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Intelligence, Creativity, and a Touch of Madness
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Intelligence, Creativity, and a Touch of Madness
There often seems to be a rather mysterious link between creativity and mental illness. Many great poets, writers, artists, composers, scientists, and mathematicians throughout history were known to battle with some kind of mental illness and/or personality disorder at some point in their lives. Many of these eminent creative individuals had to go through harsh early life experiences as well, such as social rejection, parental loss, and physical disability, along with their mental and emotional instabilities. They were tortured and brilliant at the same time, so to speak. They would oftentimes come up with the most original ideas and penetrating flashes of insight during moments of psychological pain, distress, or sadness.

But is there really a link between high levels of creativity and mental illness?


"Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence - whether much that is glorious - whether all that is profound - does not spring from disease of thought - from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect. They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night. In their gray visions they obtain glimpses of eternity, and thrill, in awakening, to find that they have been upon the verge of the great secret." - Edgar Allen Poe

"Thus the creative genius may be at once naïve and knowledgeable, being at home equally to primitive symbolism and to rigorous logic. He is both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner, than the average person." - Frank X. Barron

Those quotes may well be true ... because even recent studies have concluded that there is a positive association between creativity and mental illness. They show that creative and intelligent minds have a higher-than-average tendency to be predisposed to things like depression, anxiety, alcoholism, obsessionality, psychotic disorders, personality disorders, hallucinations, addiction, etc. So, with that said, here are some links on this which I found pretty interesting:

A Little Weird? Prone to Depression? Blame Your Creative Brain

Robin Williams' Death Underscores Connection Between Creativity, Depression and Addiction

Secrets of the Creative Brain

The Dark Side of Creativity


Creative people also have high levels of intuition. As Frank Barron, a pioneer in the psychology of creativity, asserted: "So our finding was that intuition, linked with some degree of introversion, was related to creativity" (1965).

Another interesting thing about the brains of really creative people is that they are able to simultaneously activate two different networks of the brain which are anti-correlated in most ordinary people. One of them is the executive control network (which is also dubbed the "looking out" network) and the purpose of this network is to basically control our ability to concentrate (on the external environment). The other one is called the default mode network (also dubbed the "looking in" network) and this network is associated with the ability to focus on our inner stream of consciousness, such as for things like imagining, daydreaming, and self-reflection.

Studies have found that creative people are more easily able to keep the two aforementioned networks of the brain activated at the same time as compared to less creative people. Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist, explains this new finding in the talk below which starts around the 5:30 mark.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpWLZntADdI
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Messages In This Thread
Intelligence, Creativity, and a Touch of Madness - by Rayaan - October 23, 2014 at 5:07 pm

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