Creativity and Mental Illness

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Creativity and Mental Illness

Men have called me mad, but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence--whether much that is glorious--whether all that is profound--does not spring from disease of thought--from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. Those who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night - Edgar Allen Poe

When you are insane, you are busy being insane - all the time... When I was crazy, that's all I was. - Sylvia Plath

Is creative genius somehow woven together with "madness"? According to the dictionary, "to create" is "to bring into being or form out of nothing." Such a powerful, mysterious, and even impossible act must surely be beyond the scope of scientific inquiry! No wonder creativity has for so long been "explained" as the expression of an irrational, intuitive psychic "underground" teaming with forces (perhaps divine) that are unknown and unknowable (at least to the "sane," conventional mind). The ancient Greeks believed creative inspiration was achieved through altered states of mind such as "divine madness." Socrates said: "If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the inspired madman" (8). Creative inspiration - particularly artistic inspiration -- has often been thought to require the sampling of dark "depths" of irrationality while maintaining at least some connection to everyday reality. This dive into underground forces "reminds one of a skin-diver with a breathing tube" wrote Arthur Koestler in his influential book...

... middle of paper ...

...ard Mental Health Letter, March 1996

http://www.mentalhealth.com/mag1/p5h-cre1.html

6) Artistic Inspiration and the Brain , Another response to Dr. Bruce Miller study - FTD & creativity

http://www.artsfusion.com/1999/january/awfeaturejan.html

7) The Systems View of Life , includes discussion of how creativity is fundamentally built into all living systems -by Fritjof Capra, theoretical high-energy physicist and author. Capra studied with Werner Heisenberg at the University of Vienna. He does research at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory and lectures at the University of California, Berkeley.

http://magna.com.au/~prfbrown/capra_3.html

8) Amazon.com, To order the book: Touched with Fire: Manic Depressive Illness and the Artistic temperment - by Kay Redfield Jamison

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/068483183X/themeadowlarkpre/102-1781957-3733743

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