Famous bipolars and others - a creative illness?

[shutterbug]

I'm looking into the creative aspect that has been tied to mental illness and was wondering if anyone can relate to this subject (Please tell about your illness and creative side) and/ or if you know of any more people that I should add to this list:

(From NAMI)
Charles Dickens
patty Duke
Jimmy Piersall
Winston Churchill
Michaelangelo
Sylvia Plath (sp?)
Ernest Hemingway
isaac Newton
Vincent Van Gogh
Tennesse Williams
John Keats
Leo Iolstoy
Robert Schumann
Beetohoven
Lionel Aldridge
Abraham Lincoln

(From "A Brilliant Maddness" - The Creativity Connection)

"Dr. (Kay Redfield) Jamison is well known for her interest in the link between creativity and mood disorders; she has written a major study on mood disorders among British writers and artists and is auther of the book Touched with Fire: Manic Depression Illness and the Artistic Temperament.

The book lists the following well-known bipolars:

Musical Composers:
George Frideric Handel
Robert Schumann
Hugo Wolf
Hector Berlioz
Gustav Mahler

Leaders:
Oliver Cromwell
Abraham Lincoln
Menachem Begin
Winston Churchill

Business Tycoons:
Robert Campeau
John Mulheren Jr.

Writers (and alcoholism):
Ernest Himingway

Blues musicians:
Memphis Slim

Others:
Lord Byron
Edgar Allan Poe
Anne Sexton
Virginia Woolf
Vincent Van Goh

[51anna]

I found some: This comes from The Scoop - A Bipolar Disorder Message Board

Buzz Aldrin (Astronaut)
Carrie Fisher
Dick Cavett
Tim Burton
Larry Flynt
Connie Francis
Linda Hamilton
Abbie Hoffman
Margot Kidder
Vivien Leigh
Kristy McNichol
Charly Pride
Axl Rose
Del Shannon
Jean Claude Van Damme
Virginia Woolf
Jonathon Winters
Brian Wilson
Rosemary Clooney
Francis Ford Coppola
Kitty Dukakis
Marlon Brando
Agatha Christie
Elton John
Marilyn Monroe
Mike Wallace
Jane Pauley
Ted Turner
Mariette Hartley

[pedagogue]

I think bi-polars are more in touch with their emotions (for better or worse) I think when you live part/alot of your life on the extremes.....you gain an insight that people who stick towards the middle don't get.

-pedagogue

[shutterbug]

Some interesting information about the famously ill: (all pulled from "A Brilliant Maddness," by Patty Duke)

Handel - His biographer, in 1785 wrote, "Handels' general look was somewhat heavy and sour; but when he did smile, it was his sire the sun, bursting out of a black cloud."

"Handel…left little written record of his psychological and emotional world. But in light of his recurrent mood cycles, modern psychiatric opinion agrees that he was a victim of cyclothymia, one of the milder forms of manic-depressive illness."

"Handel had long periods of high energy and extraordinary productivity, interrupted by episodes of depression that blunted his ability to work. His major depressions were called 'nervous breakdowns,' and during those times he was pessimistic and despondent, had a poor appetite and difficulty sleeping -- the hallmarks of depression."

"Typical of those with manic-depressive illness, Handle's mood swings cycled with the seasons: depressed times came in the late spring and early summer; late summer and early autumn brought bursts of productivity. In the early 1740s, his librettist Charles Jennens described Handle as having a head 'more full of maggots than ever." His biographer Percy Young wrote, 'The maggots came from mental derangement on the one hand and flooding inspiration on the other."


Robert Schumann - "His father, an author, translator and publisher, was an unstable, ambitious and brooding man who reportedly suffered a nervous breakdown from which he never fully recovered. Like his son, he worked in phenomenal burst of energy. During one 18-month period, he wrote seven novels. Robert's mother suffered from recurrent depressions. His sister committed suicide. One of his sons went insane in his early twenties and was confined to an asylum for 31 years. Another son became a morphine addict."

Schumann himself, "described his own struggles with mania and melancholy. He wrote..., 'In the night between the 17th and 18 of October [1833], I was seized with the worst fear a man can have. the worst punishment Heaven can inflict --the fear of losing one's reason....Terror drove me from place to place. My breath filed me as I pictured my brain paralyzed...No one knows the suffering, the sickness, the despair, except those so crushed.

"' And if we musicians live so often, as you know we do, on sunny heights, the sadness of reality cuts all the deeper when it lies naked before our eyes.'"

Composer Hector Berlioz, "described his affliction as a 'moral sickness, a disease of isolation. There are...two kinds of spleen,' he wrote in his memoirs, 'one mocking, active, passionate, malignant; the other morose and wholly passive, when one's only wish is for silence and solitude and the oblivion of sleep. For anyone possessed by this latter kind, nothing has meaning, the destruction of a world would hardly move him. At such times I could wish the earth were a shell filled with gunpowder, to which I would put a match for my diversion.'"

Gustav Mahler - "Lamented that he was a prisoner of his mood swings. When he was nineteen, he wrote to a childhood friend: ‘The fires of a supreme zest for living and the most gnawing desire for death alternate in my heart, sometimes in the course of a single hour. I know only one thing: I cannot go on like this…’"

"While many of manic depression’s victims have lived tempestuous lives that ended in suicide or confinement in mental institutions, they may also have brilliant contributions to society: Lord Byron and Edgar Allan Poe, Ann Sexton and Virginia Woolf, Vincent Van Gogh."

Oliver Cromwell - "The 17th-century commander-in-chief and Lord Protector of England, has been described by his biographers as manic-depressive or cyclothymic."

Abraham Lincoln - His "depressions, some of which were suicidal, are legendary. New York’s Dr. Ronald Fieve has called him a ‘mild bipolar manic-depression,’ but his depressions were more obvious than his highs."

Menachem Begin - "The controversial former Prime Minister of Israel, was subject to sweeping mood swings throughout his public career. Periods of abject depression rotated with times of frenetic activity. Often he worked with a vengeance, then retreated into bleak seclusion, avoiding all but the most important public appearances."

Winston Churchill - His, "biographer Anthony Storr describes him as cyclothymic, with alternating periods of severe depression and high energy that sometimes affected his judgment. In Churchill: The Man, Storr wrote: ‘…had he been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might well have concluded we were finished.’"

"He also wrote: ‘All those who worked with Churchill paid tribute to the enormous fertility of his new ideas, the inexhaustible stream of invention which poured from him…[they]also agreed that he needed the most severe restraint put upon him, and that many of his ideas, if they had been put into practice, would have been utterly disastrous.

Robert Campeau - "The entrepreneur and former owner of Bloomingdale’s, Jordan Marsh, and Burdine’s, has apparently never been called manic-depressive, but he does seem to have the temperament noted by Dr. [Ronald] Fieve. As Fortune magazine, in a 1988 story, said of Campeau, ‘eccentric may be too tame a word [for him].’"

One person who worked with him said, "He, ‘can go from high to low in about two seconds.'" And " Mr. Campeau has said of himself, ‘I’m full of the spice of life.’ In January 1990 he lost control of his retail stores and his company filed for bankruptcy protection."

John Mulheren Jr. - "Described by writer Connie Bruck in a New Yorker article as a ‘legendary Wall Street trader,’ broke the code of silence about manic-depressive illness when he protested in court that his manic-depressive illness, while it often enhanced his abilities on Wall Street, also distorted his reasoning and judgment. Mr. Mulheren was a former fello-arbitrageur with Ivan Boesky, an admitted felon whose cooperation with the government precipitated a rush of Wall Street prosecutions. Mr. Mulheren was convicted of manipulating Gulf + Western stock by driving up the price as a favor to Boesky. His conviction was overturned on appeal."

Mulheren said through the New Yorker article that , "’The depressive part of his cycle, which rendered him so profoundly anergic that he would take to his bed, unable to process even simple information, robbed him of perhaps 30 days a year…In his excited, hypomanic state, he did his most inspired trading.’"

"’When I would finally get high enough that it impaired my judgment, I’d lose – and I’d get so bummed out by losing that I would just leave. I’d say, Let’s all to Atlantic City. Or I’d go out on my boat. Or I’d go shopping. I love to buy stuff when I’m high. I say, Gee, I really like this shirt – I’ll by nine of them, in every color.’"

F. Scott Fitzgerald - "wrote, ‘I was drunk for many years and then I died.’"

Earnest Hemingway - "Suffered from a mood disorder, reportedly drank 16 double frozen daiquiris in one night at a Havana bar."

Memphis Slim - "Dr. Hagop Akiskal and his wife, Kareen, a psychologist…suggest that the song Born with the blues by Memphis Slim, a prominent blues musician who died recently, shows an insight into the nature of mood disorders ‘deeper than that of many professionals.’ The haunting lyrics are in part: ‘My mama had them, her mama had them, Now I’ve got them too…I’ve got something, something you just don’t learn in school. You’ll never find them in no books…You just got to inherit the blues. When I’m sad and lonely, even when I am happy too. All of the sudden, I find myself singing the blues. That’s why I know I was born with them.’"

[ryanjosef]

our life is like a rose some times we bloom sometimes we grow and some times we do nothing. when it is dry and hot we wilt. when it rains and the sun comes out we blosom. we are covered in the thorns of our past but that is the way to our fragran flower at the end of our rough road.And yet threw it all we shine for all to see our beauty and devinity.

By me.

[liveweyerd]

I wondered a long time about this legend.
Today I am sceptical.
What an incredible list it would be to list the highly creative and successfuls who do not have bi-polar!

live

[shutterbug]

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.’"

[liveweyerd]

[QUOTE] no matter the painter or the poet...." I can't figure out how to insert the quote. but that paragraph certainly describes me to a tee.

And so I get called crazy and it is attributed to my genius IQ.
I don't think I am crazy. Maybe that is why I don't like this legend/idea

[51anna]

I'm not sure what you mean by legend Live.

The names I listed are all people who have either spoken or written about their bipolar disorder.

Anna

[liveweyerd]

I mean the idea that highly creative or highly intelligent people are all a bit mad (as in crazy). The idea that the two go together period.

[shutterbug]

Anna (Oops - fixed) -- WOW, thanks for the list of names!!

Ryan -- I can't even begin to describe how very beatiful your words are!

My personal view on creativity and bipolar:

In doing some geneology work I have come to find a long list of disturbed relatives. It will be an undertaking, but I plan to do a lot of research to find out what kind of jobs they all held.

There definetly seems to be a link in my family to creativity, bipolar disorder and alcoholism/substance abuse. Starting with me, I grew up with many different intrests and felt bad because I couldn't master all areas. The Bible says something about using the talents God gave us and I always asked, "How can he possibly expect me to use ALL the talents he's given me." I felt burdened by them, but always knew I could conquer anything I put my mind to.

I began learning to play the violin in the sixth grade and it took me onto college where I was offered several music scholarships. I also longed to design things like clothing. I enjoyed writing and preformed extremely well in a Bible-based sort of knowledge bowl that I was involved in for three years in high school and where I went to nationals and placed third place in the nation, in our division (there were 3 divisions). I've always had a nack for business stuff. I've got a better than most voice and won several awards in that area too.

In college, I found my calling for journalism and set my sights on photojournalism which is where my passion lies. I never wanted to write , but was forced to in the job I got as a reporter/photographer. In my first journalism contest for the state, I was surprized and even disappointed when I won a first place for writing yet didn't get anything better than a second place in photography. From then on...I began to give in to my writing talents and now have developed a passion for that too. Only recently have I turned my photography efforts toward more abstract or artistic ventures rather than records of life through photojournalism.

Now my father, is exstremly artistic as a painter, amature photographer, sculpter and taxidermist (yes that's a odd profession, but he ranks among the best in the world). He is also alcoholic and recently disovered his bipolar disorder as the cause for his life-long battles with depression.

His sister, my aunt, was an extremely beautiful voice and recorded a few songs that were aired on the radio. She was offered a singing contract, but turned it down out of her fear of failure. She died in 2001 of a prescription drug overdose. She was an undiagnosed bipolar at the time of her death.

My younger sister is a good actor and an excellent debator, but gave up those ventures in college to study business. She is now working on her master's degree. I have been unable to discern if my sister could be bipolar or have some other mood disorder, but her husband certainly does.

My cousin, at only 16 years old, is showing signs of great creativity. She is planning to go to college and into the field of creative advertising. Her imagination and eye for detail without any schooling in the subject is astounding to me. She also carries her mother's voice (my aunt who died). She has already been hospitalized in May 2005 for attempted suicide, says she hears voices at night and is very (overly) paranoid at times. She shows classic symptoms of bipolar disorder in teenagers.

There also has been some slight speculation that my family is related to a very popular and well-known actor who was born and raised in my home town and who later married another very well-known actress. (When they got married....she took his last name and now her name is exactly the same as mine. heehee)

That's all I know now about the creativity connection in my family (which all comes from my father's side). I am not aware of anyone involved in the arts on my mother's side.

That's all about me....NOW TELL ME ABOUT YOU...if you wouldn't mind sharing your stories?

Hugs

[shutterbug]

Live, I don't think of myself as being crazy either. I can understand why you may be apprehensive about the idea.

I don't think bipolar = crazy. I have a brain disorder. It's a physical illness where the chemicals in my brain are unbalanced and that in turn affects my moods, but more importantly, it affects the way my body is able to function or not function. This doesn't make me crazy. I even struggle with slight paranoia, but I don't consider myself crazy for that either...I am always paranoid that when people are whispering or go off by themselves that they are talking about me...I think that comes from being overly sensative (rather as a result of my bipolar or from the abuse I received growing up).

But I am intriqued by the connection. I think, mainly, because I think it may be the key to getting rid of a lot of stigmas in our society about mental illness. From what I've read...there's something like 40 percent of people that think depression is a character flaw rather than a lagitament illness. There are still others who become afraid to be around anyone if they know they have a mental illness or still others who think that anyone with a mental illness should be locked up in a asylem somewhere.

If those same people were told, for example, that Abraham Lincoln was bipolar, that might open their minds enough for them to realize the truth about mental illness instead of thinking back to all the old movies with grusome ECT and straight jackets and such.

Make any sense?

[ryanjosef]

Thank you, most every thing i write in poems or meaningful thoughs come from my heart. thank you shutter bug that means alot to me

[shutterbug]

Ryan, feel free to post some of your other writings or poems! I'd love to hear them.

*NOTE/CLARIFICATION* I just wanted to explain that my reference to "grusome ECT" in my above post was in reference to the old process of doing it without anestetics. And that I think more people should be educated about how beneficial it can be and that these days there is little to fear about it.

[liveweyerd]

shutterbug, you know I haven't read the whole thread, but I was quite interested in this idea for a time myself. Guess I am just not ready to be open minded about it right now. But you really made an astute point about how if people knew about those famous and successful people like Honest Abe they might think differently. I wish I had that hope. I am very aware of the stigma. I no longer tell others that I am mentally ill, presuming them to understand it is a physical/chemical disorder. I have seen too many times and felt the stigma and how it damages me. I will never again let any one I work with know.

I do think science has shown that these things are passed along in our DNA. There is no doubt my father's side has had some real eccentrics.

Just for fun, would you mind going to the recovery follies and do the quiz, what tarot card are you? I am curious what yours would be. It blew my mind how accurately it pinned me and my hubby. Can't wait for my sis to take it.

love,
live

[utopia]

what an interesting thread.

i instantly thought of the russian composer pyotr tchaikovsky. he suffered depression and he conducted a grand composition of his great works (symphony no.6 'pathetique') before committing suicide.

i find for me that i do get those stirrings around midnight to 2-3 am when my creative juicse get flowing and i write music, paint, write stories and philosophies and plan short movies. its is a fire and my passion and makes me feel mostly alive more than anything else. i have a history of depression and so does my family, i know my fathers side has a lot of painters and singers and actresses etc.

i dont know if there is an actual link but there is something ive noticed about artists, especialyl actors that is not exactly settled. but what is the defitnion of mental heath being on the par, just what the majority of people are feeling?

insanity is not a medical term, it is only a legal term used to defend certain people. i find when my mental illness affects me i do feel im in the crazies, but sometimes my best creations have come from when i was feeling the most out of control in my life.

[shutterbug]

Utopia...thanks for telling me about the Russian composer and for giving a little background into the creative nature on your father's side.

What seems interesting to me at this point is...I'm wondering if maybe creativity mostly comes through from the father's side? Seeing as how that's seems to be the case with me, Utopia and Live...hummm...very interesting.

I too get those firey hours when I HAVE to create...something...anything...actually, I usually get so many ideas at once that I usually grab the nearest pen and paper and start trying to get as much of it down as I can. This way...I can go back later and evaluate it all and add to what I have. It makes me feel more at peace with the flight of ideas because this way I know, at least, that they are not all lost.

Utopia...you reminded me that I recently came up with my first idea for a movie. I don't know the first thing about writing a movie script so I'm planting the seed of thought into the minds of so people who might could help me later down the road...

I too have composed music in the past, but not much...and never a whole peice (the closest I've come is to writing a lullaby in highschool that I still remember and started singing to my twin nephews when they were born...these days...it often happens when I'm driving so I will call my own answering machine and record the verse or melody...that way, again, I can know that my idea won't be lost and when I have time or feel complelled I can go back to it and go from there.

And, even if I wrote 24 hours a day, for 5 years that I still wouldn't be able to finish all the books I want to write.

I love it...but at the same time it is VERY exhausting when I realize that I can't do everything that I feel passionate about and probably won't be able to complete so much as an eighth of it all before I die.

Live...it's okay...I'm not trying to make you buy into the idea...I mean who really knows for sure. I know I don't know what the truth really is.

It's just an intreging idea to me and I like knowing who else, that I may have heard of or seen on t.v., has the same illness that I do. It makes me feel normal...it makes me feel like I'm not alone and that it's okay to be me. That gives me great comfort.

I mean, you were the first one and really the only one who has made me feel like someone else has been through the same horrors and that I don't have to be ashamed because I couldn't do better than what I was already doing. I hope you know how much you helped me by just telling me, "been there...done that." And the more people I know about who has felt the same way or gone through the same things....the less I feel guilty and ashamed.

I totally understand where you are coming from about never wanting to tell anyone at work about your illness. It sure burned me too.

I guess I'm just so new to all this that I'm too stubbern for my own good and keep thinking that people are better than that and more understanding, but I know you are right.

All I know for sure right now is that when I do find a good job, that I will be very causious, at least, and I'm definetly not going to advertize it. But in the same token, I don't like having a part of me that I feel I have to keep hidden from the world and those around me...and I'm so use to being completely open that it will be hard for me to keep it totally to myself. Does that make sense? And if I do tell someone...I'm sure it will probably be to my demise.

I just can't get away from the feeling I have of being driven to help educate others and to try to knock down the stigmas. I know that I can only do so much...which isn't much, but I still feel compelled to try. It's just something that I can't really explain.

P.S. I haven't played my violin in about 8 years, but I went and auditioned for the community orchestra tonight. It's just one thing that I want to get back into as a part of my personal recovery efforts because I use to really enjoy playing with an orchestra. I won't know for a week or two if I made it or not.

I love you guys and think of you often,
Hugs,
Jenna

(LIVE) Oh yeah, I will try and find the forum follies you spoke of...if I find it I will come back here and tell you what the results are. I still would like to read some of your poetry. I never could track down the post they were in. I just get so scatterbrained and easily distracted so I often get overwhelmed if I try to move from one forum to the next and then back again. If I don't come back and report the findings that means I got lost....so will you then post the link within this thread (to that post and to the post where your poems are)?

To be honest, I've forgotten how to do it, but I think you go to the post you want to send people to and you right click on the screen and choose "save link" or "save (or copy?) location" or something like that....Then basically you go back to the new post and insert it by choosing "Edit" and then "Paste". But I'm really just guessing here because it's been a long time since I've done it. But I believe that Morning Glory can tell you how.

[shutterbug]

Oh....I'm SO MAD!! I found the forum and then found the thread....and then my stupid computer won't load the page!! It just came up saying "Page cannot be found"

URG!! I need a new computer!

[shutterbug]

Tena...took me long enough but i found the thread and was able to take the tarot card reading....here's the results:

<img src="http://images.quizilla.com/K/Koshari/1072668043_Temperance.jpg" border="0" alt="The Temperance Card"><br>You are the Temperance card. Temperance is the<br>blending of elements to produce stability. We<br>say that someone is temperate when they are<br>pleasant and easy going. Temperance achieves<br>balance through merging, so a temperate person<br>is one who feels whole. Creative genius is<br>often found in the ability to unite two<br>previously unconnected ideas. Aleister Crowley<br>considers this one of the most important facets<br>of this card and names the card Art. He refers<br>to a generation of a third element out of two<br>previously existing elements. In the same way,<br>the artist has the ability to create a painting<br>from canvas and some tubes of coloured paint.<br>The temperate person is also inclined to think<br>about philosophy. Temperance leads to a calm<br>and rational logic but can also look beyond<br>everyday knowledge for the truth. Image from<br>The Stone Tarot deck.<br> 2 % had this same result <br>http://hometown.aol.com/newtarotdeck/
<br><br><a href="http://quizilla.com/users/Koshari/quizzes/Which%20Tarot%20Card%20Are%20You%3F/"> Which Tarot Card Are You?</a><BR> <font size="-2">brought to you by <a href="http://quizilla.com">Quizilla</a></font>

[shutterbug]

Are Creativity and Mental Illness Linked?


Courtesy of Today's Science On File

All poets are mad," asserted English writer Robert Burton in his 1621 book, The Anatomy of Melancholy. Burton was exaggerating, of course. However, many people do believe that artists are more likely than others to be mentally ill. Many well-known artists, writers and musicians had a history of mental illness, in some cases leading to suicide.

Writers Sylvia Plath, Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway, painter Vincent van Gogh, and musician Kurt Cobain all committed suicide.

Painters Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe, and musicians Cole Porter and Charles Mingus suffered from depression.

Is there actually a link between artistic creativity and mental illness? Most artists are not mentally ill, and most mentally ill people are not artists. However, several studies have suggested that artists are more likely than others to suffer from a class of mental illnesses called mood disorders.

Mood disorders

Mood disorders include major depression and manic-depressive illness. Major depression is characterized by prolonged deep despair. Alternating periods of euphoria and despair characterize manic- depressive illness. Suicidal thoughts are common in people suffering from either of these disorders.

One of the first controlled studies of the creativity/mood disorder link was completed by University of Iowa psychiatrist Nancy C. Andreason. She compared 30 creative writers at the University of Iowa with 30 people holding jobs that were not inherently creative. She found that 80% of the writers said they had experienced either manic-depressive illness or major depression, while only 30% of the people in noncreative jobs said they had.

Andreason published her results in the October 1987 issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry.

In the late 1980s, Johns Hopkins University psychologist Kay Redfield Jamison also examined the link. She studied 47 painters, sculptors, playwrights and poets, all of whom had received high honors in their fields. Jamison found that 38% of the artists had been treated for a mood disorder. Only about 1% of people in the general population report manic- depressive episodes and about 5% report major depression at some point in their lives.

Skeptics have criticized both of these studies for two reasons. First, both researchers studied very few people. Studies with few people are more likely than large studies to include a group of people that does not accurately represent the population at large.

Second, both researchers interviewed the artists themselves or had the artists fill out questionnaires. It is possible that the interviewers were biased or that the artists misrepresented their true mental state.

Biographical clues

A third study attempted to avoid the flaws of the previous research. For 10 years, Arnold M. Ludwig studied the lives of 1,004 men and women prominent in a variety of fields, including art, music, science, sports, politics and business.

He studied these people by reading 2,200 biographies.

Ludwig argued that biographers were less likely than psychiatrists to believe in advance that a person has a mental illness. This would make biographies less biased than psychiatric interviews. Biographers also typically draw information about their subjects from a variety of sources, which would make misrepresentations of mental state more difficult.

The Guilford Press published the results of Ludwig's study in 1995, in a book called The Price of Greatness: Resolving the Creativity and Madness Controversy.

Ludwig concluded that "members of the artistic professions or creative arts as a whole suffer from more types of mental difficulties and do so over longer periods of their lives than members of the other professions."

He found that, as teen-agers, between 29% and 34% of future artists and musicians suffered from symptoms of mental illness. In comparison, only 3% to 9% of future scientists, athletes and businesspeople suffered similar symptoms.

As adults, between 59% and 77% of artists, writers and musicians suffered mental illness, while only 18% to 29% of the other professionals did. Ludwig's findings seemed to confirm the link between mental illness and the artistic temperament. But what is the nature of that link?

Why?

Some researchers, including Jamison, speculate that mood disorders allow people to think more creatively. In fact, one of the criteria for diagnosing mania reads "sharpened and unusually creative thinking."

People with mood disorders also experience a broad range of deep emotions. This combination of symptoms might lend itself to prolific artistic creativity.

Ludwig's studies provided some support for the theory that mood disorders can improve creativity. The artistic achievements of about 16% of the artists, writers and musicians he studied improved during times of mental upset.

Ludwig, however, believes other factors also contribute to the high rate of mood disorders among artists. He argues that people in many professions, including sports, politics and business, are extremely creative. He thinks that more people in artistic professions have mental illness because those professions are more accepting of mental illness. As a result, Ludwig speculates, people with mental illness are naturally drawn to artistic professions.

Still others believe that artistic occupations might by their nature magnify the symptoms of mental illness. Artists, musicians and writers often work alone. When they begin to feel upset or depressed, they would not have as much support and encouragement as do athletes, scientists and businesspeople who work with others.

Everyone agrees that treatments for mood disorders need to be improved. Between 60% and 80% of people who commit suicide suffered from a mood disorder. Many people with mood disorders medicate themselves with alcohol or illegal drugs. Despite the pain of mental illness, some people with mood disorders avoid treatments because of potential side effects, such as mental sluggishness.

These side effects can be particularly debilitating for people, such as artists, musicians and writers, whose work springs in large part from states of intellectual fluidity.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This article was originally printed in the December 1996 issue of Today's Science On File, which each month publishes for students the latest developments in science, medicine, technology and the environment.

The complete Today's Science On File reference package--back issues and cumulative index housed in a sturdy red binder--is available at school and public libraries throughout the United States and Canada. For more information, see our online brochure or e-mail us at info@facts.com

Copyright (c) 1996 Facts On File News Services. Reproduction for non-profit, noncommercial uses only.


Last modified: October 26, 2003

[shutterbug]

more info from www.the-bright-side.org

Dialogues with Madwomen
by Gary Morris



What does it mean to be a "madwoman" and an artist in American society? A review of Allie Light's documentary on the subject, along with an interview, try to answer that question.

The connection between mental illness and female articulation, assertiveness, and creativity is one that society has painstakingly nurtured. The idea that a woman who speaks her mind, acts in her own interests, and — supremely — openly expresses her sexuality, must be insane goes back in our society as far as the Salem witch trials, where "witchcraft" was a code phrase for "sexually active." Closer to home is the modern woman whose refusal or inability to conform to stifling social norms has resulted in her incarceration and abuse at the hands of family, church, and the mental health industry who have attempted to silence her.

In Dialogues with Madwomen, filmmakers Allie Light and Irving Saraf have coaxed seven "madwomen" — including Light herself — into telling their stories. Using a mixture of home movies, archival footage of psycho wards, re-enactments, and (mostly) interviews with their subjects, Light and Saraf have created a complex, moving portrait of women in whom depression, schizophrenia, and multiple personalities coexist with powerful, sometimes inspired levels of creativity.

These women are often dazzling in their verbal facility, talking with honesty, humor, and passion about the most intimate details of their lives. The first interviewee is director Light, who recalls the loss of interest in her domestic life that made her check herself into a hospital for treatment. She tells of her doctor's bizarre attempts at behavior modification: "One weekend he told me I could go home if I promised to bake a turkey. The next weekend I could go home if I promised to mop all the floors." Her depression, which happened in 1963, seems to have been her unconscious mind's way of telling her she could do more than bake turkeys and mop floors. Eventually, against the advice of others, she became a teacher and filmmaker, and it's clear that depression was a key factor in this decision.

We also meet R.B., an African-American woman whose frightening exposure to the "sons of the ruling class" at Stanford helped her decide to drop out. After being raped in a hot springs, "I left my body," she says, eventually becoming a bag lady. R.B. cooperated with Light in recreating scenes from her history, including haunting footage of her huddled barefoot in the corner of an airport bathroom, pulling a hood over her face and going to sleep. R.B. is typical of the women in this film, but suffers specifically from an unpredictable euphoric state that transforms her into an instrument of powerful self-expression. One scene shows her sitting alone in a stairwell at Stanford, throwing back her head and singing a beautiful, transcendent melody. One of R.B.'s poetic descriptions of her early sense of moving through unknown terrain — "As a child, I'd butterfly up to the ceiling" — is a persuasive metaphor for the power of the interior world to break through social strictures.

Light found two of the women through her teaching. Hannah, Light's T.A. at Oakland's Laney College, is a manic-depressive obsessed with Bob Dylan. She talks about the powerful lure of madness: "I do believe in these non-ordinary realities... there's something trying to emerge. It feels intensely alive, which is why it's so hard to give up... it feels so imaginative." Hannah's imagination lets her create a variety of fascinating visual and performance art.

Dee Dee is Light's other former student. She methodically documents the things the Catholic Church taught her were good: "dying... self-mutilation. The nuns were quite violent. A lot of us would cut ourselves secretly." Dee Dee took extraordinary steps to prove her lack of personal self-worth and her adherence to church norms by slicing up her own body. Eventually she attained some kind of peace with herself, became a lesbian, and is studying homeopathy.

Most of these "madwomen" live in the San Francisco Bay area. Mairi, a fascinating multiple (25) personality, is an Oakland librarian. She tells horrific (and apparently not uncommon) tales of abuse at the hands of her family, but she too has moved toward a situation where the psychic fragmentation of multiple personalities was no longer needed as a coping strategy. She can talk with humor about her situation now: "I love the fact that I'm pretty, that I'm a lesbian, that I'm a good librarian!" she says.

One of the most disturbing, but ultimately inspiring, stories concerns Susan, a strong woman who was viciously abused from childhood, but speaks with leveling insight into her own condition. Like most of the women, in spite of the sense of personal power that informs her life, she is never far from the dark side of her own emotions: "One of the last vestiges of immense anger I have left inside of me," she says, "is that I was totally robbed of any innocence."

Karen Wong, who produced the film and is one of the seven subjects, was raped and murdered during the filming. She describes her early awareness of racism and becoming politicized, joining a progressive Maoist group that — typical of doctrinaire radical groups — kicked her out when she appeared to have "mental problems." Karen's sense of sardonic humor, a coping mechanism common to these women, emerges: "It's 1980, Reagan years, I could write a resume saying, 'Ex-communist madwoman, will you hire me?'"


Dialogues with Madwomen indicts the murderous axis of family-church-medical establishment that moves swiftly to smash extreme modes of self-expression on the part of women. At the same time, this is not simply a detached problem drama. The film shows that these women exist both as part of society, and as unique individuals capable of tremendous contributions. The sometimes uncontrollable psychic and artistic forces that gave society the excuse to lock them up has also helped them survive and to some extent flourish.

Bright Lights: Why did you make Dialogues with Madwomen?
Allie Light: The first thing was the growing need to tell my own story. I was a Women's Studies teacher for many years, and I always tried to share my experiences at Langley-Porter and at San Francisco General. I taught women in the arts and, you know, you make art from your own life. And what it did was, I got these amazing stories back from students, about themselves, their mothers and their grandmothers. Actually two of the women in the film are from my class. Hannah, the woman who loves Bob Dylan, was my T.A. at Laney College. And Dee Dee, who walks into the ocean. This was an assignment she did for my class. She did it with slides. I loved that image so much, I had it on my desk for ten years. Then when I started to get the money for the film, I knew I wanted to have her on the film and I had to track her down. She was living in Juneau, Alaska. She came back and she walked into the ocean again. She had done it originally to a poem her lover wrote, an adaptation of Allan Ginsburg's HOWL written from a lesbian point of view. And so that whole poem culminated in the walk to search for Sappho, as she says in this film.

Where did you find the other women?
Mairi, the woman with multiple personalities, Irving and I met when we were taking care of a friend who had a brain tumor. During the year and a half of chemotherapy, Mairi and I became friends. When she saw footage from some of the other interviews, she told me she was a multiple personality and asked if I would be interested. Then Susan, who was tossed back and forth between her mother and father, her therapist was a friend of ours, and he had seen some of the material and he said, "I have this client I've been seeing for seven or eight years, and she'd be wonderful in your film."

Karen Wong and I met when we both joined the Writers' Union. She was actually the associate producer on the film. After her murder, it was really impossible for us to work on the film. It was delayed at least a year by that tragedy. We just couldn't look at her.

Then R.B., the African-American, was introduced by mutual friends who were studying this therapy called process work and R.B. was doing that. She's amazing because she can do just about anything. She has her law degree from Stanford, and passed the bar, but she works mostly for arts organizations. She did all the music for the film.

People who see the film will want to know what the women are doing now.
Well, everybody is really about the same, they're living their lives. That's one reason for putting the crew in at the end. I really wanted people to see that this was a film, not real life. There's much more to these women's lives than you've seen here.

And have they all seen the film?
Yes. In fact, I have this wonderful letter from Dee Dee, saying "I want you to know I just looked at it for the 100th time!" She's back in Oakland now, studying homeopathic medicine.

Was it difficult to get them to open up the way they did? Karen talked about being repressed.
I think her interview was the most difficult. But none of them were as difficult as you would think, because the camera, as Irving says, is a great confessional. People will say, "I don't want to talk about such things," and you turn on the camera, and they almost invariably do. And where else do you get so much focused attention, with a whole group of people standing around hanging on every word you say, so that helps. And I think the fact that they all knew I had done the first interview with myself, and I wasn't hiding behind anybody. That really helped develop trust. I have much greater respect for the person who sits in front of the camera now!

This film seemed visually very complex. Was it more challenging than previous ones?
It was. It's a step beyond our last film, Shadow of the Stars. Lots of formats (laughs). But Irving and I both feel the documentary form has to change — it's too stilted. As more and more docs get theatrical runs, and are getting longer, they have to become more dramatic.

The culture seems to be more receptive to documentaries — to reality.
And actually, when docs first began, years ago, they were scripted. Flaherty's films were made from scripts. Then when cinema verite came along, people were just fascinated with capturing what was there, and they forgot about the interior world. That doesn't get realized through cinema verite.

What kind of budget did you have?
Irving and I raised $20,000, and we put in $43,000 of our own.

A lot of people think that madness, so-called, comes out of nowhere. But the film links it up with their environment.
I didn't set out to make a film about child molesting or sexual abuse, but it's there. It's probably the common denominator, although three of the women were not abused sexually as children, Karen being one of them. But then look what happened to her? Eventually, we all get it.

The target's still there. There's that constant motif in the film of the authoritarian male who's indicting the sexuality of the woman — for example, your encounter with that weird doctor asking if you kissed your husband's penis.
That's still a hard story for me to tell, because even this many years later there's still something in me that feels I must have been provocative. Irving constantly reminds me that it's not me, but the doctor, who should be ashamed.

Over the past 30 years or so, there've been attempts to redefine schizophrenia as a not unreasonable response to a chaotic world — the R. D. Laing school. Do you think there's been progress there?
I certainly think you can see it in the stories in the film. I don't know if it's generally recognized. It should be. Laing did make a big impression. But certainly in Mairi's case, if you think about multiple personalities being madness, heavens! It's not. It's sanity. What could be more sane than to split off a little piece of your mind to take all the abuse? That's very sane.

A coping strategy. These women all have strong, creative personalities, and that's all mixed in with this view of them as "madwomen," which sounds ironic.
In the '50s, any woman who was articulate and spoke out, could be labeled mad. I wanted to show that women think as well as feel and that what you so often get when you listen to a woman's story is a feeling. But behind it is the ability to analyze and figure out what happened and why and what to do about it.

You also make clear connections between the idea of art and madness. For instance, you show Karen looking at ocean waves where she sees "mocking faces," then you cut to an art print of ocean waves. Can you comment on this connection?
The only similarity between them is in the imagery, in that artists know what to do with that kind of imagery. You can take that power and use it, whereas you sort of get lost in it when you're "mad." When I was depressed, it was the least likely time I could work as an artist. Whereas somebody in a manic state could make art out of that feeling.

Hannah seems to be a good example of that.
Yes, she's prone to do all kinds of things when she's in a manic state. She says the only thing that limits her is that she doesn't have good concentration, she can't focus on a project. That's the other side. Now R.B. also has this euphoric state, where she's extremely creative and hears the music she composes.

In the movie she has a great description of the tremendous rushing sound that came to save her during a trauma.
And that was true when she was a bag lady, she had that little musical instrument in her head.

How has the film been received so far?
We thought we had this little film on rinky dink equipment, that it would be like a guerilla film, playing only to women's groups. After the opening at the Castro, the first call I had was from a psychiatrist who wanted it for the APA. But he didn't want to pay a rental fee. I told him, "I couldn't get one dime from any of the helping professions when I needed money to make the film. Not only should you pay rent, but you should pay a rather high rental fee!" Of course I never heard from him again. The film will be shown at the World Congress of Psychiatrists in Hamburg. That came from out of the Berlin showing. The film has taken off. It won the prize at Sundance, and from there went to Berlin. Then all kinds of good things have happened.

How has the film affected you personally?
I have my struggles with the visibility of my life. And so I'll be glad when this year is over, and I don't have to stand up before an audience and say I'm a "former anything."

You want to be a present-day something!
I'm pretty private, but it's really rewarding when people come up afterward and tell their stories. There's such a blurred line between who gets committed and who doesn't. It often doesn't depend at all on what the behavior is. Somebody once said to me, women are in mental hospitals, and men are in prison.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Gary Morris is editor of Bright Lights Film Journal - a popular-academic hybrid of movie analysis, history, and commentary, looking at classic and commercial, independent, exploitation, and international film from a wide range of vantage points from the aesthetic to the political. A prime area of focus is on the connection between capitalist society and the images that reflect, support, or subvert it—movies as propaganda. Published quarterly in Portland, Oregon by Gary Morris and Gregory Battle. ISSN: 0147-4049.

Copyright (c) 1995 Gary Morris - Reprinted by permission of Gary Morris


Last modified: October 26, 2003

[shutterbug]

Fairy Tales Can Come True
by Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein
via: www.the-bright-side.org


In private moments we may find ourselves reflecting upon our lives, what could have been, and our true potential. We often cast our hopes and dreams aside, and then experience feelings of disillusionment or emptiness. We feel cheated of our inalienable right of happiness.

In this world of fast paced communications, it's very easy to become sidetracked when it comes to finding our Enchanted Self. We are constantly bombarded with images from TV, radio, magazines and newspapers telling us what to wear, how we should look and smell, or what car to drive.

According to these outside options, if we follow their plan then we should be happy, right? Wrong! When we place our lives in the hands of others we lose the magical, potential for happiness that exists within each of us.

How do we begin the process of looking within? What do we look for? First, we must understand that each of us has the ability to create our own happiness and joy. Second, we need to realize that the most important tool we possess is our own unique memories.

Memories don't just pop up out of nowhere; they sometimes have to be prodded or coaxed. Think of them as children playing hide and seek, hoping and waiting to be discovered.

How do we coax our memories out into the open? Experiencing the moment can trigger positive memories from your past. Learning to recognize your positive talents and strengths through memory retrieval is an important lease of the process toward discovering your Enchanted Self.

The third step is learning how to use positive memories to reinvent yourself. Several years ago, while on vacation in Wales , I met Valerie Woodall. Valerie had worked for an insurance company. She held a high position and was responsible for many employees. When her division closed, Valerie found herself out of a job.

Valerie might have spent the following year searching for another job in the same field, but instead chose to make a career change. She scanned her past for events that had brought her happiness, and went back to her love of fairy tales.

When she was three years old her grandmother had given her a beautiful book of fairy tales (which she still has). "I got this idea to have a fairy shop. My husband thought I was crazy, that no one would come in. Ignoring him, I found this little shop in a nice arcade and I have been swamped since we opened. Who can resist buying a magic wand or a captured fairy in a bottle for a daughter, a niece or grandchild?"

Valerie had taken the fourth step in the process of discovering her Enchanted Self. She had researched the practicality of her dream. This takes lots of time and effort. Needless to say, this paid off. Valerie is a wonderful example of someone who scanned her own past, found her latent talents and potential and then did the hard work of researching and finding a way to re-invent herself. As a result, she created a new career and a new passion for herself. Most importantly, she had the courage to try.

It may take a single memory or a string of memories to give you the courage to reinvent yourself. As in any worthwhile endeavor it takes practice, time and effort. Remember that happiness starts within.

Exercise: Stimulating Your Positive Memories

Pick a favorite age. It may have been when you were in high school or when you were a young child. Make a list of your interest or hobbies, the things that you enjoyed doing the most. They may include playing sports, reading detective novels, riding a bike, or picking up seashells at the beach.

Make a second list describing your best traits or characteristics. Now imagine a person coming to see you for vocational or advocational advice. This person has the same characteristics and interests as you. This person is your present age.

Brainstorm three ways that this person could utilize his/her interest and talents in new ways.

What research would this person need to do to make these changes?

How did it feel giving this 'other' person advice?

Is there anything you advised that you might want to take-on for yourself?

If the shoe fits ... enjoy it!


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein, a positive psychologist, teaches people how to enhance their lives--and consequently live lives of meaning and joy--by reclaiming what is positive about themselves. This is different from the traditional psychotherapeutic model because it is a paradigm shift designed to help us focus on our strengths rather than our disabilities and our weaknesses. The treatment model teaches both the clinician and the client how to look for purpose and a sense of well-being in daily living. She calls this process The Enchanted Self, A State of Well Being, Joy, and Happiness. Visit her website at http://www.enchantedself.com. To join The Enchanted Self E-group, click here. To subscribe to The Enchanted Self Monthly E-newsletter, click here.

THE ENCHANTED SELF® is a registered trademark of Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein.


Copyright (c) 2002 Dr. Barbara Becker Holstein - Reprinted by permission.


Last modified: December 26, 2002

[shutterbug]

The Gift of Saturn: Creativity and Psychopathology
by Antonio Preti, MD



Introduction: the difficult definition of creativity
Genius and madness
A broken mind: schizophrenia and the artistic temperament
The circular insanity: manic-depressive illness and the bipolar disorders
Mood disorders and achievement
An open conclusion
Related articles
Glossary

INTRODUCTION: THE DIFFICULT DEFINITION OF CREATIVITY

Life in the metropolis increasingly depends on the ability to provide new and original solutions to old problems. This capacity to bring together knowledge and imagination is called "creativity". Creativity can be defined as many ways as it can be conceived.

As its simplest, creativity could be described as the ability to create products or ideas which are original and which posses a strong social usefulness. This definition, however, is not the whole answer. Frank Barron, one of the most important researchers in this field, offers a more articulate description of creativity. First creativity is considered in terms of the characteristics of the creative product and the social acknowledgement obtains. A criterion of usefulness is implied in, although not essential to, this definition. Secondly the creative product can be considered in its own context: the difficulty of the problem resolved or identified, the elegance of the solution proposed, the impact of the product itself. Thirdly creativity can be conceived on the basis of the abilities that favor it, id est as skill or aptitude.

Creativity, in fact, can be properly conceived as a cognitive capability separate from other mental functions. It appears increasingly independent from the complex of abilities grouped under the word "intelligence", although it has a strong interrelation with these mental abilities. Generally, creatively gifted individuals tend to score higher than the mean of the general population in tests measuring "intelligence", and are also evaluated as more intelligent than the mean of their peers by independent observers. Elevated performances in IQ tests, however, do not guarantee a proper utterance of creativity. The most complete studies on this topic (the Terman study on a group of gifted children followed through their lives, and the McKinnon study on a wide group of architects indicated as cleverer than the mean by their colleagues) showed that intelligence gifted people have better social skills and health than the mean of people of their own age, although with higher suicide rates, but are no more creative than the general population. So, as indicated by the study of McKinnon, there is no correlation, above an IQ level of 120, between IQ scores and creative ability, however measured. Intelligence and creativity, hence, seem independent of the other cognitive capabilities which identify an individual.

The methods used in the evaluating of creative aptitude and ability are numerous and as ingenious the argument investigated demands them to be. In 1981 Dennis Hocevar, in a circumstantial review, summarized the ten main methods used in studies on creativity:
Tests of divergent thinking
Attitude and Interest inventories
Personality inventories
Biographical inventories
Teacher nominations
Peer nominations
Supervisor ratings
Judgment of products
Eminence
Self-reported creative activities and achievements
From Hocevar D (1981): Measurement of creativity: review and critique. J Personality Assessment, 45: 450-464

Evaluation by third parties and comparison with biographies are the most used methods in large scale investigations. Personality inventories or tests for the evaluation of the individual's style of thought are frequently used with well selected samples of volunteers. One of the most ingenious methods of investigation was developed by Albert Routhenberg, who created a test of verbal associations in order to measure a type of cognitive thought called "janusian thinking". Janusian thinking is, in Routhenberg's words, the "tendency to conceptualize opposites in a free-response situation". This process involves "actively conceiving two or more opposites or antitheses simultaneously during the course of the creative process". This tendency favors the development of mental associations which are often unusual and uncommon, and according to Routhenberg's studies it seems widespread among creatively gifted people, particularly among those who are most productive, those who attain the eminence in their field.

Verbal fluency, fluency of ideas, redefinition, openness to experience, independence of thought, capacity to bring together remote associations and expend effort in the production of ideas are all abilities which favor the expression of creativity among gifted individuals. Most studies, however, agree that the expression of creativity is not the result of a single act, like an answer to a question or the resolution of a problem, but derives from a process which implies many different phases. The moment of "eureka" will not occur without a previous phase of intense working out which implies the collection and elaboration of information relevant to the creative effort, which must be compared and associated before resulting a creative product.

Arnorld M. Ludwig, who studied extensively the cognitive and psychological abilities which associate with and favor creative achievement, described the creative process thus: "One of the better known conceptualizations regards the initial stage as one of preparation during which the individual consciously but unsuccessfully attempts to solve a seemingly unsolvable problem. Then, when the problem is put aside, there is a stage of incubation, a period of variable duration, during which ideas germinate at a subconscious level, usually while the individual is engaged in other tasks. Then comes the stage of insight, discovery or illumination, the "aha" or "eureka" experience, mostly occurring when the critical faculties are suspended, such as during relaxation or dreams - when supposedly the entire solution to the problem is gleaned. But insight in itself is insufficient for discovery. The last stage supposedly involves that of elaboration followed by verification, when the idea is developed and tested against scientific, aesthetic or social standards" (from: AM Ludwig: Reflections on creativity and madness. American J Psychotherapy, 1989; 43: 4-14). An example among the more quoted is the anecdote reported by the chemist Kekule, who recounted that he conceived the ring structure of benzene after a dream in which a serpent biting its tail appeared to him. This and other examples illustrate how an innate propensity towards introspection and the ability to access hidden dimensions of consciousness can favor the course of creativity.

In this respect psychoanalysts talk of "regression in the service of the Ego", as it sound the happy wording coined by the psychoanalyst E. Kris to indicate the ability of turning to the unconscious to wide the sphere of experience. This capacity to gain access to the hidden side of the mind seems to characterize artists and writers but also, though to a lesser extent, scientists and philosophers.

The unexpected and disquieting surfacing of unconscious feelings in daily life also characterizes another wide group of individuals: those who suffer from a mental illnesses, whether for a brief period or for longer. As shown by many studies, there is a surprising link between a creative gift and the risk of mental disorder: in fact, the prevalence of mental problems among creatively gifted people is significantly higher than in the general population. This would suggest that genius, as a result of creative aptitude, and madness are connected by a non-casual link.

GENIUS AND MADNESS

The Italian psychiatrist and criminologist Cesare Lombroso has over the past century been the most consistent supporter of this hypothesis. In one of his best known books, "The Man of Genius", Lombroso illustrates his thesis in a circumstantial way referring to the genius and the lunatic, extreme types related by a shared genetic basis, which taints the descendants of the most gifted families. Lombroso was not the first to assert that there is a tight link between mental illness and creative achievement.

More than two millennia earlier, in the fragment known as "Problemata XXX", Aristotle, or a disciple of his, raised the question as to why the vast majority of the eminent people are afflicted by "melancholy", i. e. suffer from a mental disorder. The text, now accepted as part of the Aristotelian canon, is surprising in its modernity and accurately describes those characteristics peculiar to one of the most diffuse mental disorders, manic-depressive psychosis. The author of the Problemata XXX indicates many behavioral characteristics as attributes of the more eminent people of his time, attributes such as mood instability, proneness to depressive withdrawal, impulsiveness, tendency to alcohol and drug abuse, high risk of suicide, all of which are peculiar to patients suffering from manic-depressive illnesses. In the Problemata XXX there are also illustrative stories taken from myth and literature, with a gallery of examples mixing excellence and bizarreness, often with a tragic outcome.

The stereotype of the eccentric artist or of the mad scientist, moreover plays a protective role in the collective imagination against the fear and suspicion that excellence and diversity of others always engenders in the majority. The image of madness as a result of genius has been repeatedly expressed in the history of the western world, being codified during the Renaissance in the figure of the melancholic genius afflicted by Saturnian acedia, and resurging during Romanticism in the figure of the deracin (?) artist.

Cesare Lombroso was among the first to apply a less anecdotal method to the investigation of the relationship between the creative gift and the risk of a mental illness, offering an answer that is nevertheless the positivistic version of the romantic myth.

Most studies performed in the positivistic era in order to either confirm, or refute, Lombroso's hypothesis rest on biographical evidence. This raises the suspicion that these studies claiming a higher prevalence of psychopathologies among creative or eminent people, were biased by overexposure. For individuals, such as artists in the public eye more information is available about their private lives: this could determine an apparently higher prevalence of disorders that tend, as a result of negative stigma, to be hidden whenever possible. In addition, some temperamental traits widespread among creative people, like eccentricity, uneasiness, propensity to excess and experimentation, could be a reflection not only of an underlying mental disorder, but also, and above all, of the tolerance by society of the behavior of individuals who obtain achievement. In some way this behavior will be a secondary product of the achievement, rewarded since it permits the expression of dissenting demands which by the majority of people are not able to express and which are not directly linked to the creative utterance.

Despite from these reservation, even the later studies, performed using methods applying specific nosographic categories and the direct confrontation with the candidate through interviews and inventories, yielded similar results, with a higher prevalence of mental disorders among gifted people than among the general population.

The two principal studies performed in the era preceding the systematic ordering of the more recent classifications (DSM III, and now IV, and ICD 9, and now 10), show among both artists and scientists a prevalence of severe mental disorders significantly higher than among the general population, with a strong familial association between creativity, psychopathology, and higher suicide rates. In a study performed in Germany from 1927 to 1943 on 5000 individuals, Adele Juda, at that time researcher at the Institute for Psychiatry of Munich, evaluated frequency and distribution of psychiatric disorders in a well selected sample of eminent artists, scientists and their relatives. The study shows a significantly higher prevalence of mental illnesses among eminent people and their families compared to the general population. Among artists disorders of the schizophrenic spectrum and psychopaties were most common. Among scientists, instead, disorders of the cyclotimic type, in particular manic-depressive psychoses, were more frequent. In both groups there was a high suicide rate and a strong familial heredity in the transmission of the psychopathological trait and of creative talent.

Some decades later JL Karlsson, in a study of Iceland, reported a clear familial association between the diagnosis of psychosis, taken from hospital registers, and eminence in artistic or scientific fields, based citations in Who's Who. A clearly recognizable creative talent was present in the relatives of schizophrenic patients twice as often as in the general population; and in the relatives of manic-depressive patients six times as often as in the general population. Karlsson, in his conclusion, suggests a familial link between creativity and psychoses, sustained by a common genetic basis.

In both studies there is a surprising but clear association between the creative gift and the risk of schizophrenia, although mediated by a familial link, since in the concept itself of schizophrenia as illness there is implied a criterion of impairment.

A BROKEN MIND: SCHIZOPHRENIA AND THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT

Schizophrenia is a psychosis, i.e. a mental disorder which implies a severe distortion of reality testing: its decourse is greatly influenced by social and economical factors far removed from the clinical side of its nature. The clinical symptomatology can be traced back to the ex novo appearance of distortions in perception, such as illusions and hallucinations, and of thought disorders leading to delusions. For a proper diagnosis of schizophrenia the symptomatology should be independent of concurrent ingestion of a drug and from the presence of a metabolic disease leading to alterations in the cerebral neurochemistry.

Generally the clinical picture of the schizophrenia is associated with severe impairment of social and occupational functioning with a negative outcome in between 30% and 50% of cases, sometimes developing into dementia. "Dementia Praecox" is the name coined by the the turn-of-the-century German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin. Kraepelin was the first to isolate the disorder now called schizophrenia from among the myriad syndromes that crowded the treatises of the positivistic era. Kraepelin, on the basis of his observations, distinguished the psychoses with a recurrent decourse and a conservative outcome, which he put in the same group as cycloid psychoses (called by him "manic-depressive illness"), from the psychoses with a progressive and negative decourse, which he indicated with the name "Dementia Praecox". Kraepelin considered the outcome of this disorder to always be negative, biased as he was by his own position as academic psychiatrist and chairman of a center of excellence in which he had access to more severe cases, and living as he did in a age without therapy for mental illness other than the containment and shock treatment.

In 1927, for example, the Austrician psychiatrist Wagner von Jauregg was awarded the Nobel prize for Medicine for his invention of malario-therapy, a treatment that was effective in obtaining the remission of many severe psychotic syndromes, through the induction of periodical fevers after the exposure to malaria. The results of this treatment derived from the induction of anti-inflammatory effects against the aetiological agents in the syndromes that were secondary to an encephalitis, as in the case of syphilis with cerebral complications, for example.

Some years later, in the Thirties, following the observation that mentally ill patients suffering from epilepsy were well after a convulsive fit and were bad when the epileptic symptoms vanished for some reason, the Italians Cerletti e Bini introduced Electro-shock-therapy into clinical practice, obtaining results that, at the time, appeared important. Not important enough, however, for a Nobel prize, which was conferred, instead, on the Portuguese Antonio Eges Moniz, for the demonstration that leucotomy (neurosurgery), used in the treatment of some otherwise refractory forms of epilepsy, could also be used for the successful treatment of some mental illnesses, like an obsessive-compulsive disorder, a disorder characterized by high anxiety and by the uncontainable drive to repeat actions or ruminate about ideas or unusual thoughts: a condition that can become impairing.

All these therapeutic tools were fortunately replaced by the introduction into clinical practice of new psychoactive drugs, at the beginning of Fifties. At the age of Kraepelin, however, the only drugs used were laudane (opium), belladonna (atropine, an anticholinergic) and a few other substances, generally with a high toxicity. So the impression of incurability of mental illnesses was widespread, and most mental disorders were considered to have an unfavorable outcome. Kraepelin was so persuaded of the irreversible decourse of the disorder now called schizophrenia, that when during a study in Java he observed more favorable outcomes, sometimes even complete recovery, he was enormously impressed.

Less biased by the "illusion of the clinician", as the tendency to overestimate one's own observations is called by epidemiologist , the Swiss Eugen Bleuler, who held the chair of "Burgholzi" Psychiatric Hospital, in which worked eminent psychiatrist like Jung, offered a redefinition of the concept of the psychoses coining the word "schizophrenia" (=broken mind) to indicate what was for him the most relevant aspect of Dementia Praecox: i.e. the loosening of mental associations. For Bleuler schizophrenia is characterized by an alteration of mental associative functions with a concurrent, and consequent, emotional instability, resulting in anaffectivity and autism (closure in oneself). For him hallucinations and delusions were subsequent to the loosening of mental associations, and were without influence on the outcome of the disorder, which was, even in his new formulation, severe and generally bad.

The symptomatology of schizophrenia, as it has been termed since Bleuler, remains manifold and includes many different behavioral patterns, predominantly disorganized and inappropriate behavior and speech, loss of will and drive, and a generalized lessening of the ability to express emotions. Positive symptoms, involving excess or distortion of normal functions, tend to fluctuate over time, whereas negative symptoms, involving loss or diminution of normal functions, seem to be more stable and to be less responsive to treatment. A three dimensional model now appears to be a better description of schizophrenic symptomatology than the preceding positive/negative dichotomy, but there is little agreement on the neural mechanisms that generate these symptoms. Studies performed with neuroimaging techniques indicate that brain abnormalities (namely signs of cerebral atrophy) can be the basis of schizophrenia, but the extent of such abnormalities depends on the characteristics of the control groups. Social deprivation per se can determine cerebral atrophy in mammals. Educational and social premorbid adjustment is often poor in schizophrenic patients, leading precociously to defective relational abilities: so cerebral abnormalities could be the result, rather than the cause of disordered behavior.

Neuropathological studies also suggest that schizophrenia is not due to a neurodegenerative process, but rather may result from lesions involving a neurodevelopmental process. The main support for this assertion is the lack of gliosis in histological investigation: gliosis occurs after many brain injuries and neurodegenerative conditions, but is not observed after events that occur early in development.

Epidemiological studies support the genetic transmission of the risk of schizophrenia, but this genetically enhanced risk seems to consist in a greater vulnerability to environmental factors acting in the perinatal period, such as complications in pregnancy and at birth or exposure to viral agents.

The final step in the pathogenesis of schizophrenia appears to be a distortion of the systems involved in modulation or integration of information processing. A key role for dopaminergic pathways is suggested by the therapeutic efficacy of dopamine blocker agents, but , as the development of new "atypical" neuroleptics with greater effects on serotonin indicate, many other neurotransmitters could be implicated in the defects in information processing.

The fact that such as severe illness could in some way favor the expression of creative abilities, mainly in the artistic field, raised enormous interest and provoked myriad studies. These studies were summarized in the Sixties by the Italian Silvano Arieti, an eminent researcher in the field of psychoses who for many years lived in the United States. In his book "Creativity, the magic synthesis", Arieti elaborates his hypothesis that the though processes typical of schizophrenic patients can favor the development of unusual mental associations which can, in turn, be inspiring to the creatively gifted individual, above all in the artistic field. Arieti supports his hypothesis in many ways, indicating the extraordinary talent of schizophrenic patients in coining new words, and giving many examples of the artistic production of patients confined in Asylums in the first half of this century. The works of these artists are often very odd and disquieting, but although unusual they do not posses the requisite of being "socially enjoyable", which is essential if a product is to be judged as creative.

The impenetrability of the works produced by mentally ill artists in the studies of the Psychiatric Hospitals in Germany drove the Nazis in the 1930s to link these works with the works of avant-garde painters, which appeared equally unintelligible to the Nazis, in the ill-famed "Degenerated Art" exhibition. Interest in the artistic production of mentally ill patients lasted until the Sixties, when the introduction of more selective diagnostic categories lessened enthusiasm for the creativity enhancing virtues of the schizophrenia."

Many cases diagnosed as "Schizophrenia" were probably severe forms of manic-depression: the introduction of specific drugs for the treatment of mental disorders contributed towards a better identification of cases, with more cases diagnosed as manic-depressive psychosis. The discovery by the Australian physician Cade that lithium ion can be used for the effective treatment of less severe forms of manic-depressive illness heightened interest in this mental disorder. With the increase in the number of cases identified awareness was also raised that it was disorders with an affective (mood) component: those characterized by melancholy (severe depression) that were associated with creative achievement, just as the author of the Problemata XXX asserted.

THE CIRCULAR INSANITY: MANIC-DEPRESSIVE ILLNESS AND THE BIPOLAR DISORDERS

Manic-depressive illness, or, as it is now called, bipolar mood disorder, is a disorder with a moderately high prevalence, about 1% in the general population. The clinical picture in current literature derives from the description made by Kraepelin in his treatise, but the disorder has been well known since antiquity. In Ancient-Egyptian papyruses and Assyro-Babylonian terracotta tablets there are descriptions of an illness characterized by recurrent episodes of depression and suicidal thought, whereas the alternation of depressive episodes with euphoria is clearly described in a paper dating from the Imperial era by the physician Areteo of Cappadocia.
Effectively bipolar disorders are characterized by the alternation of depressive episodes (with melancholia, insomnia, loss of appetite, anxiety and restlessness) with other episodes with an opposite euphoric mood, excitement, higher energy and tirelessness, overconfidence, impulsiveness and imprudence. In the periods between two episodes those who are suffering from the disorder have a highly adaptive life style , sometime with very high level of functioning, thanks to the tenacity, tirelessness and social ease that are typical of these individuals. During an episode of illness, however, the social and occupational functioning of the afflicted individual is impaired, sometimes with irreparable consequences.

Bipolars (as patients suffering from manic-depressive disorders are described using a "politically correct" word) are often inconstant at work and their affectionate and social relationship tend to be stormy: their divorce rates are higher than those of the general population, and there is a very high prevalence among them of the misuse of alcohol and other drugs, which bipolar patients may take either an auto-therapy to lessen anxiety and depression, or during an impulsive euphoric period. As a whole the lives of bipolars are troubled, with a high risk of death by suicide: one patient in ten dies by suicide, and the frequency of self-inflicted injuries is even higher (1 in 5 cases, according to studies). Nevertheless these individuals appear to have a unique gift for creative activity, and show a specific talent in the arts, sciences, philosophy speculation, and political and military leadership.

The following all suffered from bipolar disorders in their lives: the scientists Boltzmann and Babbage, the father of modern computer science; the composers Rossini and Tchaikovsky, who committed suicide drinking a cup of water contaminated with vibrio colerae; the statesmen Churchill and Lincoln; the painters van Gogh and Pollock; the philosophers Wittgenstein and Kierkegaard; the writers Pavese and Hemingway, both of whom died by suicide. Poets and writers seem to be particularly prone to developing mental problems, generally of a depressive type, and has even been asserted that one cannot write with success without being "exposed to the Dark Sun of Melancholy". Nancy C. Andreasen, an eminent American psychiatrist who studied literature before devoting herself to medicine, performed an extensive study with her coworkers at the middle of the Seventies on the qualities which characterized the styles of thought of a group of writers who were participating in the annual Writer's Workshop of Iowa University, and, using the criteria of the rising DSM-III, found a high prevalence among them of mood disorders, of a bipolar type.

The style of thought of the writers investigated in addition showed more resemblances with the over inclusive and imaginative style of thought of manic patients, than with that of schizophrenic patients examined in the same study. A clear prevalence of psychopathologies from the affective spectrum among creatively talented people was later reported by KJ Jamison in a study dedicated of twenties century English poets, by JJ Schildkraut and coworkers among American Abstract Expressionist Painters, and by AM Ludwig among 30 American female writers. Kay Jamison, in a study covering three centuries, reported similar results limited to writers and poets, with high rates of mood disorders, in most cases of a bipolar type.

In the Jamison study, the suicide and alcoholism rates were also very high: as was the familial transmission of both psychopathological risk and creativity. Kay Jamison reports many examples in his study, among the more representative is one which concerns the poet George Gordon, known as Lord Byron, whose familial history was full of suicides and bizzareness no less clamorous that that which accompanied his own adventurous and unfortunate life. The ability of bipolar patients and their relatives to express themselves successfully is not limited to the artistic field, however, and in fact achievement and ability seem to be attributes of the families of bipolar who appear time and again as motive powers for advancement of mankind.

[shutterbug]

(cont'd)
MOOD DISORDERS AND ACHIEVEMENT

In an extensive review on this topic Frederic Goodwin and Kay Jamison (among the most authoritative researchers in this field) note a significantly higher success in the social and occupational fields among manic-depressive patients' relatives, and often among the patients themselves, at least in those conditions which impair working and relational abilities less. This has been confirmed by the repeated observation that the prevalence of bipolar disorders is clearly higher in the more advantaged classes. This association between proneness to cyclothymic breakdown and social achievement differentiates manic-depressive psychosis from all other mental illnesses, including closely related disorders, such as Major Depression, with the exception, perhaps, of Anorexia Nervosa, which also associate with higher levels of performance, although at the cost of higher mortality rates as a result of medical consequences and suicide. An example of the association between a bipolar disorder and achievement is offered by Jamison herself, essayist and successful researcher, who suffered from a bipolar disorder, as she herself narrates in her autobiography "An unquiet mind".

The high suicide rates and the low fertility of bipolar patients, who tend to marry less than the general population and to have less children than the mean, suggested even in the past that the carriers of the genetic burden of the disorder must have some compensatory advantage in order for a relatively high percentage of affected individuals (more than 1 %) to be maintained in the general population. Studies on the relationship between creativity and mental illnesses suggest that it is the same characteristics of the disorder, in their less severe manifestations, and not some indeterminate associated factor which confer such a compensatory advantage on afflicted individuals and their relatives.

Ruth Richards, who extensively studied this aspect of the relationship between mood disorders and creativity, found among bipolar patients and their relatives a high propensity to the development and expression of creative potential in every field, even those not mutually linked. These abilities were evident mainly among individuals with slight or subclinical forms of the disorder. The healthy carriers of the genetic burden of manic-depressive psychosis seem in some way to take advantage from exactly the vulnerability they transmit. One can only speculate as to the characteristics that confer such an advantage . Constance Holden, a member of staff on the authoritative magazine "Science", indicated in a paper appeared on "Psychology Today" (April 1987) some of the aspects that could favor the creative achievement among bipolars. First their emotional reactivity: bipolar patients tend to be more sensitive to environmental and interior stimuli. Another factor is their greater disinhibition, which makes them both more open to experimentation and more resourceful. Another typical characteristic of bipolar patients is their greater ability to concentrate, especially in the hypomanic phase of the disorder. Further more, the greater fluidity of mental associations of these individuals favors a more fertile imagination.

It should be noted that the states of excitement that characterize manic-depressive psychosis create greater energy resource and a greater tolerance to fatigue, conditions which favor productive activity, multiplying the opportunities of creative expression and creative realization. On the other hand depressive withdrawal favors the process of introspection, permitting access to the inner dimensions of one's own mind.

In general, the experience of mental illness per se permits access to dimensions of life otherwise unknowable, particularly in conditions that associate with unusual and extreme circumstances as in psychosis. Impulsivity itself, which typically associates with many mental disorders, often leads to enterprises which are occasionally very original, and which in other circumstances, would never be pursued. Felix Post, an English emeritus psychiatrist who performed a close study of the biographies of the most eminent men of our century in the arts, science and in politics noting, as have other authors, a higher prevalence of mood disorders in his sample, supposed that the psychological discomfort itself which accompanies to a mental disorder is the main drive for creative effort: many writers, in fact, asserted that through the act of writing they hold off depressive anguish. For him this relationship can be biuniform, meaning that even creative effort, like other types of stress, could favor a psychological breakdown: the intense intellectual work of the creative process is associated with higher neural activity in the brain, and this hyperactivity can determine the onset of mental problems in those already vulnerable. Even in the past, during the Renaissance, there were philosophers who supposed that intellectual work could lead to melancholy, and this was the explanation they offered for the proneness to depression in poets and other men of letters.

AN OPEN CONCLUSION

All these studies indicate that mental disorders which imply an imbalance in the neural circuits which control mood, beyond the suffering that they cause, can also, in some circumstances, favor the expression of adaptive potential. Mental illnesses are the result of underlying neurobiological variances that, as researchers like Tim J Crow and Daniel R Wilson remind us, continue to be the basis for the action of mechanisms of selection which help men to adapt to rapidly changing conditions of life, particularly in the relational sphere. Joseph Schildkraut, one of the fathers of the biological approach to the study of mental disorders, put forward a very suggestive hypothesis attributing a decisive role to artistic symbolism in favoring the social cohesion of groups, so that the group which expresses the most creative personalities will acquire an adaptive advantage which maintains the integrity of the group as a whole, in spite of the vulnerability of the individual.
Such a process, valid for scientific and technical innovation too, would warrant the maintaining in the general population of the genetic clusters carrying the risk of mental disorders, provided that they favor creativity. This genetic burden would be preserved, in spite of the maladjusted potential of the individual, by mechanisms of selection operating at a group level. So, even if mental disorders bring suffering and distress, the aspects which are capable of enriching people's lives should not be dismissed. The "ungrateful guest" which torments the lives of the melancholic is, if properly assisted, also able to express its nicer side.

SUGGESTED READINGS

RELATED ARTICLES

Andreasen NC: Symptoms, signs and diagnosis of schizophrenia. Lancet, 346: 477-481

Andreasen NC, Glick ID: Bipolar affective disorder and creativity: implications and clinical management. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 1988; 29: 207-217

Barron F, Harrington DM: Creativity, Intelligence and personality. Ann Rev Psychol, 1981; 32: 439-476

Carpenter WT, Buchanan RW: Schizophrenia. The New England J Medicine, 330: 681-690

Crow TJ: A Darwinian approach to the origins of psychosis. Br J Psychiatry, 1995; 167: 12-25

Frosch WA: Moods, madness and music. major affective disease and musical creativity. Comprehensive Psychiatry, 1987; 28: 315-322

Hasenfus N, Magaro P: Creativity and schizophrenia: an equality of empirical constructs. Br J Psychiatry, 1976; 129: 346-369

Hocevar D: Measurement of creativity: review and critique. J Person Assessment, 1981; 45: 450-464

Juda A: The relationship between highest mental capacity and psychic abnormalities. Am J Psychiatry, 1949; 106: 296-307

Ludwig AM: Reflections on creativity and madness. Am J Psychotherapy, 1989; 43: 4-14

Ludwig AM: Mental illness and creative activity in female writers. Am J Psychiatry, 1994; 151: 1650-1656

MacKinnon DW: The nature and nurture of creative talent. Am Psychologist, 1962; 17: 484-495

Post F: Creativity and psychopathology. A study of 291 world-famous men. Br J Psychiatry, 1994; 165: 22-34

Richards RL: Relationship between creativity and psychopathology: an evaluation and interpretation of the evidence. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 1981; 103: 261-324

Richards R, Kinney DK, Lunde I, Benet M, Merzel APC: Creativity in manic-depressives, cyclothymes, their normal relatives and control subjects. J Abnormal Psychol, 1988; 97: 281-288

Rothenberg A: The process of janusian thinking in creativity. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 1971; 24: 195-205

Schildkraut JJ, Hirshfeld AJ, Murphy JM: Mind and mood in modern art. Depressive disorders, spirituality and early deaths in the Abstract Expressionist Artists of the New York school. Am J Psychiatry, 1994; 151: 482-488

Schou M: Artistic productivity and lithium prophylaxis in manic-depressive illness. Br J Psychiatry, 1979; 135: 97-103

Wilson DR: Evolutionary epidemiology. Integrative Psychiatry, 1994; 10: 6-12

BOOKS

Arieti S: Creativity: The magic synthesis. Basic Books, New York, 1976

Barron F: Creativity and personal freedom. D Van Nostrand Co, NY, 1968

Goodwin F, Jamison KR: Manic- Depressive illness. Oxford University Press, New York, 1990

Jamison KR: Touched with fire. The Free Press, Macmillan Inc, USA, 1993

Klibansky R, Panofsky E, Saxl F: Saturn and melancholy. Studies in the history of natural philosophy, religion and art. Thomas Nelson & Sons LTD, London, 1983

Koestler A: The act of creation. Macmillan, NY, 1964

Lombroso C: The Man of Genius. (original edition in Italian) Walter Scott, London, 1891

Ludwig AM: The price of greatness. New Yor, Guildford Press, 1996

Karlsson JL: Inheritance of creative intelligence. Nelson-Hall, Chicago, 1978

Kris E: Psychoanalytic explorations in Art. International Universities Press, New York, 1952

Rothenberg A: The emerging Goddess: the creative process in art, science, and other fields. Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1979

Storr A: The dynamics of creation. London, Secker & Warburg, 1972

Wittkower R, Wittkower M: Born under Saturn. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, London, 1963

GLOSSARY

Delusion
A delusion is an idea, a belief or a credence based on erroneous inferences about the external reality or the relationships between elements of that reality. Such an idea, belief or credence is stubbornly sustained even in the face of contradictory factual evidence and despite opposition from the beliefs of the majority of other people. The delusional quality of an idea, belief or credence needs to be compared to the sum of ideas, beliefs or credences of the culture to which the patient belongs: the idea that spirits are the cause of the malaise of the patient can not be considered a delusion if the same opinion is shared by the culture to which the patient belongs (Central Africa, Central America).

The Latin word "delirium" (= delusion) contains in its etymon the meaning of "to lose one's way, to go out of the furrow". The Latin verb "delirare" (= to have a delusion) therefore indicates a significant characteristic of delusion: i.e. that it is something that diverges from the usual path of thoughts, both of the individual expressing the delusion, and the culture to which this individual belongs. The German word ³wahn² (=delusion; from the Gothic "wan", derived from the Indo-European radix "WENO", Latin "vanus", English "wane" = to be empty) alludes to the "emptiness" of meaning of the delusion, which often has no proof to support it, and which is usually sustained by weak reasoning and argumentation lacking verification. There are many classifications of delusions on the basis of their content: the most widespread themes involve persecution (by third persons, in an organized manner, in order to bring about harm or damage); jealousy (the idea of being betrayed by a partner, despite contrary evidence); grandiosity (belief in possession of particular or exceptional qualities, in the absence of verification); somatic (transformation or alteration of some part of the body). In schizophrenia delusions with a bizarre content are common, and are completely incongruous with the usual beliefs of the patient expressing them: for example a patient can abruptly sustain that he or she has been changed into a wolf, or is in contact with supernatural entities. Also frequently found in schizophrenia is a particular type of delusional perception, which the German psychiatrist Kurt Schneider considered specific to the disorder, and which concerns the idea of telepathy; mind control, reading, broadcasting and transmission of thoughts.

Hallucination

An hallucination is a sensorial perception in the absence of the appropriate stimulus: for example; seeing objects not present in the environment, or hearing voices of people too far from the individual to be effectively heard. Hallucination should be differentiated from illusion, in which a stimulus actually present, is intepreted in the wrong way: for example a pile of rags in the dark can be mistaken for a person.

False perception can occur as a result of a physiological condition, such as tiredness (hypnagogic hallucination), or during awakening (hypnopompic hallucination). Hallucinations also occur after stress or after the ingestion of psychedelic drugs in individuals without any mental disorder. When the hallucination has a clear organic basis (the action of a drug, the initial phase of migraine or of a temporal epileptic crisis) it is common for the individual to be aware of the hallucinatory character of his or her perceptions. When hallucination occurs during a mental disorder this awareness is rare. Schizophrenia often involves auditory hallucination. A patient says that he/she hears voices conversing or commenting on the patient¹s actions. Sometimes these voices make suggestions that the patient will tend to trust.

Visual hallucination is frequent after the ingestion of psychedelic drugs like LSD or during the initial phase of migraine or of a temporal epileptic crisis. In migraine the visual hallucinations are often of a geometric type: a wide description is offered by the Americal neurologist Oliver Sacks in his book Migraine. Tactile hallucinations (the sensation of having something under the skin) are often reported during abstinence from cocaine or amphetamines. Olfactory hallucinations (the perception of unpleasant smell not present in the environment) are reported as precocious symptoms in some brain tumor cases.

For more informations on hallucinations see: Ramon A. Boza: Hallucinations and illusions of non-psychiatric aetiologies. In the archives of Psychiatry on-line Barry L. Beyerstein: Believing is seeing: organic and psychological reasons for hallucinations and other anomalous psychiatric symptoms. In the archives of Medscape

Psychosis

A condition in which the patient experiences a severe impairment of reality testing mechanisms, often in association with delusions and hallucinations. The impairment of reality testing often severely interferes with the social and working ability of the patient, whose behaviour appears incongruous or disorganized. Abnormal control of impulses is frequent, with a tendency towards aggression, irritability and agitation.

A restriction of consciousness, with sensory clouding and confusion (disorientation) may be present, especially in those conditions with a clear organic basis (for example brain lesions).

Gliosis

The glia is part of the brain tissue which acts as protection for neurons and vessels. The glia essentially exerts a nutritive function, but also controls the integrity of the neuron tissues. Usually after a brain lesion, however has been provoked, the necrosed tissue is absorbed by the proliferation of glyal cells, which take the place of the dead tissue. This process occurs constantly, from the age of 6 months. The absence of glyosis (glial reactions) in the lesions observed in the brains of schizophrenic patients suggests that these lesions occur early in brain development, as a consequence of complications during pregnancy (foetal hypoxia; metabolic disorder; action of toxins or drugs; viral infection).

Information-processing

A process by which signals arriving at the brain are elaborated and integrated with the memory of previous sensations. The signals, thus elaborated, contribute to the activation of genetically pre-determined patterns of behavioural response. The brain can be conceived as a huge data processor: information reaches the subcortical and cortical centres along the sense path. Sensorial signals come from the external environment but also from within the body. The elaboration of these signals implies their transfer to gating stations. In these gating stations all inputs are potentiated or inhibited according to the status of the organism. Specific neuronal pathways, which use neurotransmitter like dopamine, serotonin, noradrenaline, take part in the filtering of inputs. According to the frequency of discharge of these neuronal pathways some signals are poetntiated and others are inhibited. The majority of the drugs used in the treatment of mental disorders act on circuits using these neurotransmitters.

Autism

Autism is a lack of reciprocity in social interaction with other human beings. Autism also is a behavioral syndrome of young children. Autism was first reported as a disease in children by Kanner in 1943. The typical child with autism avoids eye contact, does not show anticipatory movements when about to be picked up, resists being held or touched and lacks initiative. Autistic people show inability to reciprocate and the tendency to treat other people as objects. Some individuals with autism, though not all, show special abilities, particularly in the field of root memory (e.g. numarical skills), music, art and visuospatial skills.

From Mary Coleman (1997): The autistic syndrome: a review. The Italian journal of Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences, 7 (1): 11-15 The American Neurologist Oliver Sacks describes some examples of autistic artists in his books The man who mistook his wife for a hat and An anthropologist on Mars.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Antonio Preti is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist who lives in Italy. A Serendip visitor, Antonio was asked to write about his work and The Gift of Saturn: Creativity and Psychopathology is the result. Like all materials on Serendip, it is intended not as the final word on any of the subjects considered, but rather as a window to observations, thoughts, and ideas, and a stimulus to further exploration and discussion.


Last modified: October 26, 2003

[shutterbug]

Here's a link to lots more creative/famous bipolars
http://depression.about.com/gi/dynam...Fcreative.html