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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.

Scientists have known for years that truly creative individuals have a much higher rate of manic depression, or bipolar disorder, than does the general population.

Stanford researchers Connie Strong and Terence Ketter, MD, have taken the first steps toward exploring the relationship.

Using personality and temperament tests, they found artists to be more similar in personality to individuals with manic depression than to healthy people in the general population.

Is it simply that manic depressive people have a wider spectrum of emotions and different points of view that enable them to sense the world in higher granularity?

Another theory is that people with bipolar disorder generate a great number of ideas during their mania period and then highly criticize them during depression, leaving only the most promising ideas, which are then further evaluated during the next manic period.

During episodes of mania, bipolar patients experience being in a good mood and their self-esteem is elevated. They sleep less and have abundant energy; their productivity increases.

Manic-depressives frequently become paranoid and irritable. Moreover, their speech is often rapid, excitable and intrusive, and their thoughts move quickly and fluidly from one topic to another. They usually hold tremendous conviction about the correctness and importance of their own ideas as well.

Studying the speech of hypomanic patients has revealed that they tend to rhyme and use other sound associations far more often than do unaffected individuals. They can also list synonyms or form other word associations much more rapidly than is considered normal.

Or perhaps it’s the other way around? Perhaps people who are highly creative and intelligent tend to develop bipolar disorder? After all most manic-depressives do not possess extraordinary imagination, and most accomplished artists do not suffer from recurring mood swings.

Consider the quote by Henrik Tikkanen who said that, “Truly great madness cannot be achieved without significant intelligence”.

See you all in my next post,

Roni

Visit Roni at the start2think website