Creativity as insanity is hardly a new concept. Socrates wrote:
"If a man comes to the door of poetry untouched by the madness of the muses, believing that technique alone will make him a good poet, he and his sane compositions never reach perfection, but are utterly eclipsed by the inspired madman."
Many great writers, painters, and other geniuses will tell you that when they are at the peak of their creativity, they are "out of their minds." They will look back on something they have made and not remember having made it. They will say they were not themselves when they were creating it. Maybe they will attribute this suspension of self - this takeover - to their muse or some ethereal other, not their real self. They may not tell their agent, but they will probably tell their therapist.
So, is insanity creativity? No offense intended by my word choice. If the word "insanity" upsets you, substitute mental disturbance or mental illness. In her fascinating book,
Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Redfield Jamison explores bipolar disorder among renowned artists and writers, including Lord Byron and Van Gogh. If you really want to dig into the subject, and pay a subscription, try Louis A. Sass'
Schizophrenia, Modernism, and the "Creative Imagination": On Creativity and Psychopathology and his responders in the
Creativity Research Journal.
What of politicians?
In the view of psychiatrists R. T. Davidson, K. M. Connor, and M. Swartz, who authored "Mental Illness in U.S. Presidents Between 1776 and 1974," in the The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, perhaps half of the 37 Presidents who served in those years may have been mentally ill to one degree or another. Were some of them creative geniuses in the political realm as a consequence of their mental illness?
Atlantic Monthly says:
The Presidential Mind
Of the thirty-seven U.S. presidents from George Washington to Richard Nixon, almost half may have suffered from a mental illness, according to a Duke University study. Two of the psychiatrists who authored the study reviewed biographical material on each president and assessed the likelihood that each chief executive suffered from various psychological disorders. While acknowledging the "limitations" of this method, they report that eighteen presidents exhibited tendencies suggestive of mental illness, with depression (in 24 percent of cases) being the most common, followed by anxiety (8 percent), bipolar disorder (8 percent), and alcoholism (also 8 percent). In ten cases, the disorder manifested itself during the president's term in office, and in most of these instances, the authors argue, it "probably impaired job performance." Franklin Pierce, for instance, lost his son in a railway accident immediately before his inauguration, and seems to have sunk into a depression so deep that associates commented that "he was not the person who had victoriously campaigned for office." And the political "drift" associated with William Howard Taft's term may be attributed to "the fact that he coped with the stress of the Presidency by overeating to the point of massive obesity and obstructive sleep apnea."
Since this is only my second diary here, and only the first one I have written myself, please do not flame me for holding outdated views about mental health or mental patients. I have undergone therapy myself - for depression related to the kidnapping of my children - and one of my cousins is schizophrenic.
What I am interested in are Kossacks' views about the trade-offs involved when the President may be mentally disturbed but politically creative beyond the levels of "ordinary" humans. What do you think? Would we have been better off without Jefferson, Lincoln. T. Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson?
Or do you consider this whole retrospective psychiatry bunk?
