Inter-Agency Communication
For Your Perception Only:
Memorandum; to/and/or/for:
Michael (1),
Archangel Plenipotentiary, Senior System Administrator [Meta-manifestation: Yahweh (13), Panoptian Subomniverse, Urantian Sector (Interdicted!)}. Ultimate Arbiter, and Appointed Ruler of All Things Within the purview of aforementioned, Fractal Spheroidal Production Coordinator of all the Heavenly Host (e’en unto those insurrectionists that have since seceded from the Galactic Union). Worlds without end. Amen!
Re: Ongoing attempts to manipulate the evolutionary progress of the Experimental Life Vehicle: 666 (Y-13,-P.-Urantia); [Planoforming Patent and Material Manifestation Number: 666 (Y-13,-P.-Urantia)].
Mike,
Sorry as I am to say it, the consensus here at G.O.D. (Galactic Operations Directorate), is that you’ve blown it badly, buddy!
Most of the Elohim Electorate were quite dubious about the extirpation of the Saurian experiment on the world Urantia, but, upon your recommendation, they (by a very slim margin, if you will but remember) allowed you the unprecedented recourse of ecocatastrophe, to better allow your biotechs to start anew.
The decision to allow you, and your engineers, to mass-drive an errant asteroid into this world was not arrived at lightly, mind, but was seen by the consensus as the only recourse possible for salvaging a demonstrably failed project. Hopefully, we needn’t remind you that the time-cost analysis for this particular module is far over the Beelzebub-line.
Therefore, we shan’t mince words. The destruction of the indigenie’s most complete repository of knowledge (to wit: the “Library of Alexandria”) was certainly ill advised, if not, as opined by some in our frat-eternity, thoroughly unconscionable. Some manipulation of life-experimentation module development has generally been adjudged tolerable in the past, but to have to have resorted so frequently and repressively (the infamous and heinous social control mechanism your administration instituted, named the “Inquisition” by the natives comes to mind) to the evolving corpus philosophi on Urantia, seems to indicate a marked inability on your part to deal with the ongoing parameters of this particular and, admittedly, peculiarly precocious and perspicaciously profound experiment.
Now, don’t think that G.O.D. doesn’t take into account the obfuscation of data induced by the unheard of defection of your predecessor, Lucifer, and the approximate third of the Panoptian bureaucracy, to the side of the inhabitants of Urantia and their co-revolutionaries, the twenty-six other planets containing ongoing life experiments in this part of the subomniverse that seceded from the Galactic Union. On the contrary, the introduction of the boddhisatvic incarnation, “Jesus”, was ample demonstration of our desire to ameliorate the counter-productive effects of the influence of this unprecedented and unprincipled cooking of Urantian data. It was certainly simple enough for us to assist this engineered avatar with a few minor demonstrations of our advanced technological expertise (which, to this moment, most of the indigenie’s still regard as “miracles”), in an attempt to foster the proper respect for G.O.D.’s principles.
Nevertheless, there are those in our ranks who are still of the opinion that your heavy handed techniques and the arrogant and authoritarian attitudes of the members of your staff who remained loyal were partly to blame for the dysfunctional occurrences hereintofore referred to. If you will recall, also, you were certainly not taken to task for the disaffection of your second-in-command and most of your staff when it occurred.
In peroration, we would like to state that, as of now, your most important obligation is to prevent any realization on the part of the presently somewhat technologically advanced inhabitants of this planet that we have played any demonstrable role in the ongoing genetic engineering and social manipulation of humanity as a species. Further discoveries of a reflectively sensitive nature (such as the recently discovered flashlight battery encased in 200,000 year-old agate, stupidly dropped and subsequently ignored by one of your staff, or the regrettably non-eradicated evidence of your planetary spaceport, the so-called “Nazca Plain Lines”) would be incredibly detrimental to our cause.
We cannot afford any more slip-ups of this nature, because, if the natives ever discover the essential nature of our influence in their affairs, and/or become cognizant of our role in instituting the cruel evolutionary parameters necessary to our aims, we might well lose their support when they become ready to emerge from their collective stupor and assume their place in the uplifted hierarchy of viable beings. I needn’t remind you of the slim majority that our party now enjoys in the current convocation of evolved beings, and that any loss of voting delegates would be to our ultimate detriment. Hopefully, a word to the wise should suffice here. Looking forward to seeing you at the upcoming Aquarian Advent party.
Yours eternally,
Gabe
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Sunday, June 05, 2005
Vainglory And Madness
(A brief look at bias in the
socio-psychological
definition of normalcy.)
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
—e. e. cummings
plying the repetitive metaphor
of mannerism
we move
through the sullied simile of being.
—J. W. T.
Introduction
“Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit”
—Seneca
Why is it that have most great artists been considered mad by the standards of their milieu? Not just angry, mind, but full out, balls to the wall, nuts: “insane” . . . “over the edge” . . . “out of control”! Is this a condition of state, necessarily? Is it systemic or endemic to the breed, to the profession, to profundity itself? Is personal perspicacity an aberration? And what is it about the process of artistic inspiration and expression that lends itself to the apparent circumvention of that which any particular milieu defines as “normalcy”?
What is “normalcy”? More specifically, what is the nature of this seemingly somewhat spurious psychological concept, that is so ubiquitously used to abjure and adjudicate sociological conventionality in our culture today? How has this concept been defined in the past, and how do past denotations of an acceptable social gloss differ from contemporaneous ones?
The noted contemporary cultural anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, in his astute and revolute volume They Became What They Beheld, quotes James Joyce in opining: “‘I flew by the nets,’ . . . the nets of family, church and country. Literate artists fly past the nets . . .” (pg. 26). What people and/or processes shaped our current conceptual comprehension of these “nets” of cultural constraint? And, for any given age, who (and/or what instrumentality) decides what is or isn’t proper thought, or behavior; and from what authority does this decisive process proceed?
Finally, why also, have so many of the most critically acclaimed, trend-setting artists in the world-shaping media fields of contemporary jazz and rock music had marked proclivities (as have had artists since the beginning of human history) for alcoholism, drug use and addiction, and ultimately, in countless cases, self-destruction? And, is there a genetic predisposition, as has been clinically shown recently for alcoholism, for the physiological accompaniment of mental illness with creativity? This article will attempt to briefly codify and clarify some, if not all, of these quondam queries.
Hypotheses
Primarily: “normalcy”, and “aberration” are, by definition, culturally conditioned concepts and not absolutes. Secondarily: there is a demonstrable connection between creativity and creative ability, and what is termed “madness” or “mental illness”. Tertiarily: acceptable modes of thought, motivation, and behavior are defined societally by whatever applicable notions happen to be extant. Quaternarily: The bases for these psychological assumptions are usually insidious social control mechanisms, consciously and/or unconsciously inculcated as cultural norms, by whatever pervasive philosophical schemata (usually religious) are, or have been, culturally paramount for any individual subject.
Evidentiary Data
Note: For brevity’s sake, and the purposes of this specific version of this essay we will attempt to deal with only the primary and secondary aspects of the hypothesis at present, leaving the tertiary and quaternary aspects to be dealt with at a later date.
Definition of Terms
In order to precisely understand the terminology utilized by society at large and this article, hereinbefore and hereinafter, and to attempt to circumvent those metathetical traps that lay in wait for the unwary thinker, we should, for clarity’s sake, avail ourselves of the ultimate authority and compendium of etymological efficacy: The Oxford English Dictionary. Too often we lose sight of the origins of meaning in our language, the prescriptive definitions. Consequently, any attempt to expositionally espouse conceptualizations based upon those descriptive definitions which we actually only “connote” and have no real, clear denotative understanding of suffers from both an heinous lack of specificity and an erroneous sense of certainty.
The word “normal”, and, thereby, our contemporary concept of normalcy, is defined by the aforementioned Oxford English Dictionary in a prescriptive and chronologically metathetical fashion: as proceeding from the Latin word norma , a “carpenter’s or mason’s square; hence, pattern, rule, etc.”; and thence to “2. Constituting, conforming to, not deviating or differing from, the common type or standard; regular, usual . . .” (s.v. “normal”).
“Aberration” (or, abnormality actualized), is defined in the selfsame lexicon as: “[T]he action of wandering or straying; the state of error or irregularity thence resulting . . .”, and, “1. lit. [A] wandering away, a straying; a deviation or divergence from the straight or recognized path. . . 2. fig . “[A] deviation or divergence from a direct, prescribed, or ordinary course or mode of action . . . 3. [A] wandering from the path of rectitude, or standard of morality . . .” (O.E.D., s.v. “aberration”). Once again, a circumstantially concomitant, and culturally conditional, definition.
The Psychiatric Dictionary contains no specific definition for normalcy, but does define “aberration” as: “[a]ny morbid deviation from normal mental activity . . .” (s.v. “aberration”, italics mine). Further, this volume goes on to define “creativity” as: “[t]he ability to create something new, presumed to be a product of sublimation . . .” (s.v. “creativity”), and the concept of “sublimation” as: “. . . the process of modifying an instinctual impulse in such a way as to conform to the demands of society . . .” (s.v. “sublimation).
Thus, it can be easily seen that the legitimacy of any such socially certain set standards are situationally definitional; and, as such, originate in those subtle and intrinsic assumptions that constitute the peripatetically penurious parsing of propinquitously impertinent phraseology.
Scientific Data
In 1987, Nancy C. Andreasen, of the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City, as part of a landmark study of the relationship between what is termed “mental illness” and creativity, reported that there seems to be a close association between creative ability and “affective disorders”. Over a 15 year period, Andreasen subjected 30 faculty members at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, one of the best-known creative writing programs in the country, to scientific scrutiny. She also interviewed another 30 control subjects of comparable age, sex and education, whose careers included hospital administration, law and social work (qtd. in Bower, 262).
Andreasen found that 80 percent of the aforementioned scriveners had experienced an episode of either severe depression or “manic” depression — either with a pronounced mania characterized by feelings of euphoria, increased energy and poor judgment, or a milder “hypomania” — at some time in their lives. Depression or manic depression occurred in only 30 percent of the control group.
Andreasen’s report follows a similar study, done in 1983 by Washington D.C. psychologist Kay Jamison, of 47 top British artists and writers (qtd. in Bower, 1987, p. 262), and is also supported by another study, subsequent to her’s, done by investigators at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. (qtd. in Bower, 1988, p. 135).
In the former study, more than one third of the 47 subjects reported having sought treatment for depression or manic depression, with poets and playwrights being most likely to have severe mood disorders or dramatic mood swings.
In the latter study, psychologist Dennis K. Kinney, who conducted the research with psychiatrist Ruth Richards and several others, reported a heightened level of “everyday” creativity — encompassing both occupational and leisure activities — among people who undergo relatively mild mood swings as well as the healthy relatives of manic depressives. (Full-blown manic depressives seem to be somewhat less creative than these two groups but show greater creativity than control subjects.)
Kinney states that: “[t]he data suggest that enhanced creativity may be a positive characteristic associated with an inherited liability for manic depression” (Bower, 135). Several other studies not mentioned here (dealing with affective and bipolar disorders) echo this statement and posit creative ability in the mentally ill as a kind of functionally compensatory biological mechanism for those afflicted with these cognitive or behavioral dysfunctions.
Lengthy and assiduously transcribed interviews with each subject made it possible for the researchers from McLean to assess and attempt to quantify creativity on a number of scales that applied to both vocational and leisure activities. Mind, they were not trying to measure genius per se, rather, they were trying to get a handle on everyday types of creative function. Kinney says: “. . . creative people in our sample may paint in their spare time, write poetry, start their own business or come up with novel ways to improve their work environment”.
In other words, in this study the researchers attempted to scrutinize the creativity of commonplace people with regard to psychological functionality or dysfunction present in their lives. The researchers had previously tested and calibrated the creativity scales with more than 300 psychiatrically healthy subjects from a larger adoption study recently conducted in Denmark.
Kinney and his coworkers studied 17 manic depressives, 11 of their parents and siblings with no psychiatric diagnoses and 16 individuals with a mild form of mood swings. The 45 subjects used as controls had no family history of mood disorders; 15 had no psychiatric disorders and 18 had some diagnosis other than mood disorder, usually some form of anxiety disorder. They found, amongst other things, that individuals with mild mood swings or manic depressive relatives tend to express their creative potential in different fashions. Those with manic depressive relatives show the highest creativity in avocational pursuits, whilst those with mild mood swings were more creative at work (Bower, 135).
Two other studies are pertinent for our purposes at present, both conducted by Kareen and Hagop Akiskal of the University of Tennessee. The first of these was a study of 750 psychiatric patients in Memphis. The Akiskals found that those with mild manic depression or mood swings were more likely to be creative artists (Bower, 262). The second is an ongoing study being done with other psychiatrists at the University of Paris involving examinations and extensive interviews with writers, painters, sculptors and musicians, which includes comparisons with a comparable number of interviewees in other occupations as controls.
“So far, the most striking aspect of the artists is their temperament, not the presence of major psychiatric disorders,” says Hagop Akiskal. “Since their teens and 20’s they’ve been moody people with emotional ups and downs” (Bower, 262).
Nearly 70 percent of the artists had some type of affective disorder, noted Akiskal. The most common diagnoses were a moderate form of manic depression or even milder, intermittent periods of mood swings. More severe disorders, he concludes, would most probably been too disruptive an influence on the artists careers.
Limitations
Obviously, the limitations of this essay are legion. The primary problem one encounters with regard to this particular subject is that of the relatively small sample size of some of the subject groups in the aforementioned studies. Alas, one must conclude from the relative paucity of creative genius at large in society today, and the relative infrequency of cases of artistic ability throughout history (as evidenced by the high prices the products of said infrequent genius command on the open market) that sample size, for any study of this nature, will consequently always be small. There just will never be a great pool of artists extant to be sampled during any given historical age, past, present, or future.
There is also the question of a producing a verifiably effective methodology for quantifying and interpreting data on the possibly innumerable and endless permutations of creative ability and madness as they are apprehended by researchers in their perusal of any subject or group of subjects.
There are also scholarly views on the subject, some of which have found their way into print, that hold to the contrary, to wit: that there is nothing inherent in or intrinsic to artistic genius and creative ability that, necessarily, demands madness as a prerequisite for the process of creation. The author Anthony Storr, in an essay entitled “Sanity of True Genius” (pp. 249-268), argues effectively (conversely, for the purposes of this essay) that: “. . . it has been believed that the greater the genius, the more likely it is that he will be an exalted type of human being; noble, lofty, and harmonious; displaying in his life, as in his works, both exquisite sensibility and perfect control.” He goes on to say that: “[t]o this way of thinking, the greatest works of art could only be produced by people of the highest character. The noblest works mirror the nobility of the artist’s soul.”
Conclusion
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” (Anon.). Consequently (all aphorisms aside), and with a nod to Occam’s Razor, there must be some connection between madness and creativity for all these quite cogent folks to have felt compelled to thus comment upon the ties so frequently down through the ages. Surely then, bearing the findings mentioned, cultural and societal efforts to set a standard for and/or classify normalcy must be seen as ultimately vainglorious.
Hopefully, as the quantitative and empirical abilities of psycho-neurologists improve with the advent of new techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging and whole brain tomographic modeling, the human neural net will be mapped with some precision, and the synaptic dissemination of information and impulse will be thoroughly cataloged. Until these daunting tasks are done, and verified by a wealth of experimental data, we will be left with the unenviable, if nevertheless exciting task of attempting to induce conclusions about the connection between madness and creativity by the best means and methods available at present, represented by the cutting edge studies referred to in this essay.
Works Cited
Bower, B. (1987, October 24). Mood swings and creativity: New clues. Science News 87, p. 262.
Bower, B. (1988, September 3). Manic depression: Risk and creativity. Science News 88, p. 135.
Carpenter, Edmund. They Became What They Beheld. New York: Ballantine, !970.
cummings, e.e. “as freedom is a breakfastfood” Poems 1923-1954. New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1954.
Psychiatric Dictionary. 4th. Ed. Oxford U.P. 1970.
Storr, Anthony. Churchill’s Black Dog, Kafka’s Mice & Other Phenomena. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
The Oxford English Dictionary. Compact Ed. Oxford U.P. 1971.
Thrasher, J.W. “Sullied Similes” 'Euphonic Sequipedalien Paronomasia'. unpbl. ms.
socio-psychological
definition of normalcy.)
deeds cannot dream what dreams can do
—e. e. cummings
plying the repetitive metaphor
of mannerism
we move
through the sullied simile of being.
—J. W. T.
Introduction
“Nullum magnum ingenium sine mixtura dementiae fuit”
—Seneca
Why is it that have most great artists been considered mad by the standards of their milieu? Not just angry, mind, but full out, balls to the wall, nuts: “insane” . . . “over the edge” . . . “out of control”! Is this a condition of state, necessarily? Is it systemic or endemic to the breed, to the profession, to profundity itself? Is personal perspicacity an aberration? And what is it about the process of artistic inspiration and expression that lends itself to the apparent circumvention of that which any particular milieu defines as “normalcy”?
What is “normalcy”? More specifically, what is the nature of this seemingly somewhat spurious psychological concept, that is so ubiquitously used to abjure and adjudicate sociological conventionality in our culture today? How has this concept been defined in the past, and how do past denotations of an acceptable social gloss differ from contemporaneous ones?
The noted contemporary cultural anthropologist Edmund Carpenter, in his astute and revolute volume They Became What They Beheld, quotes James Joyce in opining: “‘I flew by the nets,’ . . . the nets of family, church and country. Literate artists fly past the nets . . .” (pg. 26). What people and/or processes shaped our current conceptual comprehension of these “nets” of cultural constraint? And, for any given age, who (and/or what instrumentality) decides what is or isn’t proper thought, or behavior; and from what authority does this decisive process proceed?
Finally, why also, have so many of the most critically acclaimed, trend-setting artists in the world-shaping media fields of contemporary jazz and rock music had marked proclivities (as have had artists since the beginning of human history) for alcoholism, drug use and addiction, and ultimately, in countless cases, self-destruction? And, is there a genetic predisposition, as has been clinically shown recently for alcoholism, for the physiological accompaniment of mental illness with creativity? This article will attempt to briefly codify and clarify some, if not all, of these quondam queries.
Hypotheses
Primarily: “normalcy”, and “aberration” are, by definition, culturally conditioned concepts and not absolutes. Secondarily: there is a demonstrable connection between creativity and creative ability, and what is termed “madness” or “mental illness”. Tertiarily: acceptable modes of thought, motivation, and behavior are defined societally by whatever applicable notions happen to be extant. Quaternarily: The bases for these psychological assumptions are usually insidious social control mechanisms, consciously and/or unconsciously inculcated as cultural norms, by whatever pervasive philosophical schemata (usually religious) are, or have been, culturally paramount for any individual subject.
Evidentiary Data
Note: For brevity’s sake, and the purposes of this specific version of this essay we will attempt to deal with only the primary and secondary aspects of the hypothesis at present, leaving the tertiary and quaternary aspects to be dealt with at a later date.
Definition of Terms
In order to precisely understand the terminology utilized by society at large and this article, hereinbefore and hereinafter, and to attempt to circumvent those metathetical traps that lay in wait for the unwary thinker, we should, for clarity’s sake, avail ourselves of the ultimate authority and compendium of etymological efficacy: The Oxford English Dictionary. Too often we lose sight of the origins of meaning in our language, the prescriptive definitions. Consequently, any attempt to expositionally espouse conceptualizations based upon those descriptive definitions which we actually only “connote” and have no real, clear denotative understanding of suffers from both an heinous lack of specificity and an erroneous sense of certainty.
The word “normal”, and, thereby, our contemporary concept of normalcy, is defined by the aforementioned Oxford English Dictionary in a prescriptive and chronologically metathetical fashion: as proceeding from the Latin word norma , a “carpenter’s or mason’s square; hence, pattern, rule, etc.”; and thence to “2. Constituting, conforming to, not deviating or differing from, the common type or standard; regular, usual . . .” (s.v. “normal”).
“Aberration” (or, abnormality actualized), is defined in the selfsame lexicon as: “[T]he action of wandering or straying; the state of error or irregularity thence resulting . . .”, and, “1. lit. [A] wandering away, a straying; a deviation or divergence from the straight or recognized path. . . 2. fig . “[A] deviation or divergence from a direct, prescribed, or ordinary course or mode of action . . . 3. [A] wandering from the path of rectitude, or standard of morality . . .” (O.E.D., s.v. “aberration”). Once again, a circumstantially concomitant, and culturally conditional, definition.
The Psychiatric Dictionary contains no specific definition for normalcy, but does define “aberration” as: “[a]ny morbid deviation from normal mental activity . . .” (s.v. “aberration”, italics mine). Further, this volume goes on to define “creativity” as: “[t]he ability to create something new, presumed to be a product of sublimation . . .” (s.v. “creativity”), and the concept of “sublimation” as: “. . . the process of modifying an instinctual impulse in such a way as to conform to the demands of society . . .” (s.v. “sublimation).
Thus, it can be easily seen that the legitimacy of any such socially certain set standards are situationally definitional; and, as such, originate in those subtle and intrinsic assumptions that constitute the peripatetically penurious parsing of propinquitously impertinent phraseology.
Scientific Data
In 1987, Nancy C. Andreasen, of the University of Iowa College of Medicine in Iowa City, as part of a landmark study of the relationship between what is termed “mental illness” and creativity, reported that there seems to be a close association between creative ability and “affective disorders”. Over a 15 year period, Andreasen subjected 30 faculty members at the University of Iowa Writer’s Workshop, one of the best-known creative writing programs in the country, to scientific scrutiny. She also interviewed another 30 control subjects of comparable age, sex and education, whose careers included hospital administration, law and social work (qtd. in Bower, 262).
Andreasen found that 80 percent of the aforementioned scriveners had experienced an episode of either severe depression or “manic” depression — either with a pronounced mania characterized by feelings of euphoria, increased energy and poor judgment, or a milder “hypomania” — at some time in their lives. Depression or manic depression occurred in only 30 percent of the control group.
Andreasen’s report follows a similar study, done in 1983 by Washington D.C. psychologist Kay Jamison, of 47 top British artists and writers (qtd. in Bower, 1987, p. 262), and is also supported by another study, subsequent to her’s, done by investigators at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass. (qtd. in Bower, 1988, p. 135).
In the former study, more than one third of the 47 subjects reported having sought treatment for depression or manic depression, with poets and playwrights being most likely to have severe mood disorders or dramatic mood swings.
In the latter study, psychologist Dennis K. Kinney, who conducted the research with psychiatrist Ruth Richards and several others, reported a heightened level of “everyday” creativity — encompassing both occupational and leisure activities — among people who undergo relatively mild mood swings as well as the healthy relatives of manic depressives. (Full-blown manic depressives seem to be somewhat less creative than these two groups but show greater creativity than control subjects.)
Kinney states that: “[t]he data suggest that enhanced creativity may be a positive characteristic associated with an inherited liability for manic depression” (Bower, 135). Several other studies not mentioned here (dealing with affective and bipolar disorders) echo this statement and posit creative ability in the mentally ill as a kind of functionally compensatory biological mechanism for those afflicted with these cognitive or behavioral dysfunctions.
Lengthy and assiduously transcribed interviews with each subject made it possible for the researchers from McLean to assess and attempt to quantify creativity on a number of scales that applied to both vocational and leisure activities. Mind, they were not trying to measure genius per se, rather, they were trying to get a handle on everyday types of creative function. Kinney says: “. . . creative people in our sample may paint in their spare time, write poetry, start their own business or come up with novel ways to improve their work environment”.
In other words, in this study the researchers attempted to scrutinize the creativity of commonplace people with regard to psychological functionality or dysfunction present in their lives. The researchers had previously tested and calibrated the creativity scales with more than 300 psychiatrically healthy subjects from a larger adoption study recently conducted in Denmark.
Kinney and his coworkers studied 17 manic depressives, 11 of their parents and siblings with no psychiatric diagnoses and 16 individuals with a mild form of mood swings. The 45 subjects used as controls had no family history of mood disorders; 15 had no psychiatric disorders and 18 had some diagnosis other than mood disorder, usually some form of anxiety disorder. They found, amongst other things, that individuals with mild mood swings or manic depressive relatives tend to express their creative potential in different fashions. Those with manic depressive relatives show the highest creativity in avocational pursuits, whilst those with mild mood swings were more creative at work (Bower, 135).
Two other studies are pertinent for our purposes at present, both conducted by Kareen and Hagop Akiskal of the University of Tennessee. The first of these was a study of 750 psychiatric patients in Memphis. The Akiskals found that those with mild manic depression or mood swings were more likely to be creative artists (Bower, 262). The second is an ongoing study being done with other psychiatrists at the University of Paris involving examinations and extensive interviews with writers, painters, sculptors and musicians, which includes comparisons with a comparable number of interviewees in other occupations as controls.
“So far, the most striking aspect of the artists is their temperament, not the presence of major psychiatric disorders,” says Hagop Akiskal. “Since their teens and 20’s they’ve been moody people with emotional ups and downs” (Bower, 262).
Nearly 70 percent of the artists had some type of affective disorder, noted Akiskal. The most common diagnoses were a moderate form of manic depression or even milder, intermittent periods of mood swings. More severe disorders, he concludes, would most probably been too disruptive an influence on the artists careers.
Limitations
Obviously, the limitations of this essay are legion. The primary problem one encounters with regard to this particular subject is that of the relatively small sample size of some of the subject groups in the aforementioned studies. Alas, one must conclude from the relative paucity of creative genius at large in society today, and the relative infrequency of cases of artistic ability throughout history (as evidenced by the high prices the products of said infrequent genius command on the open market) that sample size, for any study of this nature, will consequently always be small. There just will never be a great pool of artists extant to be sampled during any given historical age, past, present, or future.
There is also the question of a producing a verifiably effective methodology for quantifying and interpreting data on the possibly innumerable and endless permutations of creative ability and madness as they are apprehended by researchers in their perusal of any subject or group of subjects.
There are also scholarly views on the subject, some of which have found their way into print, that hold to the contrary, to wit: that there is nothing inherent in or intrinsic to artistic genius and creative ability that, necessarily, demands madness as a prerequisite for the process of creation. The author Anthony Storr, in an essay entitled “Sanity of True Genius” (pp. 249-268), argues effectively (conversely, for the purposes of this essay) that: “. . . it has been believed that the greater the genius, the more likely it is that he will be an exalted type of human being; noble, lofty, and harmonious; displaying in his life, as in his works, both exquisite sensibility and perfect control.” He goes on to say that: “[t]o this way of thinking, the greatest works of art could only be produced by people of the highest character. The noblest works mirror the nobility of the artist’s soul.”
Conclusion
“Where there’s smoke, there’s fire” (Anon.). Consequently (all aphorisms aside), and with a nod to Occam’s Razor, there must be some connection between madness and creativity for all these quite cogent folks to have felt compelled to thus comment upon the ties so frequently down through the ages. Surely then, bearing the findings mentioned, cultural and societal efforts to set a standard for and/or classify normalcy must be seen as ultimately vainglorious.
Hopefully, as the quantitative and empirical abilities of psycho-neurologists improve with the advent of new techniques such as magnetic resonance imaging and whole brain tomographic modeling, the human neural net will be mapped with some precision, and the synaptic dissemination of information and impulse will be thoroughly cataloged. Until these daunting tasks are done, and verified by a wealth of experimental data, we will be left with the unenviable, if nevertheless exciting task of attempting to induce conclusions about the connection between madness and creativity by the best means and methods available at present, represented by the cutting edge studies referred to in this essay.
Works Cited
Bower, B. (1987, October 24). Mood swings and creativity: New clues. Science News 87, p. 262.
Bower, B. (1988, September 3). Manic depression: Risk and creativity. Science News 88, p. 135.
Carpenter, Edmund. They Became What They Beheld. New York: Ballantine, !970.
cummings, e.e. “as freedom is a breakfastfood” Poems 1923-1954. New York: Harcourt-Brace, 1954.
Psychiatric Dictionary. 4th. Ed. Oxford U.P. 1970.
Storr, Anthony. Churchill’s Black Dog, Kafka’s Mice & Other Phenomena. New York: Grove Press, 1988.
The Oxford English Dictionary. Compact Ed. Oxford U.P. 1971.
Thrasher, J.W. “Sullied Similes” 'Euphonic Sequipedalien Paronomasia'. unpbl. ms.
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