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Other interesting excerpts from "A Brilliant Maddess" - The Creativity Connection.
"Dr. Fieve describes what he calls the 'manic-depressive entrepreneur,' Long, hectic days, marked by no sleep, non-stop talk, risky deals and boundless energy --abruptly truncated by plunges into bleak depression -- characterize some of the country's highest profile business leaders."

"'Personnel departments of many offices look for this type of person --the kind that has an upbeat approach to things, who is a workaholic, who is overactive, overproductive, and who is full of ideas,' says Dr. Fieve. 'And if they don't go crazy over the top or retreat into the pits of depression, as long as their judgment is not impaired or they are surrounded by people who can keep them from going over the edge with disastrous business decisions, these would be the ideal people to staff a very productive office with. They are envied by their colleagues...until their mania goes too high or a depression washes over them. Then the accomplish nothing --or they get into trouble.'"

"Jay Jamison cautions that not everyone who is unusually creative or productive is a suspect for manic-depressive illness. Making that claim, she says, ‘mocks the notion of individuality.’ Highly creative people may be slightly to one side of the mean in terms of emotions and sensitivity. But that’s not the same as having a crippling, disabling condition such as manic-depressive illness."

"It is equally wrong to confuse ‘workaholism’ with manic-depression….Only when a person’s family and personal history have been considered, when mood swings have a cyclical, perhaps seasonal, pattern, when they have interfered with a job or family relationships, or when they have stimulated thoughts of suicide, would you be inclined to call a person manic-depressive."

"Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries. Even pre-Grecian myths drew a connection between being mad and being singled out by the gods. The notion was already a cliché when Shakespeare wrote, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, "The lunatic, the lover, and the poet, are of imagination all compact."

"The romantic-period fascination with the link between genius and insanity has been studied anecdotally since the mid-1860s, when Cesare Lombroso, an Italian psychiatrist who explored genius and insanity, concluded in his book The Man of Genius that ‘genius, whether in the study of philosophy, in affairs of state, in poetical composition, or in the exercise of the arts, has been inclined to insanity…It seems as though nature had intended to teach us respect for the supreme misfortunes of insanity; and also to preserve us from being dazzled by the brilliancy of those men of genius who might well be compared, not to the planets which keep their appointed orbits, but to falling stars, lost and dispersed over the crust of the earth.’ Lombroso suggested, too, that both creativity and mental illness seemed to run in families and referred to a ‘hereditary taint.’"

"In 1921 Emil Kraepelin, the pioneer in identifying manic-depressive illness, also commented on its connection with creativity. But it is only since the mid-1970s that several scientific studies have taken a hard look at such questions as: Is there really more psychiatric illness among creative people than in the general population? If so, how common is it? Does it occur among people who have specific kinds of talent, such as writing or painting or composing? Is creativity different from intelligence?"

"No matter whether the study includes painters or poets, architects or actors, the conclusions are remarkably the same. Creative people tend to have a mix of characteristics –intelligence, independence, and sensitivity, combined with strong egos. They are often non-conforming, introspective and socially detached; they enjoy being challenged and are self-assertive. Their personality style allows them to be more adventurous and more willing to take risks."

"Most important, they have the capacity to tap into a rich and mysterious resource deep inside themselves. It is a resource which opens a window into a world only they can see, and which gives them a unique ability to translate the world into music or poetry or paintings –or theater. The ‘flight of ideas,’ speed of thought, and exquisite heightening of the senses – the most common symptoms of mania –allow the artist to conceive, without restraint and inhibition, his most original, imaginative, and often awesome creations."

"A manic-depressive artist in Boston said that when he was hypomanic he felt "juiced up" and knew he could paint brilliantly. And for a while he could. But as his manic symptoms speeded up, he became scattered and totally disorganized. Once his studio was littered with a hundred paintings, none of them finished. His mind was racing so fast that ideas toppled over one another. He would begin a painting, get an inspiration for a new one, abandon the old and move on. Finally he collapsed in exhaustion, realizing the disaster he had created."

"It is a common scenario because someone in the grip of mania is so distractible that he moves from project to project, expending a lot of energy but accomplishing little."

"…’Certainly, depth and intensity of human feelings must be a part of great artistic achievement,’ [Dr. Jamison] concedes. ‘Maybe it always takes a certain amount of suffering to do something marvelous in the arts."

"Of course, not all people with manic-depressive illness are creative. Many resent the focus on the creativity connection because it doesn’t reflect their experience –one characterized by lost jobs, broken marriages, and fractured relationships because their moods seesawed out of control. As Dr. Anthony Rothschild of Boston reminds us, ‘For every Hemingway, there are thousands of manic-depressives whose lives are ruined."



ABOUT WRITERS:
"A much quoted 1987 study of 30 writers –27 men and 3 women –who had served on the facultyof the University of Iowa Writers’ Wordshop, was conducted by Nancy J.C. Andreasen, of the department of psychiatry at the University of Iowa College of Medicine. The Iowa workshop is the oldest creative writing program in the country; its students and faculty have included such distinguished writers as John Cheever, Robert Lowell, John Irving, Philip Roth and Kurt Vonnegut."

"During her 15-year study Dr. Andreasen found that 80 percent of the writers had had an episode of mania or depression at some time in their lives. Four had suffered from severe manic disorder that required prolonged and repeated hospital stays. In contrast, only 30 percent of a control group not in the creative arts had mood disorders."

"The families of manic-depressive writers studied by Dr. Andreasen, including brothers, sisters, and parents, were also strikingly more creative –and had more psychiatric disorders. Forty-one percent of writers’ brothers and sisters showed creativity, as did 20 percent of their parents. Relatives included several highly successful journalists, an accomplished pianist, and an award-winning choreographer."

"Dr. Andreasen suggests that a trait or traits fostering creativity –curiosity, a tolerance for ambiguity, a dislike for the conventional –are transmitted through families. Coupled with high energy, those traits in a person whose brain is ‘wired’ for math may produce an engineer; someone better wired verbally may become a writer; a person with organizational acumen may become an outstanding business leader. A single faulty gene or genes added to that combination could result in bipolar illness "

"Another leading study –this one of 47 top British artist and writers –was conducted at Oxford University and St. Georg’s Hospital in London by Kay Jamison. It revealed, too, a startlingly high number who said they had been treated for depression or manic-depression, Ninety percent of her subjects were men and were chosen to be part of her research because they had won at least one of several top prizes or awards in their field."

"The playwrights topped the list of those who had suffered from mood disorders with 63 percent having sought treatment for depression or manic-depression….More than half the poets had been treated with drugs or been hospitalized. This high figure is especially significant because men are less likely than women to seek treatment. Interestingly, the biographers, while outstanding in their field, were the least likely to be associated with ‘creative fire’;they also reported no history of mood swings or elated periods."

"Overall, about one third of the writers and artists reported histories of severe mood swings and one fourth said they had had intense, elated mood states. All of the poets, novelists and artists, 88 percent of the playwrights, and 20 percent of the biographers had a past peppered with intense, creative episodes, which lasted from one hour to more than a month at a time. During these periods, they were enthusiastic, euphoric, full of energy and self-confidence, and flt that their mental associations and thoughts were faster and more fluid. Just before these creative spurts came, they needed less sleep, ofen awakening abruptly at three or four in the morning. Half said they felt a sharp change ion mood just before the beginning of an intensely creative period. They said things such as ‘I have a fever to write…’"

Many writers also suffer from alcoholism as well as bipolar disorder. "In the preface to his book (Alcohol and the Writer), Dr. [Donald] Goodwin writes: ‘As a researcher, my first discovery was that writers drank a lot—maybe more than anyone else. Six Americans had won the Nobel Prize in literature and four were alcoholic...Through the years I have become more and more convinced that alcoholism among American Writers consittutes and epidemic.’"

"Nonetheless, many alcoholic creators acknowledge that their best work was not done while they were under the influence of alcohol, just as manic-depressive artists achieve little when going through the tortures of depression or the wastefulness of mania."

"…The Akiskals studied 750 psychiatric patients at the University of Tennessee’s mood clinic in Memphis, they discovered that those with mild manic depression or mood swings, rather than other mental illnesses, were more likely to be creative artists."

"Over the past eight years, the Akiskals have been working on a sample of Parisian artists –including writers, painters, sculptors, and musicians –to further explore these provacative leads from the Memphis study. Their main finding, not yet published (when this book was written) supports the high rate of cyclothymia rather than major mood disorders among them,"

"’This is an illness that torments,’ declares Dr. Kay Jamison. ‘And no one who is confined in a psychiatric hospital is being creative. No one who is spending six or seven months a year sleeping 14 hours a day is producing anything. No one is achieving when he is dead."

"In his book Movie Stars, Real People and Me, Joshua Logan, the teatrical director and producer, once said that over a period of 20 years he experienced manic elations during which he ‘would be going great guns, putting out a thousand ideas a minute, acting flamboyant -–until I went over the bounds of reality’ and then got to a point where ‘I had a profound wish to be dead without having to go throught the shaming defeat of suicide.’"