9 ms·

The myth of ‘mad’ genius

107 points by baddash 8y ago

Semirhage 8y ago
The article focuses exclusively on mood disorders, which frankly isn’t what most people think of or mean by “mad” in any case. Nikola Tesla for example was mad as a hatter, but it appears to have been a delusional disorder. While depression for example can be psychotic, it tends not to be, and I think psychosis or at least delusional beliefs are the hallmark of what is commonly meant when the public talks about “madness.”
- eigenstuff 8y ago
  You're on the money. Tesla, Emily Dickinson, and likely Van Gogh all had schizotypal personality disorder. Which is not so much a personality disorder in the sense most people think of them so much as it's the Aspergers analog of the schizophrenia spectrum. I've seen it suggested that Einstein may have had it, which I find a lot easier to believe than the notion that he had Aspergers given that his son had schizophrenia and these things tend to run in families. (He may well have had nothing, though.) I strongly suspect that Edwin Land, the inventor of Polaroid, was schizotypal. There IS actually a proven connection between schizotypal traits and creativity where there really isn't with mood disorders (except bipolar to an extent), since you're "mad" but not so much so that you can't function well enough to execute your ideas. It's worth googling about.
- a1369209993 8y ago
  It's also not what most people mean by "genius"; I was hoping for something about Tesla, Nash, maybe Einstein and Feynman.
commandlinefan 8y ago
I've always wondered if a lot of "eccentric" people aren't just behaving the way everybody would naturally behave if they could get away with it. I say and do a lot of things because I have to if I want to have food to eat and a place to sleep, but I'll never know how different my behavior _might_ have been if I were rich enough or brilliant enough that people would just put up with whatever I happened to feel like doing at any given moment.
- nur0n 8y ago
  Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both...
  - azhu 8y ago
    Or perhaps brilliant people care a lot and just have the ability to pull it off so well that everyone else thinks they don't care. The real answer to how to be happy is not to not care how you affect others, it is to master your ability to affect them how you intend to. Those who recommend the "not giving a fuck" approach step on their own bootstraps given how large a fuck they give about not giving a fuck.
    - vorpalhex 8y ago
      Not giving a fuck isn't the same as apathy. Today I spent an hour waiting for some poor chap to repin a simple lock at the hardware store - I didn't give a fuck that he was a bit clueless and flying by the seat of his pants - but if someone scammed me tomorrow I would absolutely jump into action. There are things that don't matter (someone a bit clueless working earnestly) and things that do (scammers, violence, etc). The goal is to differentiate and respond appropriately.
  - geezerjay 8y ago
    > Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both... IMHO, it's neither. If others want something from you then they pamper you to get what they seek, and the more indispensable you are the more they tolerate. Over time you feel no pressure to adapt your behaviour because those who deal with you feel compelled to adapt to you.
- kizer 8y ago
  I think I behave in an eccentric manner because I was raised by two liberal parents and am an only child. Although I always made friends just fine. I'm bright, but no genius. At least not yet. I often feel somehow that the eccentric behavior and intelligence are the result of a latent property, like some kind of general freedom of mind. Also I have (will inherit) some assets that generate money on their own. So I guess I can "get away" with it.
jpeg_hero 8y ago
Article and “meta-research” distinctly not related to genius. Genius is a distinctly one-in-a-million phenomenon, this is about people of above average creativity and how they relate to those of below average creativity. And very dubious categorization at that.
- aje403 8y ago
  I don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're right (although the definition of 'genius' is always up for debate). This is just one of a million opinion articles on the same questions which happens to have a regression line behind it.
LifeLiverTransp 8y ago
Yes, why should a shizophreniac who wildly connects everyday experiences to form strange conspiracy theories would have a natural advantage when it comes to wildly recombining seemingly unconnected ideas, to leap over boundaries every 100 recombination? Of course, if there is a birth advantage there- all the meritocratic idealism and work wont get you or your kids there. So its very very anti-equalizism. Its okay, though, if that "benefit" messes up someone elses life and strands him/her living in a box. That is just how the world is supossed to work. Sick people must suffer, if they do not fit into the world tailored for average people by average people. No sense in protesting gods wanted order. Move along.
- kizer 8y ago
  I can't discern your point. Are you saying that there is some kind of "equality" since the geniuses are doomed to suffer from mental illness?
- darkmighty 8y ago
  Have you ever experienced or met someone with schizophrenia? It is hell. Not only for them but often for those who care about them. It's not about a rosy, whacky persons that the society whimsically outcasts. It's often legitimately tortured people that almost always need serious treatment and constant care, otherwise they risk falling into a very dark abyss. They often wind up hobos or sometimes in prisons/asylums because they don't have treatment and a very supportive family available, falling in disrepair, not because an evil plot of society. If this condition were the price to pay for breakthroughs, I'd consider the price too high. But indeed it isn't -- there are no examples of seriously ill paranoid schizophrenics that put out meaningful work. It's a massive hindrance, fogging your view of the world and yourself. Often cited cases like John Nash actually stopped being able to conduct any good work once the disease got hold of them. There are countless examples of extremely brilliant people productive through their lives that never showed signs of delusion, and almost no cases of delusional persons doing good work. This disease largely embodies the obscurantism, mysticism, fear, distrust, that scientific enlightenment was idealized to fight against. I can't wait for its root causes to be found and it completely eradicated (along with MS, Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia, please).
askl56 8y ago
I've always believed that "genius" is simply mental illness with an audience. People such as Mozart were known for feeling nervous anxious etc, until they wrote music which was cathartic, which nowadays I'm sure would be diagnosed as some sort of mental illness.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- themodelplumber 8y ago
  This is part of the reason why "mental illness" is a broken term for certain applications. Unevenly-matched skill (coping, etc) vs. circumstance (group psychology, social standards) is one alternate POV that better explains why a "mentally-ill" person could create genius works. They have become conditioned to exploring extremes by dint of circumstance and personal history; their liabilities, struggles, and even periodic victories in these contexts allow them to produce works the likes of which are rarely seen or even contemplated in "non-genius" company. The audience knows intuitively that they are experiencing some fundamental truth, though they cannot in a small number of steps arrive at the sequence that allowed the truth to emerge.
  - humbleMouse 8y ago
    That last sentence is profound, nice comment +1
swayvil 8y ago
I used to be nuts. And you know what, I went with it. I could focus on a project 24-7-365. That's how great projects get done. And people who get great projects done are what we call "geniuses". I'm better now. Sometimes I think of the great projects that I could do but then I think, "no thanks, life is bigger than that".
- kizer 8y ago
  Good that you're better. Maybe try to work lightly (2 hours a day) on a project someday and see if you can complete it without herculean focus or dedication.
  - rabidrat 8y ago
    It's not like that, in my experience at least. I can do amazing things in 6 weeks, but it involves eating, breathing, and sleeping the system/problem/project. It turns out there are 1000 hours in 6 weeks (including sleep time), and if you have the problem loaded into your brain as its 'default mode network', then it takes over and you can get massive cross-functional efficiencies (including dreaming up solutions in your sleep). Working the equivalent for 2 hours/day would take years and does not generate anywhere close to the kind of energy or output that the parent is referring to.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  In what way is life bigger than that? You'll be dead in the blink of an eye relative to any meaningful timescale. And so will everybody and everything you know. All that will be left is what you create and leave behind. Okay for some this is children, but that's hardly a legacy in many cases. You have greatness born to fools and fools born of greatness, so in the end you're just leaving your mark as a roll of the dice which is hardly unique in any case. But what we create and help bring to light are things that can reshape and redirect humanity, changing our path forever.
cbanek 8y ago
It's interesting that there was no talk of anxiety. In talking about the availability heuristic, which is refereneced a lot in Daniel Kahneman's _Thinking Fast and Slow_, they also talk about how anxiety tends to activate System 2 (which is the one for deep thinking), as opposed to the intuitive and nearly autonomous System 1. Creativity and intelligence are considered different, but related, and Kahneman talks about how the activation of System 2 allows people to make more well informed (smarter) decisions.
uxhack 8y ago
This article is trying to rebute David Horrobin idea that if everyone is creative then the world will soon be become crazy. It takes a geniuses to see a stick as a weapon. If Everyone starts becoming creative then the whole society will quickly devenigate.We need slme order. Horrobin arguement goes against the idea that everyone can be a creative genius. What is interesting about his idea is that how universal craziness is amongst a small proportion of the population, which means it is has been around a very long time.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Reminds me of a differing but related idea. Society at large is already crazy but nobody notices because it has been so normalized being rational is looked upon as crazy. The promoter of doctors handwashing wound up instituionalized. And it isn't a in the past problem. I mean look at interviewing etiquette and ideals for one. They distrust people who can't or won't put on a mask convincingly enough as untrustworthy. Not even as "unsuited for a job where it is relevant like sales or acting". That is frankly barking mad to only trust those capable of faking.
majos 8y ago
I don't get this article. As far as I can tell, it wants to prove (in spite of the headline) that mental illness and creativity are not really correlated. Then it goes on to say that measuring either mental illness or creativity is hard on its own -- in which case the meta-analysis done isn't terribly useful? My own unempirical take on genius is it's not so much "you need some insanity to have groundbreaking genius-level ideas" but "some people are so into doing thing x that they will choose to do it almost all the time, and some of these people have talent and luck in thing x too, which is a potent combination that looks like what we'd call genius".
- taneq 8y ago
  Well, the general take is that average intelligence combined with well-above-average drive (motivation, work ethic, etc.) has significantly better results than "smart but lazy". So you'd expect someone who's smart and also fanatical about something to get outstanding results in that field. Monomania also generally comes across as 'mad'.
ggm 8y ago
An article about the status/role/context of insanity and society which doesn't mention Foucault's work? Published in the year of my birth (1961), which I like to think is a coincidence... Foucault M. History of Madness. Khalfa J, editor, translator & Murphy J, translator. New York: Routledge; 2006. ISBN 0-415-27701-9.
dbxz 8y ago
I taught gifted education at a prestigious middle school for five years. Over 300 kids came through my classroom during that time. I saw it all. Seizures. Fistfights. One girl was pretty sure there were secret messages from the principal in the tests I gave. Lots of them started taking drugs early too. The culmination happened in the Fall of 2012, when one girl convinced her friends that, if they killed themselves, they'd wake up already graduated from college, with school behind them. Luckily, they didn't succeed. And so, in a class of 30 people, I had 6 out and in a mental hospital. Mad geniuses. They're real.
- eeperson 8y ago
  I wonder if this is a link between 'madness' and 'genius' or if this is the result of pressure put on kids to succeed at a prestigious middle school.
- toomanybeersies 8y ago
  I used to go to a gifted education class once a week when I was around 13 years old. Probably half the class or more had some form of condition, Autism, ADHD, depression, etc. Looking back at it now, I don't think it was the case that gifted people are generally "mad". I'm a fairly normal person, and so were a lot of other people in the class. I think that rather, it was that these kids didn't integrate well into conventional education, but this gifted education class was very understanding and accepting of people's "quirks", and had a much more open learning environment where people could grow in their own way. I ended up there because I struggled with the structured nature of normal school. I've met plenty of people over the years who could be considered gifted (in this case, top 5% IQ), most of them are completely normal and probably just dealt with the overly structured nature of normal school.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
toomanybeersies 8y ago
As much as I like to joke that the greatest artists were all deeply flawed people, so I'm trying to become an alcoholic arsehole in order to become a better author, as the article states, there are a lot of good and great artists/creatives who are not substance abusing wife beaters. I think there are a couple of factors at play here. The first is that you never hear about how normal an artist was. Nobody talks about how Ansel Adams didn't beat his wife and wasn't an alcoholic, because that's just normal. We only talk about Hemingway's alcoholism, or Van Gogh's mental condition. So we're conditioned to believe that artists are flawed people. The second factor is that people want to justify why they're not a great artist. "I'm not a great writer, but at least I don't emotionally abuse everyone I know and I'm not a raging alcoholic".
- perfmode 8y ago
  That was a cutting analysis; a pleasure to read and important to consider.
- darawk 8y ago
  That's a reasonable theory, but it doesn't explain why this phenomenon is (somewhat) unique to art. The explanation you gave applies equally well to say, Basketball players and business tycoons. And for the most part, there's no social wisdom i'm aware of that says you have to be a drug addicted asshole to be one of those things.
  - minikites 8y ago
    The article has a good response to this, artists generally have a more flexible work environment: >The creative occupations considered in these studies are overwhelmingly in the arts, which frequently provide greater autonomy and less rigid structure than the average nine-to-five job. This makes these jobs more conducive to the success of individuals who struggle with performance consistency as the result of a mood disorder. People with emotional problems or substance dependence wash out of more structured jobs pretty quickly.
    - gh02t 8y ago
8bitsrule 8y ago
The Romantic stereotype that creativity is enhanced by a mood disorder That's postulated as a given. If it's not a given, then it's a red herring. The author supplies no evidence that it's a given. As far as I got, the phrase 'mood disorder' was undefined. ... But is there any scientific reason to believe in a connection? Science doesn't believe, science constructs and improves models based on repeatable observations. That which cannot be observed cannot be modelled. People can choose to 'believe' those models ... which is 'faith'. Which science was invented to get away from. So in the first two paragraphs, the author prepares us for the illucid neo-phrenology which follows.
- carlmr 8y ago
  >Science doesn't believe, science constructs and improves models based on repeatable observations. That's confusing the scientific ideal, with how actual scientists operate. Actual scientists hope that they get something right, they feel strongly about their research like the mother of a child, they're just as clouded by emotions as any other human being. And if you add corruption into the mix, then yes, what we call science is not as solid as it looks, but it still provides useful results sometimes. But we can still talk about a scientific reason to believe. Because the reason might be scientific, but it still might be something which we can believe or not. Because scientific reasons are about as flawed as their creators. The replication problems in many fields are evidence that science is only as ideal as the people producing it.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Speaking of the stereotype of 'mad genius', as opposed to the eccentric creative which this article is about, I would hypothesize that 'mad' is simply a mislabeling of the fact that those who are more intelligent are generally going to be less guided by social norms and more by their own logic and views. Being able to follow your own logic, without bounds, is something that is most people, for some reason, do not tend to do. Einstein is the best example of this. Relativity, and its implications, are intuitively insane and absurd. Yet his logic led him there and he invested an immense amount of effort and energy trying to prove it. And it turned out he was correct. In a parallel universe where the laws of physics are more sane, Einstein would have been labeled as insane for even imagining such an 'absurd' idea might be reality.
salty_biscuits 8y ago
James Joyce said "To say that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic merit, is no better than to say he is rheumatic or diabetic" His daughter had mental health issues. She went to see Jung and the exchange allegedly went “Doctor Jung, have you noticed that my daughter seems to be submerged in the same waters as me?” to which he answered: “Yes, but where you swim, she drowns.”
fladrif 8y ago
Creativity seems to stem from being outside of the "mainstream" mindset, of going down paths not taken and trying unconventional strategies. Most of the time these don't work out putting an emphasis on the tried and true, but when it does it get labeled as a spark of genius, of creativity. I think it takes a certain type of person to continually beat down these paths and blaze unconventional trails and may be a mark of a 'mad' man/woman, but it may just take those kinds of people to not try and conform with conventional wisdom.
madshiva 8y ago
The text to the right paragraph is mad and bad. Don't want to read a text like that.

107 points by baddash 8y ago

The article focuses exclusively on mood disorders, which frankly isn’t what most people think of or mean by “mad” in any case. Nikola Tesla for example was mad as a hatter, but it appears to have been a delusional disorder. While depression for example can be psychotic, it tends not to be, and I think psychosis or at least delusional beliefs are the hallmark of what is commonly meant when the public talks about “madness.”

eigenstuff 8y ago
You're on the money. Tesla, Emily Dickinson, and likely Van Gogh all had schizotypal personality disorder. Which is not so much a personality disorder in the sense most people think of them so much as it's the Aspergers analog of the schizophrenia spectrum. I've seen it suggested that Einstein may have had it, which I find a lot easier to believe than the notion that he had Aspergers given that his son had schizophrenia and these things tend to run in families. (He may well have had nothing, though.) I strongly suspect that Edwin Land, the inventor of Polaroid, was schizotypal. There IS actually a proven connection between schizotypal traits and creativity where there really isn't with mood disorders (except bipolar to an extent), since you're "mad" but not so much so that you can't function well enough to execute your ideas. It's worth googling about.
a1369209993 8y ago
It's also not what most people mean by "genius"; I was hoping for something about Tesla, Nash, maybe Einstein and Feynman.

commandlinefan 8y ago

I've always wondered if a lot of "eccentric" people aren't just behaving the way everybody would naturally behave if they could get away with it. I say and do a lot of things because I have to if I want to have food to eat and a place to sleep, but I'll never know how different my behavior _might_ have been if I were rich enough or brilliant enough that people would just put up with whatever I happened to feel like doing at any given moment.

nur0n 8y ago
Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both...
- azhu 8y ago
  Or perhaps brilliant people care a lot and just have the ability to pull it off so well that everyone else thinks they don't care. The real answer to how to be happy is not to not care how you affect others, it is to master your ability to affect them how you intend to. Those who recommend the "not giving a fuck" approach step on their own bootstraps given how large a fuck they give about not giving a fuck.
  - vorpalhex 8y ago
    Not giving a fuck isn't the same as apathy. Today I spent an hour waiting for some poor chap to repin a simple lock at the hardware store - I didn't give a fuck that he was a bit clueless and flying by the seat of his pants - but if someone scammed me tomorrow I would absolutely jump into action. There are things that don't matter (someone a bit clueless working earnestly) and things that do (scammers, violence, etc). The goal is to differentiate and respond appropriately.
- geezerjay 8y ago
  > Are people brilliant because they don't care or do they not care because they are brilliant? Seems to be a little of both... IMHO, it's neither. If others want something from you then they pamper you to get what they seek, and the more indispensable you are the more they tolerate. Over time you feel no pressure to adapt your behaviour because those who deal with you feel compelled to adapt to you.
kizer 8y ago
I think I behave in an eccentric manner because I was raised by two liberal parents and am an only child. Although I always made friends just fine. I'm bright, but no genius. At least not yet. I often feel somehow that the eccentric behavior and intelligence are the result of a latent property, like some kind of general freedom of mind. Also I have (will inherit) some assets that generate money on their own. So I guess I can "get away" with it.

jpeg_hero 8y ago

Article and “meta-research” distinctly not related to genius. Genius is a distinctly one-in-a-million phenomenon, this is about people of above average creativity and how they relate to those of below average creativity. And very dubious categorization at that.

aje403 8y ago
I don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're right (although the definition of 'genius' is always up for debate). This is just one of a million opinion articles on the same questions which happens to have a regression line behind it.

LifeLiverTransp 8y ago

Yes, why should a shizophreniac who wildly connects everyday experiences to form strange conspiracy theories would have a natural advantage when it comes to wildly recombining seemingly unconnected ideas, to leap over boundaries every 100 recombination? Of course, if there is a birth advantage there- all the meritocratic idealism and work wont get you or your kids there. So its very very anti-equalizism. Its okay, though, if that "benefit" messes up someone elses life and strands him/her living in a box. That is just how the world is supossed to work. Sick people must suffer, if they do not fit into the world tailored for average people by average people. No sense in protesting gods wanted order. Move along.

kizer 8y ago
I can't discern your point. Are you saying that there is some kind of "equality" since the geniuses are doomed to suffer from mental illness?
darkmighty 8y ago
Have you ever experienced or met someone with schizophrenia? It is hell. Not only for them but often for those who care about them. It's not about a rosy, whacky persons that the society whimsically outcasts. It's often legitimately tortured people that almost always need serious treatment and constant care, otherwise they risk falling into a very dark abyss. They often wind up hobos or sometimes in prisons/asylums because they don't have treatment and a very supportive family available, falling in disrepair, not because an evil plot of society. If this condition were the price to pay for breakthroughs, I'd consider the price too high. But indeed it isn't -- there are no examples of seriously ill paranoid schizophrenics that put out meaningful work. It's a massive hindrance, fogging your view of the world and yourself. Often cited cases like John Nash actually stopped being able to conduct any good work once the disease got hold of them. There are countless examples of extremely brilliant people productive through their lives that never showed signs of delusion, and almost no cases of delusional persons doing good work. This disease largely embodies the obscurantism, mysticism, fear, distrust, that scientific enlightenment was idealized to fight against. I can't wait for its root causes to be found and it completely eradicated (along with MS, Alzheimer's Disease and Dementia, please).

askl56 8y ago

I've always believed that "genius" is simply mental illness with an audience. People such as Mozart were known for feeling nervous anxious etc, until they wrote music which was cathartic, which nowadays I'm sure would be diagnosed as some sort of mental illness.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
themodelplumber 8y ago
This is part of the reason why "mental illness" is a broken term for certain applications. Unevenly-matched skill (coping, etc) vs. circumstance (group psychology, social standards) is one alternate POV that better explains why a "mentally-ill" person could create genius works. They have become conditioned to exploring extremes by dint of circumstance and personal history; their liabilities, struggles, and even periodic victories in these contexts allow them to produce works the likes of which are rarely seen or even contemplated in "non-genius" company. The audience knows intuitively that they are experiencing some fundamental truth, though they cannot in a small number of steps arrive at the sequence that allowed the truth to emerge.
- humbleMouse 8y ago
  That last sentence is profound, nice comment +1

swayvil 8y ago

I used to be nuts. And you know what, I went with it. I could focus on a project 24-7-365. That's how great projects get done. And people who get great projects done are what we call "geniuses". I'm better now. Sometimes I think of the great projects that I could do but then I think, "no thanks, life is bigger than that".

kizer 8y ago
Good that you're better. Maybe try to work lightly (2 hours a day) on a project someday and see if you can complete it without herculean focus or dedication.
- rabidrat 8y ago
  It's not like that, in my experience at least. I can do amazing things in 6 weeks, but it involves eating, breathing, and sleeping the system/problem/project. It turns out there are 1000 hours in 6 weeks (including sleep time), and if you have the problem loaded into your brain as its 'default mode network', then it takes over and you can get massive cross-functional efficiencies (including dreaming up solutions in your sleep). Working the equivalent for 2 hours/day would take years and does not generate anywhere close to the kind of energy or output that the parent is referring to.
TangoTrotFox 8y ago
In what way is life bigger than that? You'll be dead in the blink of an eye relative to any meaningful timescale. And so will everybody and everything you know. All that will be left is what you create and leave behind. Okay for some this is children, but that's hardly a legacy in many cases. You have greatness born to fools and fools born of greatness, so in the end you're just leaving your mark as a roll of the dice which is hardly unique in any case. But what we create and help bring to light are things that can reshape and redirect humanity, changing our path forever.

cbanek 8y ago

It's interesting that there was no talk of anxiety. In talking about the availability heuristic, which is refereneced a lot in Daniel Kahneman's _Thinking Fast and Slow_, they also talk about how anxiety tends to activate System 2 (which is the one for deep thinking), as opposed to the intuitive and nearly autonomous System 1. Creativity and intelligence are considered different, but related, and Kahneman talks about how the activation of System 2 allows people to make more well informed (smarter) decisions.

uxhack 8y ago

This article is trying to rebute David Horrobin idea that if everyone is creative then the world will soon be become crazy. It takes a geniuses to see a stick as a weapon. If Everyone starts becoming creative then the whole society will quickly devenigate.We need slme order. Horrobin arguement goes against the idea that everyone can be a creative genius. What is interesting about his idea is that how universal craziness is amongst a small proportion of the population, which means it is has been around a very long time.

Nasrudith 8y ago
Reminds me of a differing but related idea. Society at large is already crazy but nobody notices because it has been so normalized being rational is looked upon as crazy. The promoter of doctors handwashing wound up instituionalized. And it isn't a in the past problem. I mean look at interviewing etiquette and ideals for one. They distrust people who can't or won't put on a mask convincingly enough as untrustworthy. Not even as "unsuited for a job where it is relevant like sales or acting". That is frankly barking mad to only trust those capable of faking.

majos 8y ago

I don't get this article. As far as I can tell, it wants to prove (in spite of the headline) that mental illness and creativity are not really correlated. Then it goes on to say that measuring either mental illness or creativity is hard on its own -- in which case the meta-analysis done isn't terribly useful? My own unempirical take on genius is it's not so much "you need some insanity to have groundbreaking genius-level ideas" but "some people are so into doing thing x that they will choose to do it almost all the time, and some of these people have talent and luck in thing x too, which is a potent combination that looks like what we'd call genius".

taneq 8y ago
Well, the general take is that average intelligence combined with well-above-average drive (motivation, work ethic, etc.) has significantly better results than "smart but lazy". So you'd expect someone who's smart and also fanatical about something to get outstanding results in that field. Monomania also generally comes across as 'mad'.

ggm 8y ago

An article about the status/role/context of insanity and society which doesn't mention Foucault's work? Published in the year of my birth (1961), which I like to think is a coincidence... Foucault M. History of Madness. Khalfa J, editor, translator & Murphy J, translator. New York: Routledge; 2006. ISBN 0-415-27701-9.

dbxz 8y ago

I taught gifted education at a prestigious middle school for five years. Over 300 kids came through my classroom during that time. I saw it all. Seizures. Fistfights. One girl was pretty sure there were secret messages from the principal in the tests I gave. Lots of them started taking drugs early too. The culmination happened in the Fall of 2012, when one girl convinced her friends that, if they killed themselves, they'd wake up already graduated from college, with school behind them. Luckily, they didn't succeed. And so, in a class of 30 people, I had 6 out and in a mental hospital. Mad geniuses. They're real.

eeperson 8y ago
I wonder if this is a link between 'madness' and 'genius' or if this is the result of pressure put on kids to succeed at a prestigious middle school.
toomanybeersies 8y ago
I used to go to a gifted education class once a week when I was around 13 years old. Probably half the class or more had some form of condition, Autism, ADHD, depression, etc. Looking back at it now, I don't think it was the case that gifted people are generally "mad". I'm a fairly normal person, and so were a lot of other people in the class. I think that rather, it was that these kids didn't integrate well into conventional education, but this gifted education class was very understanding and accepting of people's "quirks", and had a much more open learning environment where people could grow in their own way. I ended up there because I struggled with the structured nature of normal school. I've met plenty of people over the years who could be considered gifted (in this case, top 5% IQ), most of them are completely normal and probably just dealt with the overly structured nature of normal school.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

toomanybeersies 8y ago

As much as I like to joke that the greatest artists were all deeply flawed people, so I'm trying to become an alcoholic arsehole in order to become a better author, as the article states, there are a lot of good and great artists/creatives who are not substance abusing wife beaters. I think there are a couple of factors at play here. The first is that you never hear about how normal an artist was. Nobody talks about how Ansel Adams didn't beat his wife and wasn't an alcoholic, because that's just normal. We only talk about Hemingway's alcoholism, or Van Gogh's mental condition. So we're conditioned to believe that artists are flawed people. The second factor is that people want to justify why they're not a great artist. "I'm not a great writer, but at least I don't emotionally abuse everyone I know and I'm not a raging alcoholic".

perfmode 8y ago
That was a cutting analysis; a pleasure to read and important to consider.
darawk 8y ago
That's a reasonable theory, but it doesn't explain why this phenomenon is (somewhat) unique to art. The explanation you gave applies equally well to say, Basketball players and business tycoons. And for the most part, there's no social wisdom i'm aware of that says you have to be a drug addicted asshole to be one of those things.
- minikites 8y ago
  The article has a good response to this, artists generally have a more flexible work environment: >The creative occupations considered in these studies are overwhelmingly in the arts, which frequently provide greater autonomy and less rigid structure than the average nine-to-five job. This makes these jobs more conducive to the success of individuals who struggle with performance consistency as the result of a mood disorder. People with emotional problems or substance dependence wash out of more structured jobs pretty quickly.
  - gh02t 8y ago

8bitsrule 8y ago

The Romantic stereotype that creativity is enhanced by a mood disorder That's postulated as a given. If it's not a given, then it's a red herring. The author supplies no evidence that it's a given. As far as I got, the phrase 'mood disorder' was undefined. ... But is there any scientific reason to believe in a connection? Science doesn't believe, science constructs and improves models based on repeatable observations. That which cannot be observed cannot be modelled. People can choose to 'believe' those models ... which is 'faith'. Which science was invented to get away from. So in the first two paragraphs, the author prepares us for the illucid neo-phrenology which follows.

carlmr 8y ago
>Science doesn't believe, science constructs and improves models based on repeatable observations. That's confusing the scientific ideal, with how actual scientists operate. Actual scientists hope that they get something right, they feel strongly about their research like the mother of a child, they're just as clouded by emotions as any other human being. And if you add corruption into the mix, then yes, what we call science is not as solid as it looks, but it still provides useful results sometimes. But we can still talk about a scientific reason to believe. Because the reason might be scientific, but it still might be something which we can believe or not. Because scientific reasons are about as flawed as their creators. The replication problems in many fields are evidence that science is only as ideal as the people producing it.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago

Speaking of the stereotype of 'mad genius', as opposed to the eccentric creative which this article is about, I would hypothesize that 'mad' is simply a mislabeling of the fact that those who are more intelligent are generally going to be less guided by social norms and more by their own logic and views. Being able to follow your own logic, without bounds, is something that is most people, for some reason, do not tend to do. Einstein is the best example of this. Relativity, and its implications, are intuitively insane and absurd. Yet his logic led him there and he invested an immense amount of effort and energy trying to prove it. And it turned out he was correct. In a parallel universe where the laws of physics are more sane, Einstein would have been labeled as insane for even imagining such an 'absurd' idea might be reality.

salty_biscuits 8y ago

James Joyce said "To say that a great genius is mad, while at the same time recognizing his artistic merit, is no better than to say he is rheumatic or diabetic" His daughter had mental health issues. She went to see Jung and the exchange allegedly went “Doctor Jung, have you noticed that my daughter seems to be submerged in the same waters as me?” to which he answered: “Yes, but where you swim, she drowns.”

fladrif 8y ago

Creativity seems to stem from being outside of the "mainstream" mindset, of going down paths not taken and trying unconventional strategies. Most of the time these don't work out putting an emphasis on the tried and true, but when it does it get labeled as a spark of genius, of creativity. I think it takes a certain type of person to continually beat down these paths and blaze unconventional trails and may be a mark of a 'mad' man/woman, but it may just take those kinds of people to not try and conform with conventional wisdom.

madshiva 8y ago

The text to the right paragraph is mad and bad. Don't want to read a text like that.