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All geniuses are a little crazy, all crazy people are a little genius… Such a postulate was not born from scratch, because not everyone is given to understand the ingenious idea of a scientist or artist, to unravel the invisible series of hidden meanings in musical harmony or to penetrate the secrets of formulas that reveal the essence of the universe. And everything that is incomprehensible causes alertness and distrust in ordinary people.
Geniuses ahead of their time, or madmen?
The names of Isaac Newton, Friedrich Nietzsche, Vincent van Gogh or Nikolai Gogol are known to anyone who regularly attended high school, but few people know that behind high-profile discoveries, worldwide recognition and applause, difficult, full of tragedy fates are hidden. One way or another, all of the listed personalities were united by the same ailment — schizophrenia. Of course, for the uninitiated, their illness was reliably hidden behind boundless genius, non-trivial thinking and a specific view of the world. And the suffering that each of the geniuses experienced alone remained behind the screen of recognition and success. Today we will lift the veil of secrecy over the fates of five outstanding people, but not in order to cast a shadow on their reputation, but only in order to once again confirm the established opinion about the inextricable link between genius and madness.
The Bizarre Worlds of Divergent Vincent van Gogh
Until now, even scientists have not been able to draw a clear line between unconditional genius and mental disorder. Especially when it comes to fine arts. And all because the more bizarre the images and the more unusual the plot, the more attractive the picture for the viewer, who reveals the hidden meanings layer by layer.
Complicated and incomprehensible for contemporaries, Van Gogh fully illustrates this postulate. His paintings are a vivid example of divergent thinking that goes beyond the norm not only in nominal, but also in the most direct, physiological sense.
While working on the paintings, the brain of a brilliant artist functioned completely differently from that of an ordinary person, the most active were the left anterior insular lobe, which controls aspects of perception and awareness, as well as the right dorsal-lateral prefrontal cortex, which allows rationalization of the thought flow, and the posterior cortex. cingulate gyrus of the brain, thanks to which the artist easily switched between the images formed in the mind, managing to fix them on the canvas in a state close to trance.
Nuclear mosaic schizophrenia by Friedrich Nietzsche
Literally fanatical devotion to his own super-idea of the superman, supplemented by delusions of grandeur — this is what provoked the manifestation of a mental disorder of an outstanding philosopher. Unlike a normal person, in whom only parts of the brain that do not exclude each other’s functions can actively work in parallel, Nietzsche’s brain in an emergency mode activated mutually exclusive brain areas, causing manifestations of antisocial behavior, loss of self-control and increased emotionality. It is no coincidence that Nietzsche’s ideas, described in his works in a very lively and emotional language, easily subjugated even people with a very stable psyche, not inclined to the usual methods of suggestion.
Mind Games of Schizophrenic John Nash
Remember the famous movie «A Beautiful Mind» about a brilliant mathematician suffering from a mental disorder? The movie hero had a real prototype — American mathematician John Nash, Nobel Prize winner. A man with an incredibly high IQ, meticulous to the point of insanity, obsessed with details and immersed in the familiar world of numbers — the perfect image of an absent-minded professor or mad genius. Nash was so identical to this image that until the end of his life he did not leave his “shell”, consciously drawing a line between the world of people and the world of numbers, balancing on the verge of apathy and psychosis.
