Abstract
The empirical link between psychopathology and creativity is often correlational and fraught with suspiciously causal interpretations. In this paper, we review research in favor of the position that certain forms of psychopathology that profoundly affect the neural substrates for rule-based thought (e.g., schizophrenia, bipolar disorder) can significantly influence the quantity of creative production. Because highly productive individuals, irrespective of psychopathology, often produce work of greater quality, it seems that such an increase in the quantity of one’s output positively affects the likelihood of generating those statistically rare acts and achievements identified and celebrated as creative. We consider evidence that offers support for such a claim. In addition, we explore findings from neuroscience that can address how a neural mechanism, the flexibility of which relies on tradeoffs between rule-based (e.g., prefrontal cortex) and stimulus-based (e.g., sensorimotor cortex) brain regions, is influenced by psychopathology in ways that can alter dramatically the quantity and quality of creative output.
Highlights
There is an undeniable empirical link between psychopathology and creativity
We first discuss how the persistence of an ancient historical link between creativity and psychopathology has contributed to the acceptance of recent empirical evidence at face value, despite its serious methodological shortcomings
We review research that points to a more nuanced interpretation of these positions, namely that certain forms of psychopathology that profoundly affect the neural substrates for rule-based thought can significantly influence the quantity of creative production
Summary
There is an undeniable empirical link between psychopathology and creativity. By its very nature, much of this work on the “mad genius” is correlational or otherwise methodologically compromised and still fraught with suspiciously causal interpretations (Schlesinger, 2009). What is hard to believe about still regarding the creative individual as somehow “possessed” or “inspired” (which literally suggests a vessel being “breathed into,” in+spire) is that it is based on an ancient argument that sought to privilege philosophers over poets (and rhapsodes) as authorities in the Greek world, especially in regards to a general theory of knowledge and the good (see Plato’s The republic). Without such an ontological or epistemological commitment, modern creativity researchers should not be so beholden to this position. Muses did not absolve responsibility; they were www.frontiersin.org
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