The most important events in our waking time are - maintaining alertness and choosing what to pay attention to, processing these inputs and associated feelings etc, thinking and planning, and finally responding by appropriate verbal or behavioral means. We are continuously preoccupied with one thought or another throughout our waking hours. But what is thinking ?
According to one definition It is a flow of ideas, symbols (words are symbols for objects or concepts) or associations (refers to connection between one idea and the next). Thought is usually initiated by a problem or a task, proceeds in a logical manner and results in a reality oriented conclusion. This type of thinking is called rational thinking which is the most usual mode of thinking employed by us. Such thought can also use the medium of combinations of sounds or colors as when a musician or painter makes his creations. But usually most of our thought uses the medium of language.
But we are also capable of many other types of thought. In fantasy there is no clear use of logic. Contact with reality may also be abandoned to some extent when one is in the mode of fantasy thinking. Creative writers use this mode for creating their tales or poems. But if fantasy thinking becomes excessive, or uncontrolled, or if it becomes the predominant mode, the person may have crossed over to the other side of the Line of control. Psychotics are unable to distinguish between these modes of thinking. A person with schizophrenia may be believing the irrational or subjective reality created by his mind and taking this as objective fact. (It has to be conceded that his genetic and environmental vulnerabilty also contributes to this state).
This may be one reason why madness and creativity were thought of as 2 sides of the same coin. In psychosis, the person is unable to perform reality checks to put his subjective world in order. A creative writer is able to utilise this gift of imagination in a controlled manner.In addition he also has good linguistic skills, vocabulary, the insight and empathy to understand the emotional world of others. Many of them have an open attitude and are bold to experiment with life and entertain unconventional ideas. I think it is this combination of many facets that makes a creative writer. It has to highlighted that emotional skills are as much important as cognitive skill for an artist.
ഇന്ത്യ
7 months ago
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Hi friends,
Is it so simple to deny the link between madness and creativity? I may disagree with Sashi because there are studies done on this subject, the researchers include eminent psychiatrists also. Blaming it on western stereotyping is over simplification, I will give examples from India later. It is not possible to put all the studies here, anyway here are some words from Nancy Andreasen. In 2000 President Clinton awarded her the National Medal of Science, America’s highest award for scientific achievement. This award was given "for her pivotal contributions to the social and behavioral sciences, through the integrative study of mind, brain, and behavior, by joining behavioral science with the technologies of neuroscience and neuroimaging in order to understand mental processes such as memory and creativity, and mental illnesses such as schizophrenia."
In a pair of studies that were the first to use modern scientific techniques to look at the relationship between "genius and insanity," I studied 30 writers and a control group matched for age, sex, and education who had professions outside the arts. I began this study in the context of my interest in the relationship between schizophrenia and creativity, based on the family histories of people such as Joyce, Einstein, and Russell, as described in chapter 8.1 expected that the writers themselves would be relatively free of mental illness, but that they would have an increased rate of schizophrenia in their first-degree relatives. As I interviewed one writer after another, I was astonished to find that the majority of them suffered from mood disorder, not schizophrenia. This was completely counter to my working hypothesis! Furthermore, their relatives also suffered from mood disorders! Their relatives also had a very high rate of creativity. In fact, there was scarcely a family that did not have a first-degree relative with either mood disorder or creativity, and most had both. The statistics from the thirty writers and their families, compared with the thirty controls and their families, are quite amazing. Thirteen percent of the writers were bipolar I, 30% were bipolar II, and 37% suffered from major depression. Thirty percent also suffered from alcoholism. All these rates were significantly higher than in the control group. Turning to their first-degree relatives, I found that they too had high rates of mood disorder in comparison to normal controls. Three percent had bipolar disorder, 15% major depression, and 7% alcoholism. Further, their rates of creativity were also increased in comparison with the controls. Twenty percent of their relatives were creatively successful. Interestingly, the type of creativity exhibited in the relatives of these writers was not limited to literary creativity. Instead, family members were dancers, painters, inventers, musicians, and photographers, as well as writers. It appears that the trait running in these families is a primary one reflecting personality and cognitive style, which predisposes people to being creative, but also makes them susceptible to mood disorder. Cognitive and personality testing of this sample indicated that they tended to be more intellectually open, adventuresome, curious, and questioning. This way of approaching the world may permit them to perceive in novel ways and to be generally more inventive, but it also makes them more vulnerable to rebuffs and mood swings.
Several other investigators, including Kay Jamison, Ruth Richards, and Hagop Akiskal, have subsequently confirmed the general direction of these findings. These multiple replications have created a sea change in thinking about the relationship between "genius and insanity." Many types of creativity are clearly related to mood disorder.
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