The Association of Creativity and Psychopathology: Its Cultural-Historical Origins

Abstract

The relation between creativity and mental illness has been a subject of controversy in Western society from about the 1830s to the present. Although speculations regarding the mental state of creative individuals predate this period by centuries, they typically fell short of the verdict of clinical insanity. It was the romantic movement in literature that provided the single most powerful impetus for the judgment of clinical madness. By selectively adopting and redefining certain cultural axioms from the past, the romantics produced not only a logical connection between creativity and madness but also one in which madness was simultaneously a piteous and exalted condition that stood in sharp contrast to what they regarded as dreaded normality. This article examines how the specific intellectual assumptions regarding creative individuals and the nature of the creative process that the romantics "inherited" from Greek antiquity, the Italian Renaissance, and the Enlightenment were subsequently transformed into a system of logic that precluded the possibility of total health and sanity on the part of the creative genius. This logic was so compelling, in fact, that self-admissions of mental anguish and actual manifestations of madness on the part of many romantics may be seen as little more than adherence to what had become part of a role expectation deemed appropriate for artists, writers, and other creative individuals. It is argued, moreover, that evidence abounds that the expectation of "madness" continues to be part of a professional ideology of what it means to be truly creative. Given such, it is not unreasonable to assume that even contemporary writers and artists, far from disavowing any connection to madness, may actually invite it and inadvertently volunteer evidence of madness in diagnostic and psychological examinations.