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Those whom society unanimously regards as geniuses usually perceive their giftedness as a heavy burden. They put this cross on themselves voluntarily and carry it to the end – as a rule, alone. And if the goddess of beauty Aphrodite was born from the foam, then the goddess of genius seems to be born in the depths of the inflamed consciousness. So what is it – a curse or just a consequence of increased brain activity?
The Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso and the Russian geneticist Vladimir Efroimson at different times came to the same conclusion: genius is a genetically determined quality. However, this opinion, it seems, can be easily refuted if we consider individual examples. We know that many future geniuses grew up in extremely poor and often dysfunctional families. The situation itself gave rise to an internal protest and a desire to change something in them.
There may be another explanation for this phenomenon. So, Goethe, for example, believed that the desire for truth makes a genius out of an ordinary person.
Psychological trauma as a source of extraordinary thinking
Psychiatrist and author of Touching Fire: Manic Depressive Psychosis and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Relfield Jamison, has found that nearly 80% of talented people have mental disorders.
The causes of disorders are often to be found in childhood: for example, many future geniuses were abused by their parents. Many of them already in adulthood were haunted by troubles, misfortunes and other traumatic situations, which not everyone can cope with. In the most critical moments, extraordinary thinking arose among geniuses. Negative emotions served as an incentive to search for unusual creative solutions.
Genius is a way both to transform your traumas and to be heard, understood
The already mentioned geneticist Vladimir Efroimson believed that a genius cannot create without society: it is only thanks to him that creation receives a response. This means that genius is a way both to transform one’s traumas and to be heard and understood.
Most of the works of Nikolai Gogol were saturated with mysticism: the writer gave his own fears the form of bizarre stories, trying to somehow interpret inexplicable phenomena in his life. And Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart himself sentenced himself to death in the Requiem, saying goodbye to our world with his help. Consider a few more cases where pathology served as an impetus for the creation of masterpieces.
Salvador Dalli
Today, the Catalan Salvador Dali is known throughout the world as one of the main representatives of surrealism. The foundation for such an unusual perception of reality was laid in childhood. Salvador had an older brother who died of meningitis before the birth of the future genius. As he grew older, Dali realized that in his face, his parents were trying to resurrect their dead firstborn. This deeply traumatized him and made him doubt himself for the rest of his life.
Throughout his childhood, Salvador tried to attract the attention of his parents with constant tantrums, and when he grew up, he could not build healthy relationships with others. The artist did not find any other way out but to turn his life into a provocation, going against everything and everyone. In his diaries, he wrote: “… I was obsessed with the desire to force myself to love at any cost. The child king has become an anarchist! On principle, I was against everything. From an early age, I unconsciously did everything to be different from others. In my youth I did the same, but on purpose. It was worth saying “no” – I answered “yes”. In each of his works, the cry of a lonely soul is heard, striving to find integrity.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Nietzsche was obsessed with the idea of the appearance of the superman. It is especially evident in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The extraordinary perception of the author’s life was the result of his megalomania. Over time, his condition worsened, and the idea that a person should have cosmic abilities eventually led to a mental breakdown. Nietzsche claimed that “God is dead”, and, as if echoing this idea, his consciousness was dying.
The philosopher spent 1889-1990 in a psychiatric hospital. Doctors noted sharp mood swings, confusion in words. Nietzsche spoke first in French, then in Italian, asked to play his non-existent musical works. The disease progressed, and from a brilliant creator, the philosopher turned into a silent creature, driven solely by animal instincts. He spent his last years under the care of his sister and mother, whom he was unable to recognize.
Vincent van Gogh
Like the works of Van Gogh, his life, like a puzzle, consisted of small details, and the true picture can only be seen by putting all the pieces together. Van Gogh’s strangeness began to manifest itself in childhood: he inherited a mental disorder from his mother.
Creativity has always been in the first place for the artist, other needs were not realized, which aggravated mental problems. In his diaries, he wrote: “My bones are worn out. My brain is completely crazy and no longer fit for life, so it’s time for me to run to a madhouse.” Despite the awareness of his own vulnerability and constant depression, Van Gogh admitted that it was at the moments of attacks that future canvases appeared to him: “I only take into account excitement … then I let go of myself and reach excesses.”
The artist was oppressed not only by poor health, loneliness and poverty, but also by the absolute lack of demand for his work, and at the age of 37 he committed suicide. Psychiatrists still have not come to a consensus about what kind of disease Van Gogh suffered: diagnoses range from damage to the temporal lobes to schizophrenia.
John Nash
The great scientist and mathematician, who made a huge contribution to the development of science, was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the age of 30. Despite being unable to distinguish between reality and fantasy, Nash learned to stop the attacks of the disease, continued to work productively, and even received the Nobel Prize in Economics. According to the doctors who treated him, Nash’s main object of insanity was his inner self, which he referred to during hallucinations. Whether the illness helped him in his work or not is unknown, but John Nash will remain in history as a man who managed to tame his inner demons.
Edward Munch
The future artist lost his mother early; the father was very pious and stubbornly instilled in the boy the fear of sin. This fear remained with Munch for life and is clearly felt in many of his works. Edward wrote: “My mother died young and gave me a tendency to tuberculosis, and an easily excitable father, a descendant of an old family who was pious to the point of fanaticism, sowed in me the seeds of madness. From the moment I was born, the angels of anxiety, anxiety and death have always been there. Often I woke up at night, looked around the room and asked myself: “Am I in hell?”
With age, Munch began to develop paranoia and persecution mania; it seemed to him that the whole world was against him. In the end, the artist resigned himself to the presence of the angels of death and doomedly continued to create, realizing that he would no longer save himself, but he might be able to help someone else: “My suffering belongs to me and my art, they united with me. Without disease and anxiety, I would be a ship without a rudder. My art is truly a voluntary recognition and an attempt to explain to myself my relationship with life. This is actually a kind of selfishness, but I hope that through this I can help others achieve clarity.
Thanks to Munch, art therapy began to actively develop, including enabling the mentally ill to free themselves from obsessive ideas.
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It is known that many masterpieces were created in moments of the most difficult and borderline states of the psyche, becoming the result of a synthesis of a darkened consciousness and an extraordinary vision of the world. We owe their creation to people who have lost their “I”, but in return have found the eternal “we”.