A famous Professor of Psychiatry in Bombay used to narrate the story of Siddhartha Gautama to his fresh post graduates in Psychiatry (of course without revealing the name) and ask them "What will be your advice if such a parson is brought to you by his parents ?" Obviously it is difficult to give an accurate answer.
The concept of normality is based on statistical norms or conventions etc. A person whose thoughts and behaviors run contrary to these standards is at risk of being labelled abnormal.
I had read in 'Readers' Digest' long ago that the famous Hollywood director Steven Spillberg showed unusual behaviors as a child. He had a huge parakeet living in his room. Nobody except his grandma used to enter his room for cleaning or collecting dirty clothes. All of them were afraid that the bird will fly away. The room was untidy most of the time.
This and many other peculiarities might have given him several unusual experiences in childhood. All these might have contributed to his later creative work. (Later he was diagnosed as having Asperger's syndrome).
His grandma also remembers that the family was advised to consult a psychiatrist by many relatives and friends. She never allowed the parents to do this. She thinks this way she helped to protect his creativity. Is she right ? I have no answer. Is this why Americans use the term Headshrinker (shrinks !) for psychiatrists ?
ഇന്ത്യ
2 weeks ago
12 comments:
I would like to answer the famous professor of Mumbay though the question is very difficult to answer. I will recommend treating the Buddha if he is asking for help. The question gets more complex if Buddha is completely egosyntonic. In the history, it says that Buddha was extremely dissatisfied with the normal life. I think health is preferred to creativity. Nobody has the right to enjoy anything at the expense of others. You may take away something from the society they are supposed to get from nature when you treat a psychotic creative but I think it doesn't matter. Why should an individual suffer for a group of people? Our question of insanity vs. creativity is a zero sum game. Worth of the life of all individuals (society) minus the worth of the life of an individual is zero.
I thought I have to make clear my stand on the discussion of insanity vs. creativity. I tried to point to the consequences of treating a creative person with mental illness. I may be wrong, invite your comments about this.
Thank you.
It is easy to treat anybody if he is willing and asking for help. But it is difficult when the person insists that he is normal, and his relatives don't agree to this. I csould not follow the rest of your ideas. Can you clarify it a bit more ? John Nash is highly gifted and creative. But when he became psychotic he had to be treated. Later events confirmed that the treatment only did hiim good. He made remarkable contribution after the psychosis abated with treatment.
Thank you.
I said you can treat a person even if it is going to take away all his creative talents. It is possible that a poet may develop difficulty writing poems when he is treated with mood stabilizers or antipsychotics. So healing a poet's mood disorder or psychosis means he is not going to write any more poems but this has other implications. A poet is a nature's or evolution's gift to the society. The society is not getting what it deserves from the poet or poet's genes or the debated genes that play in creativity or insanity. I think nobody can write great poetry in a normal/usual mood.
But a poet's health is more important than his poetry. He doesn't need to suffer from any mind/brain disorder for the sake of others enjoying his poetry. A single person's life is equally important to the sum of all people's life on the earth. I said if you are confident that somebody is suffering from any mind-brain disorder, try to treat him and don't worry about the treatment's consequences on his creative talents. Antipsychotic treatment with drugs in a person will result in improvement if he is working in more objective science or art but I doubt the effects of drugs in cases like poetry, abstract art, novel or short story writing etc... To keep the whole story of a novel and its characters in the head are not easy and not for the common mind. I think a little bit of insanity is required in some fields of arts. But it is also true that nobody needs to suffer for that. A patient’s decision to treat or not has no value in severe cases because the very organ that is used for making decisions is not working properly.
I hope I made it clear. Let me know if it is not. Thank you.
I think it is better to leave the choice to the poet himself rather than society or psychiatrist acting as a father figure / protector. This will have to abandoned if the actions of the artist (or of any citizen) runs against of the safety and common intersts of the society. Then appropriate legal provisions should apply. Such acts cannot be justified in the name of creativity or originality.
You are absolutely right. But we have to notice an important point that the same rules can be applied to a man who is smoking ganja and not disturbing any others. There is a dilemma here and it is the reason I insist for an integration of positive deviation to the diagnostic criteria. Psychosis of a poet is the negative deviation and his poetry is the positive deviation. But there are no positive deviations in a ganja smoker. The current systems of diagnostic criteria are biased towards abnormality grading.
Thank you.
You are not likely to be punished if you use alcohol without disturbing others. In countries where ganja use is legal, smoking it quietly is not a problem. But in India and other countries where its use is declared illegal, you are likely to be caught as you have commited an offence. The revised Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances actually differentiated between user of a substance (who will not be punished for keeping a small specifeid quantity, and a seller who keeps larger quantities. In fact users tell me that sellers bribe the police to charge them as users. This provision was not there in the earlier act).
Deviations can lead to a higher level of adaptation or a lower level. The society finds it dificult to tolerate highly gifted geniuses and label them as eccentrics. But is not with a negative intent. This is ok. diagnostic labels apply ony to maladaptive and problematic behaviors.
i think , as harish has said, and i said earlier, the psychiatric criteria is only a voluntary one in the sense that a person may fulfil the criteria, but is only graded once he is front of a psychiatrist. The psychiatrist has no role in the matter. It is the psychiatrist's duty to prove why a person is mentally ill, it's not the patient;s duty to prove his innocence of the illness, so i think any apprehensions on thae score is misplaced, and you can thank the classification system and the mental health act for that. I recognise the validity of ajeesh's point, but we are mere mortals, we may not think on cosmic lines, or we may, but the society has a right to reject that view. Like individual views, the society's views may be as valid, since society itself is a stage in evolution. Thank you
Dear ajeesh,
Do you mean to say that the progress of the human society from hunters/tribes/nomards to the modern civilised society was possible...... only because of the fotunate absence of enough number of psychiatrists (and his drugs) who are more than willing to treat creativities if they do not conform the normality of the society in question?
Hi,
Did the invention of wheel provoke anyone?
I didn’t say that the progress become possible because there were not enough psychiatrists around. I tried to say that psychiatrists should be more careful when they are dealing with creative people. There are problems identifying creative people among psychotics. So I proposed the integration of positive deviations to the diagnostic criteria. It is a complicated subject and I hope experts will revise the diagnostic criteria sooner or later. I have heard that in DSM V, they are going to remove OCD from the group of anxiety disorders to a new group of its own. People who support this view argue that obsessions and compulsions are the fundamental nature of the problem so that it is not a good idea to include it in the anxiety disorders group. It is my humble opinion that it will be a good idea to give some guidelines in the new DSM V to identify the creative or positive deviations associated with bipolar disease. Not all discoveries or inventions make people irritated.
Thank you.
Dear Ajeesh,
Your view on positive deviation is well taken. DSM - IV Tr and its earlier version has on critria in most of the categories. It say "The condition should produce significant distress or impairment in the person's life or represent gross deviation from the social/cultural context of the person". I think this safeguards against labelling positive deviations as mental illness. Thank you
But does it help you find creative among mentally disturbed?
No Ajeesh. But is it the job of a psychiatrist to find creative people. I dont think this amy be needed. Most of the creative people accomplish things and get recognition by themselves and with the help of their friends. Psychiatrists have no role here. But when a creative person is being treated for coexisting mental illness, I think some caution is needed to ensure that he is able to be productive.
Post a Comment