Creativity And Mood Disorders
..."madness" and creativity is explored. In particular, unipolar disorder and bipolar disorder are discussed. The article Manic Depressive Illness and Creativity by Kay Redfield Jamison is used to reference the link between both unipolar disorder and bipolar disorder and creativity.
Creativity and Mood Disorders
More than two thousand years ago, the great philosopher Aristotle proclaimed, "No great genius has ever been without some divine madness." History has long painted the idea that mental turmoil and creativity go hand in hand. There are many examples of great artists, musicians, poets and novelists who exhibit the classic signs of major mood disorders, such as depression and bipolar disorder. Poets and novelists who wrote about their "savage moods," include: William Blake, Alfred Lord Tennyson, John Berryman, Edgar Allan Poe, Emily Dickinson, Ernest Hemingway, and Virginia Woolf. Artists, who were thought to have painted the picture of insanity included: Vincent Van Gogh, Ernest Josephson, Georgia O'Keefe, Max Ernest, Jackson Pollock, Amedeo Modigliani, Paul Gaugin, Edvard Munch, Michelangelo, and Mark Rothko.
The sheer number of creative geniuses plagued with "madness" seems to indicate that the mind that holds great creative promise may also suffer from great mental anguish. The article Manic Depressive Illness and Creativity by Kay Redfield Jamison illustrates this point. In the article Jamison tries to show a link between unipolar disorder, bipolar disorder and creativity. As evidence, Jamison points to several prominent artists who experienced some degree of "madness" or irrational thought. His research has found that artists and writers are eight to ten times more likely to exhibit signs of major depression and ten to twenty times more likely to exhibit signs of bipolar disorder than the general public (Jamison, 1997).
How does one define...
View Full Essay
