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Van Gogh presented his cut off ear to his beloved. Hemingway suffered from persecution mania. Gogol had bouts of severe depression. It seems that genius is always somehow connected with mental disorders. But is there any confirmation of this?
In 2014, fans around the world mourned the death of actor Robin Williams. According to the official version, Williams committed suicide amid an attack of paranoia. In the press, publications immediately appeared on the topic of the connection between creativity and mental disorders. Journalists recalled that the actor, whom many called a genius, suffered from depression for many years, abused alcohol and took drugs. From the pages of newspapers and magazines, the question again and again sounded: “Psychological instability – an inevitable companion of genius?”
Of the 29 studies, only nine showed a clear link between mental disorders and creativity.
Psychologists also tried to find an answer to this question: in the 1998th century, dozens of scientific articles appeared on this topic. In 29, psychiatrists from McMaster University (Canada) summed up the interim result of this work by examining XNUMX studies. Only nine of them showed a clear link between mental disorders and creativity. Fifteen did not reveal any association, and in five the data obtained did not allow drawing unambiguous conclusions. At the same time, Canadian scientists drew attention to the weakness of the methodology and unclear evaluation criteria in many works.
Why are the results so mixed? Perhaps the problem lies in the subject itself. Measuring human creativity is not an easy task. So, in 2011, Swedish psychologists found that representatives of creative professions suffer from bipolar disorder 1,35 times more often than workers with more routine tasks. But they were based only on the type of activity of the participants. In the “creative group” they recorded artists, photographers, designers, scientists, in the “less creative” – accountants and auditors. What exactly was the work of those and others, how creative it was – no one found out.
Half of the poets surveyed at least once in their lives sought psychological help. True, it is only nine people.
This simplification leads to confusion: either the creative professions are more likely than others to be subject to bipolar disorder, or accountants have some kind of mysterious immunity to this disease. In addition, disorders such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia were present in approximately equal proportions in both.
One of the main arguments of those who believe in the “alliance” between genius and mental instability was the study of Kay Redfield Jamison. It was attended by 47 poets, writers and artists. Among other things, Jamison found that half of the poets sought psychological help at least once in their lives. True, critics of this study note that this is only 9 people.
Emotionally unstable people more often gravitated towards art, and reserved people with clearer thinking gravitated towards science.
The American psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig took a different approach. He studied more than two thousand biographies of celebrities, trying to find in them indications of mental problems. He was able to show that emotionally unstable people more often gravitated toward art, and reserved people with clear thinking gravitated towards science. But Ludwig himself noted that his results do not allow us to say unequivocally that genius or even outstanding creative abilities develop side by side with mental disorders.
Read more:
- Creativity on the verge of insanity
Why, then, do we believe in this myth so much, if there is not a single irrefutable scientifically based evidence?
A pertinent answer comes from the Lebanese psychologist Arne Dietrich’s suggestion, based on psychologist Daniel Kahneman’s “availability heuristic” theory, that what we think is most likely is what we can easily imagine, what is remembered and has caused strong emotional experiences. So, we immediately remember the tragic story of Van Gogh or the suicide of Virginia Woolf, but we do not remember the many writers and artists who lived to a ripe old age, whose life was measured, calm and happy.
Perhaps the point is that we want such a connection to exist. This belief comforts us and helps us come to terms with reality. A person suffering from depression may recall that such greats as Mark Twain, Isaac Newton, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka also suffered from this ailment. Stephen Fry, Catherine Zeta Jones and Mel Gibson are living with bipolar disorder. And healthy people understand that for talent, they might have to pay with their health.