If mental illness and creativity go together, as Kay Redfield Jamison and others claim...

However, even if the reverse were true, and mental illness caused creativity, then art therapy would still be useless, as it would be quite superfluous. The mentally ill would already be creative. Moreover, there would be no therapeutic point to such a process.

One could argue equally convincingly that cancerous cells are more creative than normal cells. This approach sidesteps the whole question of value or function in art and reduces it to mere form of novelty or grotequeness.

Maybe the idea is that you can be creative but not actually creating, because you never discovered that you could. Which might make you unhappy while the chance to create might make you a bit happier.

None of this really addresses the art therapy thing though.

To me, art therapy for mentally ill (or even neurologically defective types eg autism) helps not because it is creative, but because it allows a vent, an outlet of expression. Thus providing a therapy by way of catharsis, or soothing. Perhaps?

Nevertheless, isn't there a contradiction in the way modern psychiatry is so keep to prove some kind of causal link between creativity and the artist, while at the same time using art as therapy for mental illness?

My sister is a special education teacher who works in art therapy with autistic children. She says that her desire is to offer the child another means of conveying information and/or interacting with the world in a (hopefully positive) manner.

I've seen situations where the process of creating something has been quite theraputic for the patient, as it channels energy and requires focus, and results in something that is not harmful. I think that therapy in these cases is just transfering the tools and skills to those who are struggling with inner daemons and who do not have the tools and skills yet to communicate. (In other words, it's offering the person another option for survival.)

My best friend is bi-polar, and extremely creative ... in his case, it's the process of creation that he finds to be theraputic. Once he determines that a project has been completed he discards it and moves on to something new. It seems that thinking about creating and manipulating things to make something new to the world helps him to channel his manic energy in a fruitful manner. (Although it may also lead to not sleeping for hours on end, while lost in the process of creating ... that happens to me, unfortunately.)

isn't there a contradiction in the way modern psychiatry is so keep to prove some kind of causal link between creativity and the artist, while at the same time using art as therapy for mental illness?

I don't think that there is a contradiction. I see art therapy as giving the patient one more resource to battle their illness with. If there is a link between creativity and mental illness (which I am assuming is what you're saying above), then giving the patient a more structured manner in which to express themselves seems to me to be providing the patient with one more path toward coping in this world. Imagine having the desire ... or, rather, need ... to create, but not knowing how to channel that need. What would it be like to not know how to transfer that need into something more tangible?

(I apologize for all of this. It seems quite muddied to me as I re-read it. But somewhere, in amongst all of the babble, are some representations of what I am trying to communicate.)

If mental illness were to cause creativity, could it not then be theorised that that creative urge is actually a kind of naturally-occurring self-therapy? How many times have you heard an artist say something like "I do my art to keep myself sane."? To look at it another way: artistry is a form of expression, and thus art can be therepeutic as catharsis in the same way as, say, counselling sessions with a psychologist.

I think that all people are born with certain creative abilities or gifts or knacks or whatever you want to term such things (the 'nature' part of identity, if you will). However, most people bow to the moldings of society, to some extent (even if it's just to the point of barely functioning on the edges of society), and I think that much of society today frowns on creativity, unless it is performed within a strict definition of what is acceptable (the 'nurture' part of identity).

Therefore, does it not stand to reason that possibly those people with mental illness, who by dint of their illness have difficulty functioning within and assimilating into society, are more free to express their creativity, because they do not respond within (may not be aware of or completely disregard) society's strictures of what is and is not acceptable creativity?

I tend to think that those people who are the most creative are those who are on the outskirts of 'normal' (well, as it is commonly defined) society. Look at people like Crumb and John Waters, etc. to almost infinity) ... those people are not bowing to what is considered acceptable to the 'normals' and are not paying much attention to the strictures that dictate how art is to appear/to function (though, because there is commercialism in their need to support themselves and their art, they do have to meet some basic guidelines of what is acceptable to present and how it is presented ... but at the same time they are pushing those boundaries increasingly further and not going with the accepted/formulaic means of creation).

This is not to say that one must be mentally ill to be a great artist or a genius or whatever (Colin, I don't know that I'd agree with your grouping of 'great/famous' in that I think that some of the greatest are not the best known), but that there is a freedom that comes with not having to function 9-5, which accompanies the symptoms of the illness.

I also worry about there being too strong of a connection being drawn between creativity and mental illness, in that it could easily evolve to the point where one is believe to be mentally ill if one is creative. And that our current society, which seems to be insistent on making all of us into clones, with the same emotions and beliefs and actions, would even further alienate those who are creative, believing them to be sick. Or, even more frighteningly, society could come to manadate (whether through social conditioning or even governmental actions) 'treatment' for anyone who is creative, saying that those who are creative are merely evidencing their mental illness (and spinning it all to the idea that art is a plea from the artist to be 'healed' or 'made normal').

Also, I wonder if we haven't confounded other variables with artistry along the way - things like eminence/fame/popularity (yes, Passing Open Windows, they aren't quite the same thing, point taken). The people who desire fame most ardently are those who are most likely to get it; yet, that very desire can be founded on narcissistic compensations, like the need for an audience to compensate for a loveless childhood.

In some cases maybe the mentally ill are closer to that because they have an even harder time communicating 'normally'. I have read of a correlation between artistic creativity and bipolarity, due to the really intense highs and lows. (I was once diagnosed bipolar and I guess it fits to some extent, I get manic-feeling sometimes in overwhelming creative bursts.)

Art is therapeutic to me personally. It's a way to get things out of my system that would be disturbing or confounding in another context. I do think most people who are passionate about art, do it because they couldn't not do it. It's just what I have to do. Sometimes I feel that this makes me appear mentally ill to others because it's what I care about most in life, and I've done it pretty much since I was old enough to do anything at all. Not to mention that a lot of the things I choose to explore in art are admittedly weird and personal and coded for good reasons.

(this relates perhaps to the stigma of eccentricity. yes, I was a nerd in grammar school, maybe art is my great escape from it all.)

It is entirely possible, at this point, to think that maybe we do want those that we consider to be genuis to be weird and eccentric (look at D*li ... though I am not putting forth that he was a genius, but that the general public of the time viewed him that way ... at least some did). And maybe those who are inclined to be more individualistic and creative take that premissability and run with it, to the extremes. Or maybe we've come to somehow idolize those people who are eccentric because we yearn to be more like them and therefore we elevate them to a god-/goddess-like status of being genius without their having done anything to deserve that elevation (the Uni-B*mber?).

But I think that I am straying from the original question, here. I was thinking about what was said on the 'Am I a Weirdo' thread and on the thread on 'innovation and creativity are born of captivity, not freedom' and it seems to me that all of these questions come together, in that they deal with the desire to create (whether that is to create what most would consider to be 'art' or to create the identity of the self, and everything in between) and they strive to understand the place of the creative in society (if they are to be a part of society).

You can answer the 'innovation and creativity' thread with the idea that mental illness is a type of captivity, and if there is a correlation between mental illness and creativity, then therefore it is logical that if one is mentally ill and is trapped in that condition then one would strive to communicate through those constraints and one would have to be a genius to figure-out how to express that communication through creativity.

As far as 'Weirdos' in society are viewed, I am more inclined to be attracted to those who have the strength to reject the conventions of 'normalacy' and to be themselves in all of their unique glory then to look at the beige, everyday automatons who surround us all. I don't think that weirdos have much of a place in society (though society needs them as examples of what is not acceptable). I think that weirdos perform the essential role of being outside society and that therefore they are able to view and comment upon society with an eye that is untarnished by wanting to be a part of that which they are viewing. Society might not want those observations, but society needs them at the same time, because they provide structure and remind us that not everyone lives like everyone else and that all people have an individuality that needs to be allowed to be nourished and grow. (I'm actually working on an email to you on this topic, from your blog.)

Trixy (er, how do you want to be addressed and hello!), what you wrote about feeling that others perceive you as being mentally ill because your priorities is right on. That is something that I think society conditions people to do: 'Oh, she's just a batty artist-type', which completely demeans that person and invalidates whatever they say and/or contribute to any situation that society considers to be important.

I find it interesting, though, that some obsessions are more acceptable than others. Such as those people who refuse to leave the house on Sundays during football season, or ice fisher-people, or . It's like some obsessions are condoned, in that it is okay to be upset that your basketball team played a lousy game, but it is not okay to be upset that some beautiful creation has touched one deeply. Is this one of those 'well, it's all the fault of this being a masculinely-created and dominated society' (so therefore it's okay to passionate about sports and other 'masculine' endeavors but not about other, more feminine things) or does it actually reflect something different? And does this vary from culture to culture or time period to time period?

(I am hesitant to even mention the masculine/feminine argument, because it's so heated and because it has become, in many ways, a catch-all argument/thing on which to place blame, instead of looking more deeply for the true causes. But at the same time I do wonder if it might not be a contributing factor.)

A couple of points here:

1) HSA reckons that being manic depressive is actually incredibly *helpful* for an artist - manic phases of heightened activity and perhaps creativity are followed by periods of intense self-doubt and therefore self criticism and self-editing. Perhaps this is a link between one form of mental illness and being *successful* as an artist.

2) I agree with those who have stated above that the important part of art therapy is not creativity but SELF EXPRESSION. Not expressing oneself is linked to insanity, expressing oneself makes it better.

I don't know; I've been thinking about this a lot lately, because I've been dealing with both a huge depression, and a huge "writers' block" for lack of a better thing to call it, and I can't help but think that the two things are related.

I discovered and got into music/art/writing and other forms of self expression and creativity as a response to mental illness. I'll throw my vote in with the "if I didn't create, I'd go mad" crowd. But over the past few years, there has been a shift away from creativity for self expression, and towards creativity as some kind of achievement. In short, I stopped making music to stop myself from going mad, and started making music in order to make other people happy - bandmates, fans, journalists, boys I wanted to impress. And I've paid a price for this, both in terms of my mental health - which has basically gone to hell - and because of that, I've paid a price in terms of my "creatvity" drying up.

It's a vicious circle which I don't think I'm doing a particularly good job of explaining right now.

It's weird, but I think in a lot of ways the pressure of being *successful* as an artist can drive a sensitive person more insane. You insecure to start with, yet you learn to link your self-worth to achievement - achievement marked by making other people happy. Which exacerbates insecurity and lack of self worth.

OK, this is making me more unhappy trying to explain this.

Let's start at the beginning - I've never had traditional "art therapy" (though lord knows I've had every other kind of therapy) but I discovered myself, that at the worst times in my life, the thing that always made me feel better was some kind of artistic expression. This is not soft-focus feel-good stuff, this is things that have kept me alive during my real darkest moments.

When in complete manic stages, drawing or writing or practicing guitar compulsively actually helped me to calm and control rampaging thoughts. (At the same time, the obsessive compulsion to play songs over and over, draw pictures over and over, probably made me a better, or at least more technically competant artist.)

When I'm in my depressive state, simply *having something to do* - especially something that you feel "good at" - helps counteract feelings of worthlessness, bolsters self esteem, and - in the cases of communal activity like music, actually decreases a sense of isolation and alienation by linking me with like-minded people.

Or, at least, that's the highly clinical description of what's going on. What it FEELS LIKE is... well, bear in mind this is all metaphorical. It feels like there is a great whirling and rampaging VOID at the core centre of my personality, this dark and nasty and THING which is consuming me. When I was younger, they used to call it the "black dog on my shoulder" (not coincidentally the name of my first zine). Sometimes it feels like if I create beautiful things, that I can use them to make a fence around the whirling black hole, and stop me from being sucked in. Sometimes it feels like the black hole itself is belching out songs and writing and art, as a by-product of living, the same way that shit is a by-product of eating.

If I didn't create, this stuff would BUILD UP INSIDE ME AND DESTROY ME, destroying my equilibrium, turning my moods black, a howling gale of uncontollable rage and frustration and inexpressable pain.

So that's my experience of WHY I need to create.

I'm going to hit submit to continue talking so this computer doesn't crash and take the post with it.

I stopped making art because I needed to, and started making it to impress other people.

It didn't start with the direct idea of "Hey! I know! I'll sell out, that's a great idea!" - it started with receiving praise, adulation, and eventually money, for certain Aesthetic Product, but not for others. (And I use that phrase Aesthetic Product quite deliberately. I'm with the Dadaists, Art is a process, not the end result.) Sometimes you do it consciously, sometimes you do it unconsciously, but you end up focusing on that which gets a reward. Art becomes no longer about self expression, but about getting positive response, about impressing other people.

If you are a happy, healthy person with a good sense of self worth, there is nothing wrong with this process. You *should* give the people what they want, you should focus your talents and energies (in a money-making capacity) on those things that you are good at.

The problem results when you sacrifice the self-expression that keeps you sane.

The commerce of art - the music industry, etc. - is about Aesthetic Product. If you are a person who considers your art to be the emotional equivalent of excretement - a necessary process, but rather smelly - then to participate in this lifestyle requires that you spend a great deal of time rolling around in your own shit. Writing a song is a cathartic act, but performing that song over and over and over again becomes an act of *wallowing* in the emotions that created it, rather than an act of *transcending* those emotions and moving on.

The defensive reaction to this is to start to produce Aesthetic Product which is not a form of self expression, or a form of self expression so dilluted as to render it meaningless. You create art to make other people happy, not make yourself happy.

So you lose your self expression. The shit builds up inside you again, the belching blackhole remains unfed.

You start to become alienated from the people around you again, because you feel they are responding to a product, not you. You feel constantly misunderstood.

Even the self esteem bolstering positive strokes start to seem meaningless. You become over-sensitive to criticism. When you are making something for yourself, and someone doesn't like it, the result is a shrug and a "I'm not making this for you anyway, I don't care." When you are making something for someone else and they reject it, the result is some kind of rage of "Bloody hell, I made this for you, and you still don't like it, you ungrateful brat?!?!?"

So this ends up dumping me here, with my writers' blot. It's not that I don't have ideas - melodies, couplets, lyrics still pop into my head, I still still tell myself stories to get myself to sleep at night and take up long train journeys. I've just stopped writing them down. Maybe I lack the motivation to write them down, because I'm so demoralised by (my own perceived) failure. Maybe I'm actually afraid to write them down and get them out, for fear that I'll be locked back into the cycle I describe above. The *NEED* to do it hasn't gone away, there's just this overwhelming fear. I stopped enjoying it.

Anyway. Mad people create. Creative people go mad. The two things are implicitly linked, but correlation does not imply causality, and neither can you infer which way the cause runs.

What you've just shared shines some interesting lights for me ... someone that I love very much, who is creative and brilliant and also bi-polar, has recently decided to return to a lithium regimine, though with the fear that they will lose their extremes or 'sparks' that drive them to create and that they feel best represents their inner self.

Why? Because this person says that they're tired of being a burden on people; tired of knowing that people are struggling to understand them; tired of knowing that sometimes people discount their ideas/concerns/fears as being a symptom of the mental illness; tired of feeling like a burden to family and friends and society in gerneral; tired of feeling so disconnected and alien in the world.

What you've just shared gives me some glimpses of what it might be like to be inside the soul and mind of this other person. I'm going to ask them to read this thread and your posts, because it's something that they've been trying to explain to me and that I've not been comprehending, and ask if what you've presented comes close to their own perceptions. Thank you, Kate.

I think the two are linked.

Luckily? I've never been in Kate's position of having to pleae other people with art. It sounds like something I'd want to avoid.

Thanks Kate.

It didn't start with the direct idea of "Hey! I know! I'll sell out, that's a great idea!" - it started with receiving praise, adulation, and eventually money, for certain Aesthetic Product, but not for others

Interestingly, it can be even more distressful later if you get praise, adulation and/or money for all of them. That can lead to anxieties of accomplishment. e.g. "I used to be able to create so much, and now I barely have time to do anything" when really it was simply the case that you used to enjoy creating for its own sake, so you didn't view, say, not writing music for a week as a problem if instead you chose to write prose.

Also, Re: an earlier post...

That's almost close to saying that artistic activity and _sanity_ are causally linked (the former giving rise to the latter) - the complete opposite to the Jamison thesis. So - how do you acocunt for the correlation between great/famous artists and a high incidence of mental illness?
-- colin s barrow

Jamison's writing on the subject isn't the opposite of saying artistic activity and sanity are causally linked. She makes the case that the increased activity/awareness in bipolar manic or hypomanic states combined with the intensity of feelings during both "up" and "down" stages of the illness is in many ways a recipe for creativity. Also, I think it bears noting that she doesn't make the case for all mental illnesses... she's specifically talking about manic depressive illness.

That claim seems more reasonable, but it also seems rather obvious, too obvious to be worth stating even.

I'll admit I haven't read Jamison's stuff on the subject in a while, but as I recall there's also a good bit about how having an up/normal/down cycle can be beneficial to some artists in that they store up a lot of very real emotion during the down part of the cycle, are able to create a lot of work quickly and without editing during the up part and are able to spend more time looking at the work and reasonably editing it during the "normal" phase of the cycle.

She's very careful not to say that being bipolar means one will be more creative or that not being bipolar means one won't. Most of the stuff she's written on the subject (Touched with Fire being the biggest bit of it) simply makes arguments for creativity stemming from the way bipolars experience the world... with a shitload of examples from folks like Poe and Byron and others known or suspected to be/have been bipolar.

However, if one is wishing to extrapolate this towards drawing an important, valid conclusion about the nature mental illness and creativity, I find it kind of a futile exercise, because it remains purely speculative...no one living today really knows how Mozart behaved or what he said, or the level of accuracy with which he is portrayed in historical accounts. Like if there's an account written by Mozart's friend that reads "the Maestro washed his hands twenty times today", a historian/psychologist reading that might say "A-HA! OCD!!!" Whereas in reality it could be he was out cleaning the barn all day, and the guy writing the account had no idea. Or it could be completely not true to begin with, or exaggerated (maybe he washed his hands a normal number of times that day).

Like I said, it's entertaining and interesting stuff, but when people are constructing entire worlds around their inferences of what may or may not have happened hundreds of years ago, I think this should be kept with a bit of perspective as well...

Here's what I've noticed from "on the ground, up close and personal": a causal effect, and surprisingly an economic effect.

In the personal politics of eccentricity, you can be crazy if you can *afford* to be crazy. In other words, social class has something to do with how long you can stay within the parameters of what is commonly accepted as the "creative personality" without being put away or summarily dismissed as simply crazy, and no longer creative. If an artist can afford a place to live, whatever substances that legally or illegally medicate his/her condition, then productivity and recognition as an artist, even only at a local level, is possible.

Without this, a spin into addiction from self-medication or downward spiral due to the inability to self-medication means the ability to produce art will be lost--you can't paint it you can't afford the paint and you can't play guitar if you've pawned it. The main point here is that our definition of the mentally ill artist has an economic basis to it--the artist ceases to be the artist not when s/he becomes "cured" or "sane" but when economic conditions are such that art is no longer produced and interaction with other artists ceases.

This isn't to discount "blocks"; which exist. But when someone is blocked, they still have the ability to create. So what am I saying, I ask myself? That the role of actual economic freedom plays a larger part in the link between creativity and mental illness than might be supposed at first hand.

I've spent my life in artistic circles, being part of one music scene or another since high school. I've watched writers, artists, musicians attain big, small, and no fame, and I've seen how they do it. The best ones were mentally ill in some way. The ones who "made it", much like in business, had the finances to back up their efforts and keep their lifestyles at least on a functional level. The ones who didn't descended into the desperation of self-medication (remember the state of health care in the US--there is none for those with no money) which led to more *severe* mental illness to the point where they could no longer keep their lives functional. At that point, they ceased being regarded as artists, or "creative" and were simply regarded as insane.

I see two requisites for the link between creativity and mental illness. To be considered a "creative crazy" you have to (1) maintain a functional life at some level of economic feasibility and (2) actually produce your art and interact with a community that recognizes you as an artist. When you cease to do 1 and 2, then you are culturally defined as merely "insane" and no longer an artist.

Perhaps I've taken this on a tangent, but some artists can afford to be more disturbed than others. From what I've seen in my life, creative people *are* nutso, period (myself included), by whatever definition--they just have it under varying levels of control, in varying cycles, but the common denominator is that they can keep a functional life going.

I guess my question here is more along the lines of "where and how is the line drawn between being a crazy artist and just being crazy"?

But isn't this a matter of taste? Perhaps you just prefer the artistic products of the mentally ill for whatever reason. Many of the artists I like are (or rather seem) perfectly normal. Of course everyone has their neuroses, but I doubt it's a prerequisite to be batsh*t to appeal to me. I guess the other possibility is that I'm insane and I don't even notice that others are too!

i also think that the link between creativity and mental illness has been mythologized so that people can create the illusion of being much more creative or talented than they are because they are crazy or charismatic. it's like stealing a production idea from the beatles so people think you're beatles-esque when the actual song is nowhere near as complex or interesting.

I tend to agree with you there, Lolita I'm all for local scenes where art it done for art's sake. The urge to succeed isn't necessarily the same as obsessively pursuing fame, though, or maybe not? That's a thread in itself--to what extent does creative success *require* obsessive pursuit of fame?

Also, and Spencer I didn't mean to imply that only the mentally ill can create art (although when I think of Britney Spears... j/k), just that those who I have *known personally* have been a little touched. If I prefer emotionally intense art to sensible, normal art, so be it.

I don't think there's an absolute correlation between an artists mental state and the "intensity" of the art they produce. I absolutely reject the notion that normal, sensible people can only create normal, sensible art. What I'm sure we can all agree on is that plenty crazy people and plenty sane people are all capable of making bad art.

Spencer OTM.

A good example of this would be film director Werner Herzog, who when asked if he is mentally ill, has categorically rejected the notion (maybe a bit egotistical, but not in any way you wouldn't expect a director to be to get things accomplished). But look at the ideas he has put in his movies: literally pulling a boat over a mountain (Fitzcarraldo), unloading crates and crates of rats throughout a city for a dream sequence (Nosferatu), insisting an entire cast be hypnotized to make one of his movies (Heart of Glass), chose to work six times with an actor who probably WAS mentally ill (Klaus Kinski) not once but SIX times (all other directors never worked with Kinski more than once). He's created pretty unique and intense films (are they for everyone? well, no, of course not), is unflinchingly adamant and passionate about his creative choices as a director...no mental illness.

Except I don't even understand what you're trying to say!

I was making a joke.

Kay Redfield Jamison: Classic or Dud?

It kinda throws a lot of things from the past year or two into very sharp focus.

http://www.angelfire.com/nv/mf/elia2/genius.htm

SANITY OF TRUE GENIUS

SO far from the position holding true, that great wit (or genius, in our modern way of speaking), has a necessary alliance with insanity, the greatest wits, on the contrary, will ever be found to he the sanest writers. It is impossible for the mind to conceive of a mad Shakspeare. The greatness of wit, by which the poetic talent is here chiefly to he understood, manifests itself in the admirable balance of all the faculties. Madness is the disproportionate straining or excess of any one of them. "So strong a wit," says Cowley, speaking of a poetical friend,

"----did Nature to him frame, As all things but his judgment overcame,
His judgment like the heavenly moon did show,
Tempering that mighty sea below."
The ground of the mistake is, that men, finding in the raptures of the higher poetry a condition of exaltation, to which they have no parallel in their own experience, besides the spurious resemblance of it in dreams and fevers, impute a state of dreaminess and fever to the poet. But the true poet dreams being awake. He is not possessed by his subject, but has dominion over it. In the groves of Eden he walks familiar as in his native paths. He ascends the empyrean heaven, and is not intoxicated. He treads the burning marl without dismay; he wins his flight without self-loss through realms of chaos "and old night." Or if; abandoning himself to that severer chaos of a "human mind untuned," he is content awhile to be mad with Lear, or to hate mankind (a sort of madness) with Timon, neither is that madness, nor this misanthropy, so unchecked, but that,never letting the reins of reason wholly go, while most he seems to do so, -- he has his better genius still whispering at his ear, with the good servant Kent suggesting saner counsels, or with the honest steward Flavius recommending kindlier resolutions. Where he seems most to recede from humanity, he will he found the truest to it. From beyond the scope of Nature if he summon possible existences, he subjugates them to the law of her consistency. He is beautifully loyal to that sovereign directress, even when he appears most to betray and desert her. His ideal tribes submit to policy; his very monsters are tamed to his hand, even as that wild sea-brood, shepherded by Proteus. He tames, and he clothes them with attributes of flesh and blood, till they wonder at themselves, like Indian Islanders forced to submit to European vesture. Caliban, the Witches, are as true to the laws of their own nature (ours with a difference), as Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth. Herein the great and the little wits are differenced; that if the latter wander ever so little from nature or actual existence, they lose themselves, and their readers. Their phantoms are lawless; their visions nightmares. They do not create, which implies shaping and consistency. Their imaginations are not active -- for to be active is to call something into act and form -- but passive, as men in sick dreams. For the super-natural, or something super-added to what we know of nature, they give you the plainly non-natural. And if this were all, and that these mental hallucinations were discoverable only in the treatment of subjects out of nature, or transcending it, the judgment might with some plea be pardoned if it ran riot, and a little wantonized: but even in the describing of real and every day life, that which is before their eyes, one of these lesser wits shall more deviate from nature -- show more of that inconsequence, which has a natural alliance with frenzy, than a great genius in his "maddest fits," as Withers somewhere calls them. We appeal to any one that is acquainted with the common run of Lane's novels, -- as they existed some twenty or thirty years back, -- those scanty intellectual viands of the whole female reading public, till a happier genius arose, and expelled for ever the innutritious phantoms, -- whether he has not found his brain more "betossed," his memory more puzzled, his sense of when and where more confounded, among the improbable events, the incoherent incidents, the inconsistent characters, or no-characters, of some third-rate love intrigue where the persons shall be a Lord Glendamour and a Miss Rivers, and the scene only alternate between Bath and Bond-streets more bewildering dreaminess induced upon him, than he has felt wandering over all the fairy grounds of Spenser. In the productions we refer to, nothing but names and places is familiar; the persons are neither of this world nor of any other conceivable one; an endless string of activities without purpose, of purposes destitute of motive : -- we meet phantoms in our known walks; fantasy only christened. In the poet we have names which announce fiction; and we have absolutely no place at all, for the things and persons of the Fairy Queen prate not of their "whereabout." But in their inner nature, and the law of their speech and actions, we are at home and upon acquainted ground. The one turns life into a dream; the other to the wildest dreams gives the sobrieties of every day occurrences. By what subtile art of tracing the mental processes it is effected, we are not philosophers enough to explain, but in that wonderful episode of the cave of Mammon, in which the Money God appears first in the lowest form of a miser, is then a worker of metals, and becomes the god of all the treasures of the world; and has a daughter, Ambition, before whom all the world kneels for favours -- with the Hesperian fruit, the waters of Tantalus, with Pilate washing his hands vainly, but not impertinently, in the same stream -- that we should be at one moment in the cave of an old hoarder of treasures, at the next at the forge of the Cyclops, in a palace and yet in hell, all at once, with the shifting mutations of the most rambling dream, and our judgment yet all the time awake, and neither able nor willing to detect the fallacy, is a proof of that hidden sanity which still guides the poet in his widest seeming. aberrations.

It is not enough to say that the whole episode is a copy of the mind's conceptions in sleep; it is, in some sort -- but what a copy! Let the most romantic of us, that has been entertained all night with the spectacle of some wild and magnificent vision, recombine it in the morning, and try it by his waking judgment. That which appeared so shifting, and yet so coherent, while that faculty was passive, when it comes under cool examination, shall appear so reasonless and so unlinked, that we are ashamed to have been so deluded; and to have taken, though but in sleep, a monster for a god. But the transitions in this episode are every whit as violent as in the most extravagant dream, and yet the waking judgment ratifies them.

This is probably the wrong thread to put this article on (have barely skimmed above content) but I was looking for some creativity/mental illness thread to discuss this on:

A giant "hmmmmmmm" to this article

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-unleashed-mind

Eye-rolls at the first couple of pages, which seems to be "let's create a mental disorder based completely on eccentricity, then hold it responsible for eccentricity and creativity" which is circular logic at its finest.

But later on in the article, it talks about how both creative people and "schitzotypal" people lack cognitive filters that stop all the churning sense impressions and inner digestive processes of those sense impressions, memories, etc (I hate to use the term "Subconscious" because it's so Freudian and just not really substantiated, but the back chatter channels of the mind) from reaching the conscious/focus level.

Which really kind of makes a lot of sense to me. Because I've always felt that both my creativity and my madness spring from the same thing: that my *internal* world just seems so much more *real* to me than the external world. (And also the continuing sense that I have always lacked some kind of cognitive filter to screen all that back chatter out, the thoughtworms, etc.)

Anyway. I don't know. There seems to be an awful lot of nonsense in that article, but a kernel of truth in it somwhere.