Modern American poets John Berryman, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Sylvia Plath, Theodore Roethke, Delmore Schwartz and Anne Sexton were all hospitalized for bipolar disorder during their lives. And many painters and composers, among them Vincent van Gogh, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Mingus and Robert Schumann were similarly afflicted.
The belief that “madness” is related to creativity is not limited to artistic creativity. Consider for example the movie, “A Beautiful Mind”, which tells the story of Nobel Laureate in economics, John Nash, who suffered from Schizophrenia.
Gravity was discovered. Hydroelectricity was developed. There is little argument there. The first is a natural phenomenon which does not owe its existence to Newton. The second is a manmade technology that uses that natural phenomenon in a way that did not exist before it was developed (late 19th century – would you believe it?).
When it comes to the human psyche, the picture gets a little fuzzier. Arguably, the unconscious was discovered, while psychoanalysis was developed (also late 19th century). But the boundaries between what existed independently of Freud’s work and what was developed by him and his followers are somewhat blurred.
