Unlike any other, it was called the royal disease – because it often affected people of various talents, outstanding personalities, and brilliant minds. Did she mutilate the sick or gave them wings? Both psychiatrists say probably both.
Rafał Wojaczek (1945-1971) entered the legend of Polish poetry as one of the accursed poets. An outstanding artist, scandalist and loser at the same time. The author of a brilliant debut, a promising student, started fights and made further suicide attempts. His life had two alternating cycles: writing and plunging into alcohol and depression. Doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia, he was treated for some time in a psychiatric hospital. At 26, he committed suicide by overdosing on drugs. What influence did the disease have on Wojaczek’s work, did it help to create a cult around his character? The dispute over this continues today.
– I am man and God at the same time – Wacław Niżyński (1889-1950), an outstanding choreographer and dancer, used to say about himself. He had a mania for persecution, he was silent and irritable. The ailments worsened and he was suspected of having a mental illness. He also suffered from schizophrenia. Eventually, the artist’s condition deteriorated so much that he had to withdraw from performing. He danced the last time at the age of 29. Nijinsky left behind the legend of the god of dance, he was adored, portrayed and described by outstanding artists. From reading his Diary, written in 1919, shockingly honest, we meet, however, an unhappy man with a disturbed personality.
A disease of geniuses
Over the years, a legend has grown up around schizophrenia. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972), a distinguished Polish psychiatrist, called it a royal disease. Because no other person has such rich and varied symptoms! It also often affects outstanding and extraordinary minds. Schizophrenia suffered from, among others, Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel, Strindberg. Perhaps the disease was one of the sources of their genius. The following painters were to create under the influence of the vision caused by schizophrenia: Munch, Kubin, and van Gogh. Kępiński wrote that the symptoms of schizophrenia allow us to see all the features of human nature in catastrophic proportions.
Has schizophrenia influenced the creative genius of many artists and scientists? This disease was associated with genius, and its links with creativity were noticed. Such conclusions were drawn on the basis of observations of patients – fascinated by painting schizophrenics was, among others professor Kępiński. Unusual abilities and unusual behavior make schizophrenics often become movie heroes.
A fatal gene bundle
The genetic link between schizophrenia and creativity was confirmed in 2009 by Hungarian researchers from the University of Budapest, led by Prof. Szabolcsa Keri. Research shows that the disease incidence (although the exact model of its inheritance is unknown) is determined by our genotype. The inheritance of the disease is influenced by many genes, which are not very important individually, but the negative effect of their presence is cumulative.
Check how schizophrenia was treated in the past
Keri recruited 200 volunteers who considered themselves creative and talented. They were tested with creative thinking tests, and then their genotypes were analyzed, including the neuregulin 1 gene, whose mutations increase the risk of the disease. As it turned out, the most creative people had two copies of the mutated gene. However, the link between genes and schizophrenia and genius was not clear cut. The gene mutation alone did not determine greater creativity. Prof. Keri suspects that the mutated DNA fragment may affect the brain’s functions of mood and behavior. In some people, they can stimulate creativity, and in others, they can lead to psychotic illusions. The determining factor is perhaps the level of intelligence.
Nobel prize for schizophrenic
There is no question: schizophrenia can encourage creativity. The question remains whether it really helps in mental work, or on the contrary? The film A Beautiful Mind is a story about the life of Professor John Nash (born 1928), an outstanding American mathematician and Nobel Prize winner. Nash suffered from paranoid schizophrenia all his life, was delusional, making it difficult to assess reality and complicating everyday life. It ruined his relationship with his relatives. Thanks to treatment (Nash went to a psychiatric hospital in 1959), persistent work and genius, he managed to return to academic teaching over time, from which he was removed due to illness. In 1994, he became one of the co-winners of the Nobel Prize in Economics. He has been researching game theory and is named after the Nash equilibrium concept.
Unfortunately, the popular idea that insanity and genius are two sides of the same coin is not true. Very often, mental illness only makes it difficult or even impossible for people burdened with it to live a normal life, without embellishing it with extraordinary abilities or creativity. The example of prof. Nasha points out that the sick person can, however, achieve unquestionable success in life. However, it is determined by therapy and persistent work, the harder and more difficult that it is necessary to fight the limitations of the disease.
Schizophrenia
* Schizophrenia is a social disease – the most common severe mental illness. In Poland, as many as 400 suffer from it. people. Around 50 million people suffer from schizophrenia worldwide. Statistically, every hundredth person suffers from it.
* The first mentions of schizophrenia are already found in the Bible, as well as in the “Book of Hearts” – the Ebers papyrus before 1550 BC Symptoms resembling schizophrenia were also described in Arabic literature from the Middle Ages. This disease was not distinguished for a long time, until the XNUMXth century. For centuries, it was believed that the state of mind of the sick is caused by evil powers, most often it was considered that the sick person was possessed by the devil and he was treated with exorcism.
* Today, the mainstay of schizophrenia therapy is pharmacological treatment and psychotherapy. Proper treatment significantly improves the patient’s quality of life and allows them to function successfully in society. However, in some countries, such as Poland, a serious problem is the stigmatization of patients, which often prevents them from living a normal life.
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