"Alas, and why are genius and insanity so close to each other?" - lament the French writer and philosopher Denis Diderot in the 18th century.
And until now, scientists cannot determine what genius is: whether it is the highest degree of a person's creative giftedness, or one of the forms of pathopsychology.
The vast majority of those whom we call geniuses had various deviations from the mental norm. Socrates, Jonathan Swift, Peter I, Napoleon, Nikolai Gogol, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edgar Poe, Mikhail Vrubel, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Ernest Hemingway, Salvador Dali … The list goes on and on.
Departure from reality
The 19th century Italian scientist Cesare Lombroso in his book "Genius and Insanity" issued an aphorism: "Genius is not far-reaching insanity, and insanity is far-reaching genius." But where does the invisible line that separates these two polar states lie? And are they so opposite?
The concept of probabilistic forecasting, which has become widespread in modern psychology, shows that the thinking of geniuses and madmen has much in common. Considering this or that object or phenomenon, they highlight such signs that an ordinary person is unlikely to see.
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Here, for example, is a simple test: which of the four words - man, snake, horse, cart - is superfluous? Most people will name the cart as the only inanimate object in this series. A psychiatric patient, in particular an epileptic whose thinking is tied to a specific situation, is likely to single out the snake as the most dangerous. And the train of thought of a genius is generally difficult to predict. For example, he may say, "I see different combinations of atoms." (However, a schizophrenic can give the same answer.)
At first glance, genius and insanity are similar phenomena. In both cases, there is a "departure from reality." But if the departure of a madman is a road to nowhere, to a historical and cultural void, then the departure of a genius is a breakthrough to new heights of human thought, another round in the development of culture and civilization.
In modern science, there are several directions trying to unravel the nature of genius. For example, the classics of gestalt psychology Max Wertheimer and Karl Dunker argue that genius is overcoming the phenomenon of a functional attitude, functional fixation, that is, the inertia of our thinking. For many centuries, scientists agreed with Ptolemy that the Earth is motionless, and the Sun revolves around it. And only Copernicus dared to overcome the inertia of thinking, to go beyond stereotypes.
Undoubtedly, geniuses are people with a certain type of psyche. They are obsessed with obsessive overvalued ideas and bouts of inspiration that foster creativity. Often, genius discoveries and works are born as if against their will, it is more a product of their unconscious, and not an act of conscious creation.
However, many researchers believe that genius and insanity are very closely related. Lombroso wrote that genius is nothing more than a continuation of the strangeness and even anomalies of human nature. German psychologist and psychiatrist Ernst Kretschmer identified the signs of an average genius: he is a psychopathic or neurotic person, hypersensitive, irritable, resentful, capricious, with violent affective reactions and frequent mood swings: he has practically no ability to adapt.
His lifestyle, his actions are often incomprehensible and strange to those around him. And any deviation from the norm, according to the layman, is a sign of insanity. By declaring genius a madman, ordinary people defend themselves against the idea that there is someone who surpasses them in intellectual and creative potential.
Moreover, they simply cannot understand how such a novel, or a picture, or a symphony can be written; how a person is able to think of such a thing. And everything incomprehensible is considered abnormal.
And since the geniuses themselves give a lot of reasons for such gossip, human rumor almost all of them write them down as madmen. And sometimes it has every reason for this.
Jump into the mouth of the volcano
Empedocles, Greek scientist and philosopher (490-430 BC) begins our gallery of portraits of mad geniuses.
He made a number of discoveries that were well ahead of their time. In particular, he was able to determine that the light is in motion (although he could not measure its speed: there were no such devices yet).
Empedocles argued that air is a substance, that the Earth has a spherical shape (only for this contemporaries could declare him crazy). His other major discoveries include centrifugal force, the theory of evolution and the Italian school of medicine. That is, the contribution of this scientist to science is difficult to overestimate.
At the same time Empedocles firmly believed that he was a god. And since those around him did not take his claims to divinity seriously and constantly made fun of him, he declared in front of a large crowd of people that he would jump into the mouth of Mount Etna and come out safe and sound. The end of this experiment was described by the poet Richard Osborne: “Great Empedocles, sinful soul; jumped to Etna and fried."
Over the years, it is difficult to make an accurate diagnosis. But there are clear signs of the madness of this genius.
Inverted stomach
The great Russian writer Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol was diagnosed with fur-coat schizophrenia by the psychiatrist Burno. Another diagnosis is manic-depressive psychosis. Mental abnormalities were observed throughout his life.
Gogol was constantly haunted by visual and auditory hallucinations, there were frequent periods of apathy and lethargy, up to complete immobility and inability to respond to external stimuli.
In addition, Nikolai Vasilievich was convinced that all the organs in his body were displaced, and the stomach was generally turned upside down. The disease escalated sharply after Yekaterina Khomyakova, the sister of the poet Nikolai Yazykov, with whom Gogol was on friendly terms and felt spiritual closeness, died on January 26, 1852 of typhoid fever. This death caused a severe attack of hypochondria in the writer.
Gogol plunged into unceasing prayers, practically refused food, complained of weakness and malaise. On the night of February 11-12, the writer burned the manuscript of the second volume of Dead Souls, which he later explained by a devilish temptation. His condition worsened all the time, and on February 21 Gogol died. The doctors were never able to determine the true cause of his illness and death. Most likely, he brought himself to complete physical and nervous exhaustion.
By the way, Gogol suffered from taphophobia - he was very afraid of being buried alive. And there is a version that his fear came true. When the exhumation was carried out in 1931, rumors circulated that the writer's head in the coffin had been turned to the side, and the inner lining had been torn apart. That is, Gogol, being in a lethargic dream, was buried alive.
Perelman's riddle
Grigory Yakovlevich Perelman (b. June 13, 1966, Leningrad, USSR) - Russian mathematician who proved the Poincaré conjecture. This man with long hair and uncut nails is called the man of the world. He entered the list of the hundred most famous people of the planet Grigory Yakovlevich Perelman.
For many years reporters hunted for a man-mystery who chose the ascetic lifestyle in a tiny St. Petersburg apartment. But only a couple of times was it possible to photograph the recluse going to the store with a string bag. Grigory Perelman became famous as an eccentric hermit and a strange person. Some even call him the "rain man" in St. Petersburg.
The unsociable genius practically never gives interviews. He refused the prize for proving the hypothesis, he lived with his mother. In 2014, news broke that he had gone to work in Sweden for 10 years.
One of the bloggers wrote about him:
“I don't even know what strikes me most about Perelman: his freak nature or scientific genius. These qualities in talented people, like a nuclear cocktail, create a new reality and change the old world. There are only a few of them, but they are moving progress in leaps and bounds, forcing the rest of the mass to speak of themselves as insane. This has been the case at all times and ours is no exception."
And here is the opinion of one of the journalists who interviewed him:
- We had a great talk. He made the impression of an absolutely sane, healthy, adequate and normal person. Realistic, pragmatic and sane, but not devoid of sentimentality and excitement … Everything that was attributed to him in the press, as if he was "not himself" - complete nonsense!
Don't push the falling one
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche gave the world the idea of a superman - a free, perfect, existing on the other side of good and evil personality, which is above all that exists.
He announced the coming arrival of a new, healthy morality, which should glorify and strengthen the natural striving of man for power. "Push the falling one!" Nietzsche urged. That is, the sick and the weak must die, make way for the strong.
These philosophical ideas were the result of a mental illness called "nuclear mosaic schizophrenia", or, in common parlance, obsession. One of the main symptoms of this disorder is delusions of grandeur.
In a psychiatric clinic, where the philosopher came after a sharp exacerbation of the disease and where he spent the last 11 years of his life, he sent out notes like: "In two months I will become the first person on Earth."
But at the end of his life he could only make up the simplest phrases, for example: "I am stupid because I am dead." Nietzsche's medical record notes that he drank his own urine from a boot, mistook the hospital watchman for Chancellor Bismarck, tried to barricade the door with fragments of a broken glass, slept on the floor by the stairs, jumped like a goat. This is the irony of fate. Don't push the falling one, but you won't fall yourself!
So, many geniuses, on the basis of certain deviations from the mental norm, were declared insane. But do so-called normal people exist at all? When the German psychiatrist and psychologist Ernst Kretschmer was asked about this, he pointed to a cabinet in the corner of the office:
- Here is a normal person!
As they say, comments are unnecessary.
Victor MEDNIKOV