How do you differentiate creativity from insanity?

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Creativity, the highest form of human activity, and its link to insanity has been a debate for over thousands of years. Aristotle himself stated that “no excellent soul is exempt from a mixture of madness”; if you have the capabilities to devise a creative masterpiece, where does it stop being creativity and become madness? Vincent Van Gogh, Mozart, and Robin Williams are amongst the few names that surface when talking about “insane creative geniuses”. Their creative breakthroughs in their respective fields are directly correlated to their inherited mental disorders that they suffered with. With that being said, the thin line that differentiates creativity from insanity is barely existent, making the two concepts areas on the same spectrum. Creativity is the first stage of insanity, so there is no need to separate the two as they are essentially the same thing.

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The most well known writers that are known for their creative abilities are clinically insane, for example, Lewis Carroll. His breakthroughs in literature are most recognized in his series “Alice in Wonderland”, where he writes about a girl named Alice who experiences a succession of peculiar events after falling into a rabbit hole. In the extract “Through the Looking Glass”, Carroll writes about Alice having a conversation with her cat as if it were another human, asking her questions such as “if [she] can play chess”. She discusses the idea of “living in a Looking-glass House” and then goes on to imagine herself in the room itself. This extract is one small section of thousands of pages of creative geniosity as Alice endures experiences most wouldn’t even be able to think of. Although some might think that it is all fiction, therefore not making it a valid reasoning for this argument, the man behind the words is actually Lewis Carroll, and he must have a certain level of creativity in order to be able to have thought of all the description in the first place. His creativity is undeniable which begs the question: if he was able to come up with these situations in his head, is he creative or in a state of madness? Multiple articles have claimed that Carroll had a “rare neurological syndrome that causes strange hallucinations and affects the size of visual objects, which can make the sufferer feel bigger or smaller than they are - a huge theme of the book” (Robson). In one of her first adventures, Alice drinks multiple potions to change sizes, one of the most memorable scenes in the book. It was found that many psychiatric patients experienced similar feelings of “opening out like a telescope”, which resulted in the discovery of a new illness. The disease, who was first discovered by English psychiatrist John Todd, was later named Alice in Wonderland Syndrome (Blom). Lewis Carroll was actually suffering from this mental illness, which he then conveyed in a book and was labelled as ‘creative’, not insane, even though clearly both go hand-in-hand.

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The link between creativity and insanity through the form of art is even more evident than that in literature. If you are able to visualize 3D street art and draw it out, are you creative or are you insane? Similarly to this, if you are able to accurately depict one of the greatest unknown physics concepts of all time, are you creative or insane? Vincent Van Gogh did this exact phenomenon through his unique style of painting which he is famous for. He was one of the most troubled artists known to man, mutilating his own ear and admitting himself to a mental institution after a psychotic episode (Gould). Strangely enough, a painting that Vincent Van Gogh painted of the view outside his window just before sunrise in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum called “The Starry Night” conveyed the “distinct pattern of turbulent fluid structures” (St. Clair). The night sky that is covered in circular brush strokes captured the motion of light rather than its appearance, unlike in paintings from famous artists in the past. Turbulent flow in fluid dynamics is one of the hardest concepts we’ve tried to understand in physics, especially when attempting to describe it mathematically. Sixty years after Van Gogh’s masterpiece, Russian mathematician Andrey Kolmogorov proposed a new equation that was “remarkably close to the way turbulent flow works”, however, a completely accurate description is one of the biggest unsolved problems in physics (St. Clair). The fact that his painting demonstrated shockingly close representations of this concept without Van Gogh even knowing about it highlights the pure genius in his work. In addition to this, his mental health had a direct correlation to his ability to creatively produce a masterpiece. His self-portrait with a pipe that he painted from a calmer period in his life showed no sign to the correspondence with turbulent flow. With that being said, the obvious relation proves that there is, in fact, no difference between the two and that insanity is simply a synonym for extensive creativity.

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Studies conducted on the ‘creativity vs insanity’ debate exhibit insignificant differences between the two, making them the same. The article “Creativity & Madness Revisited from Current Psychological Perspectives” from the Journal of Consciousness Studies by Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona explores the idea of similar personality roots between heightened creativity and mental illness (Barrantes-Vidal). Biological-cognitive-personality features such as cognitive disinhibition are the link between personality traits and creativity, which is then related to genetic liability for both bipolar and schizophrenic psychoses. Power et al’s study highlights this idea of genetic similarity; they identified the fact that genetic variation links to creativity and psychiatric disorders. Their method included testing whether polygenic risk scores for various mental illnesses (such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder) would prophesy creativity, and after testing multiple cohorts, they found that higher scores were associated with members of the artistic society or those who had creative professions. According to the study’s conclusion, the results “could not be accounted for by increased relatedness between creative individuals and those with psychoses, indicating that creativity and psychosis share genetic roots” (Power).  

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In addition to genetic relations, highly creative people and mentally ill people share common personality and cognitive traits. The Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts “investigated the relationship between creativity and personality, latent inhibition, and psychopathology” (Fink). Their findings show that creative people and people suffering from mental disorders share the same traits. These personality traits are speculated to come from the brain, which is what the Vanderbilt study looks more into. They investigated a small group of people known as schizotypes are people who are diagnosed with ‘creative madness’. Published results display that enhanced creativity in schizotypes may be from “using more of the right side of the brain than the rest of us” (Vanderbilt). Psychiatry investigations have managed to identify schizotypy through emotional characteristics that come from the same part of the brain, therefore suggesting that not only is there a correlation genetically but neurologically.

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Although these studies prove a correlation, the process to get those results has been critiqued as unreliable. Some studies are said to have problems in sample size and selection, experimenter bias, and methodology (Schlesinger). However, the experiments with these issues have been replicated and improved, producing more reliable results. Brain studies itself were done multiple times to confirm the conjectured relationship between creativity and madness, thus making the previous limitations less valid (Andreasen).

 

It is argued that creativity is more of an outlet for psychopaths and not an actual direct link. Forgeard and Elstein did a study on a different clinically-based perspective: undergoing psychopathological states is a motivation for creativity in order to improve their psychological health (Forgeard). This alternative possibility suggests that the link is more so a cause and relation, however, the study is heavily critiqued for its lack of replication (Abraham). Furthermore, it is impossible to distinguish cause and relationship in a correlational study, making most of their results assumptions rather than fact. The study’s conclusion could also be analysed differently - creativity being an outlet could reinforce the correlation between the two as their connection is augmented, thus emphasizing the fact that there is no difference between them, as with one comes the other.

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In the end, we need to look at the nature of creativity itself and its definition before linking it to insanity. With that being said, creativity is simply a synonym of insanity, describing its first stages. Examples such as Vincent Van Gogh and Lewis Carroll exemplify this conclusion and are only two instances out of the millions of others that are experiencing the same thing. This issue is important when thinking about the larger context as it could affect our perception of people with mental illnesses. If we attempt to differentiate creativity from insanity, we end up with unfair marginalization against people who are seen as ‘insane’ and missed opportunities to harvest their potential. The negative connotations that are associated with being mentally ill need to be revisited so that new forms of help can be devised for them to not only better their mental health, but in the meantime use their illness as potential for creating new masterpieces.

 

Works Cited

1. “10 Things You Didn't Know About Alice In Wonderland." the Guardian. N. p., 2015. Web. 20 Mar. 2018.

2. Abraham, Anna. "Editorial: Madness And Creativity—Yes, No Or Maybe?." Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015): n. pag. Web. 19 Mar. 2018.

3. Andreasen, N. C. (2005). “The creating brain: The neuroscience of genius.” Washington, DC, US: Dana Press.

4. "Aristotle Told Me." Beyond the Sphere. N. p., 2013. Web. 20 Mar. 2018.

5. Barrantes-Vidal, Neus. "Creativity & Madness Revisited From Current Psychological Perspectives." Journal of Consciousness Studies, 11.3-4 (2004): 58-78(21). Print.

6. Blom, Jan Dirk. "Alice In Wonderland Syndrome." Neurology: Clinical Practice 6.3 (2016): 259-270. Web. 20 Mar. 2018.

7. Carroll, Lewis. Through The Looking Glass. San Diego: ICON Group International, 2005. Print.

8. "Fine Line Revealed Between Creativity And Insanity." Live Science. N. p., 2018. Web. 19 Mar. 2018.

9. Fink, Andreas et al. "Creativity: Genius, Madness, Or A Combination Of Both?." Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts 6.1 (2012): 11-18. Web.

10. Forgeard, Marie J. C., and Jeanette G. Elstein. "Advancing The Clinical Science Of Creativity." Frontiers in Psychology 5 (2014): n. pag. Web. 19 Mar. 2018.

11. Gould, Rachel. "How Did Van Gogh’S Turbulent Mind Depict One Of The Most Complex Concepts In Physics?." Medium. N. p., 2017. Web. 20 Mar. 2018.

12. “Nine Traits of Schizotypal Personality Disorder.”Psycnet.apa.org. N. p., 2018. Web. 19 Mar. 2018.

13. Power, Robert A et al. "Polygenic Risk Scores For Schizophrenia And Bipolar Disorder Predict Creativity." Nature Neuroscience 18.7 (2015): 953-955. Web.

14. Robson, David. "Five Things Alice In Wonderland Reveals About The Brain." Bbc.com. N. p., 2018. Web. 20 Mar. 2018.

15. Schlesinger, Judith. "Issues In Creativity And Madness Part One: Ancient Questions, Modern Answers." Ethical Human Sciences and Services 4.1 (2002): 73-76(4). Print.

16. St. Clair, Natalya. "The Unexpected Math Behind Van Gogh's "Starry Night" - Natalya St. Clair." Ted-Ed. YouTube. N. p., 2018. Web. 20 Mar. 2018.

17. Vanderbilt. "Lens :: A New Way Of Looking At Science || Creativity And Madness: Are They Linked?." Mc.vanderbilt.edu. N. p., 2018. Web. 19 Mar. 2018.

18. Yoon, Seon-Ah, Do-Hyung Kang, and Jun Soo Kwon. "The Emotional Characteristics Of Schizotypy." Psychiatry Investigation 5.3 (2008): 148. Web. 19 Mar. 2018.”