Photo: Vincent Van Gogh. "Self-portrait with a Bandaged Ear" (1889)
Many geniuses were mentally ill. Consider, for example, Vincent van Gogh, Frida Kahlo, Virginia Wolfe and Edgar Allan Poe. Genius and madness - these two extremes are truly connected, and scientists are beginning to understand why.
A group of experts discussed new research on this issue at a roundtable that took place at the annual World Science Festival. All three participants in the discussion, it should be noted, also suffer from mental disorders.
Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist at Johns Hopkins University (USA), noted that about 20 or 30 scientific papers have introduced the term "tortured genius" ("tortured genius"). Of all types of psychosis, creativity seems to be most closely associated with mood disorders and especially bipolar disorder, which Ms. Jamison knows from her own example. For example, researchers tested the intelligence of 700 thousand 16-year-old Swedes and, ten years later, found out which of them developed mental illness. It turned out that the students who scored the maximum points were four times more likely to develop bipolar disorder.
Bipolar disorder involves mood swings ranging from extreme happiness to severe depression. What does creativity have to do with it? Another panellist, James Fallon, a neuroscientist at the University of California, Irvine, USA, suggested the answer: "People with bipolar disorder tend to be creative when they come out of deep depression."
When the patient's mood improves, his brain activity also changes: activity stops in the lower part of the frontal lobe and flares up in the upper one. Ironically, the same shift has been observed in people experiencing a bout of creativity.
Schizophrenic Elin Sacks from the University of Southern California (USA) explained this by the fact that people with psychosis do not filter stimuli. They are able to consider conflicting ideas at the same time and give free rein to unconscious associations, while the psyche of most healthy people does not consider these thoughts worthy of sending to the surface of consciousness. All of this can have both devastating and creative effects, Ms. Sax emphasized.
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For example, experiments have shown that patients with mild bipolar disorder produce three times more associations in response to a given word.
Of course, no one can create during a severe attack of depression or schizophrenia. These conditions are painful and even life-threatening. The glimpses are not always worth the suffering that befell geniuses. Ms. Sax put it this way: "I think creativity is part of something bad."
Based on materials from Life's Little Mysteries.
science.compulenta.ru
Great writers who were mentally ill
We present to your attention a list of great writers, whose unconditional talent bordered on insanity.
1. Virginia Woolf The
burning prose of Virginia Woolf was formed not only due to the creative spirit, but also due to the complex turns of the writer's fate. Left at an early age without a mother and sister, Sella, she was forced to endure sexual abuse from her stepbrothers. Throughout her life, she was tormented by deep depression: constant headaches, voices, visions - all this led to several suicide attempts. As a result, on March 28, 1941, Virginia drowned in the river.
2. Edgar Allan
Poe The works of Edgar Allan Poe have always been dark, full of demons and other evil spirits. The same demons filled the author's consciousness. After the death of his wife, the writer admitted: “By my bodily properties, I am impressionable - nervous to a very extraordinary degree. I became insane, with long periods of terrifying sanity.”In October 1849, Edgar Poe was found staggering through the streets of Baltimore. How he got there, the writer could not explain. The next day he died in an honest hospital.
3. Philip K. Dick
Science fiction writer Philip K. Dick suffered from amphetamine addiction. In 1974, while resting in his home after visiting the dentist, he experienced a series of vivid hallucinations. The attacks of the hallucinations were repeated and continued for several months. In them, the writer clearly saw geometric shapes superimposed on scenes of religious content. In Dick's view, they were re-interpreting the church and literature. "It seemed to me that I was insane all my life and suddenly regained my mind," - this is how Dick described the onset of a seizure. During this period were written the novel "Free Radio Albemuth" and the trilogy " VALIS ".
4. Jack Kerouac
Originally, On The Road, writer Jack Kerouac conceived as a 10-chapter novel. But instead of a novel, it turned out to be a 36-meter roll of paper, covered with a continuous stream of consciousness. The author, finishing one typewritten page, taped it to the previous one. It is known that Kerouac supported his creative spirit with a mixture of alcohol, marijuana and benzedrine. Written from the ranks of the US Navy with the wording "schizoid personality", Kerouac plunged headlong into a life full of jazz, drugs and travel around the world.
5. Howard Phillips Lovecraft
Lovecraft combined fantasy, mysticism and horror in his work. The writer suffered from a sleep disorder. The writer's night visions were visited by bizarre creatures with webbed wings, which carried him to the "vile Lang plateau". After such dreams, Lovecraft would wake up in complete insanity. The reasons for mental disorder were not only in the psyche. The financial affairs of the writer's family were in a deplorable state, the standard of living deteriorated sharply. This led to deep depression and almost led to suicide. Later, bowel cancer and kidney inflammation were added to Lovecraft's life, the pain from which accompanied the rest of the writer's life.
6. Sylvia Plath
The first attempt at suicide by Sylvia Plath was described by her in her famous novel "Under a Glass Jar". This was in 1953. They tried to treat the clinical depression that tormented Sylvia with the latest methods, including electroshock. After such treatment, the writer did not get worse, on the contrary, she tried to commit suicide. Fortunately, the attempt failed, and the psychiatric intervention became even more intense. Several more attempts followed, until the thirty-year-old Sylvia was found dead in her own apartment. Her head was lying in the oven, from which gas was coming.
7. Marquis de Sade
The name of the Marquis de Sade originated with a very peculiar way of life. The writer promoted the revolutionary idea of sexual and moral freedom, which he outlined in his opuses. And "sadism" began to call sexual satisfaction obtained by inflicting pain and humiliation on another person. In 1803, by order of Napoleon Bonaparte, the marquis was first taken into custody without trial and without trial, and then declared insane and placed in the Charenton psychiatric hospital. But even there, de Sade managed to write plays and lead the same dissolute lifestyle until his death in 1814.
8. Jonathan Swift
Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift became famous for his fantastic tetralogy Gulliver's Travels and the satirical pamphlet A Modest Proposition. Throughout his life, the writer slowly plunged into madness. Although, according to the writer Will Durant, “certain symptoms of mental disorder appeared in 1738,” no one knows when the “point of no return” was passed. In 1742, the writer's mental state deteriorated, it ceased to be rational and stable. Durant describes, for example, an episode when "five people held Swift, who was trying to rip out his sore eye." After this incident, the writer fell silent and for a whole year did not utter a single word.
9. Ernest Hemingway
Few people know that the mental state of the American writer Ernest Hemingway was far from perfect. For most of his life, the writer suffered from alcohol addiction. But there were other diagnoses - from bipolar psychosis and traumatic brain damage to narcissistic personality disorder. The writer was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, but after therapy sessions, he became even worse - he lost his memory and the ability to formulate thoughts. And soon after being discharged he shot himself with a hunting rifle.
10. Leo Tolstoy
The creator of Anna Karenina and War and Peace is known for his philosophical and historical digressions. The writer created more than a hundred characters, thereby trying to escape from longing and fear. The writer experienced frequent, deep and prolonged bouts of depression. When the writer was 83 years old, he decided to apply for a wandering ascetic. but his journey was short-lived. Lev Nikolayevich fell ill with pneumonia, was forced to make a stop at the small Astapovo station, where he soon died.