say about the type of person they decide to fall in love with over and over again...now that's what I call "crazy."

 

[bronzeage]

I dont post my stories on LIT.

There is probably a story behind that.

 

[3113]

There is probably a story behind that.

Not really. It's his standard answer. We're giving out the title of Grand Pooba to anyone who can prove they have read one of JBJ's stories, thus proving that they actually exist and he really is the great writer he claims to be.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

There is probably a story behind that.

My stories are guaranteed to melt the polish off your toenails. Mike & Carol wont approve them, anyway, cuz teenagers in Jim World really & truly fuck. Just like in the Real World. Horrors.

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

I'm bi-polar and when I'm manic, I write from an entirely different vantage point. It's as though I am being propelled forward by the crest of a great wave and the force takes me high enough to write words that do not even occur to me when I'm not manic. When depressed, I cannot write at all. I can't prove to anyone that there is a correlation between mania and creativity, but I've read quite a lot of information that indicates I'm not the only person that has been true of.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Yes! Thats how it is.

I want to add that the mentally ill people I worked with were mentally ill NOT merely afflicted. Schizophrenics finger-painted with shit, bipolars apllied lipstick with their fingers and splashed in the fountain at the mall or ran thru the neighborhood in a teddy. When a paranoid schizophrenic is homicidal he's not thinking about writing poetry.