4 ms·

I have to say, I can't help thinking the author doesn't know anything about Hemingway or Picasso. Both are very famous examples of how depression can be creativ

by j_baker 12y ago

I have to say, I can't help thinking the author doesn't know anything about Hemingway or Picasso. Both are very famous examples of how depression can be creative. You can name many others like Virginia Woolf or Emily Dickenson. I think both depression and exuberance can be creative, albeit creative in different ways. Exuberance is very good for, as the author notes, divergent thinking. You simply have the ability to come up with so many positive possibilities. Depression on the other hand is very converging. You just know for sure that something bad is going to happen. EDIT: I should add that Hemingway at least was likely bipolar. So it may very well be that he's a good example of how both depression and exuberance can be creative.

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
> Both are very famous examples of how depression can be creative. That probably had more to do with their substance abuse.
- j_baker 12y ago
  We don't really know the full relationship between substance abuse and mental illness. There's a very well-known correlation between the two, but it's questionable whether the substance abuse causes mental illness or the mental illness causes the substance abuse. It's likely some combination of the two: the substance abuse aids the mental illness and the mental illness aids the substance abuse.
  - jeorgun 12y ago
    I think the implication was more that the substance abuse effected their creative output.
  - coldtea 12y ago
    Or, you know, actual sensitivity and sadness for something causes both depression and substance abuse. It's not like don't have things to be sad and depressed about, creative people doubly so. Thinking it's all just chemicals gone bad in the brain is the fad of the day, like electroshock treatment for gays and ADD over-perscription in previous decades. People are always conflating circumstantial pepression with "mental illness" but it's not the same. Or, even worse, a lot of persons with circumstantial pepression prefer to think they have a "chemical imbalance" to get people to think they are absolved of any influence in the matter. Which is the wrong reason, because with circumstantial depression you also don't have much, if any, influence in the matter. It's not like you can reverse the loss of a love or failed ambitions, for example, and just rewire your psyche to not care about those. (Doctors of course, eager to prescribe anything and with no time for subtle distinctions, easily assure them that they indeed have a "mental illness". There was a whole counter-culture movement in medical circles criticizing that in the '60s and '70s, with is sadly forgotten.).
    - beatpanda 12y ago
      Not quite forgotten: http://www.theicarusproject.net http://www.theicarusproject.net
- joe_the_user 12y ago
  Whatever causes we claim after the fact for these people's condition, depression has been compatible with a high level of artistic creativity for many, many famous artists (out of laziness, I'll only add Kafka and Foster-Wallace).
andrewfelix 12y ago
The article actually barely touches on positive thinking. The more important factor is divergent thinking. I suspect the article's title is designed to generate interest. It's a stupidly misleading title.
jarcane 12y ago
As someone with clinical depression and who is also a writer: this is purest self-fulfilling, self-indulgent bullshit, and exactly the kind that kept me bound to my own illness for over a decade. Depression does fuck all either way for creativity, but what it is very good at doing is making sure you're afraid to be rid of it lest you lose that, all the while actually serving to make every creative act an uphill battle you will probably lose. Getting out from under that rock produced the finest and most productive creative phase of my life. The myth of the tortured artist is one of the ugliest in modern culture. Go look at the lifestyle indulging that produces, and tell me that's a good route to creativity with a straight face. Because I will grant it one concession: guilt and self-recrimination can indeed be a pretty powerful quality control measure, but it is also a short jaunt from there to self-destruction and even suicide. Hemingway drank himself to death. Woolf drowned herself. I'm pretty sure you could lose count inventorying the lives of musicians who've spiraled down that hole. As far as I'm concerned, this romanticism for depression is no less destructive and unhelpful than "pro-ana" boards; it is an enabling fiction for the mentally ill, and nothing more.
- andrewingram 12y ago
  This is exactly how I feel. The worst trick depression plays on sufferers is to convince them that they're at least feeling something, and that if they cheer up they'll feel nothing. It's like being in an unhealthy relationship, with yourself.

by j_baker 12y ago

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago

> Both are very famous examples of how depression can be creative. That probably had more to do with their substance abuse.

j_baker 12y ago
We don't really know the full relationship between substance abuse and mental illness. There's a very well-known correlation between the two, but it's questionable whether the substance abuse causes mental illness or the mental illness causes the substance abuse. It's likely some combination of the two: the substance abuse aids the mental illness and the mental illness aids the substance abuse.
- jeorgun 12y ago
  I think the implication was more that the substance abuse effected their creative output.
- coldtea 12y ago
  Or, you know, actual sensitivity and sadness for something causes both depression and substance abuse. It's not like don't have things to be sad and depressed about, creative people doubly so. Thinking it's all just chemicals gone bad in the brain is the fad of the day, like electroshock treatment for gays and ADD over-perscription in previous decades. People are always conflating circumstantial pepression with "mental illness" but it's not the same. Or, even worse, a lot of persons with circumstantial pepression prefer to think they have a "chemical imbalance" to get people to think they are absolved of any influence in the matter. Which is the wrong reason, because with circumstantial depression you also don't have much, if any, influence in the matter. It's not like you can reverse the loss of a love or failed ambitions, for example, and just rewire your psyche to not care about those. (Doctors of course, eager to prescribe anything and with no time for subtle distinctions, easily assure them that they indeed have a "mental illness". There was a whole counter-culture movement in medical circles criticizing that in the '60s and '70s, with is sadly forgotten.).
  - beatpanda 12y ago
    Not quite forgotten: http://www.theicarusproject.net http://www.theicarusproject.net
joe_the_user 12y ago
Whatever causes we claim after the fact for these people's condition, depression has been compatible with a high level of artistic creativity for many, many famous artists (out of laziness, I'll only add Kafka and Foster-Wallace).

andrewfelix 12y ago

The article actually barely touches on positive thinking. The more important factor is divergent thinking. I suspect the article's title is designed to generate interest. It's a stupidly misleading title.

jarcane 12y ago

As someone with clinical depression and who is also a writer: this is purest self-fulfilling, self-indulgent bullshit, and exactly the kind that kept me bound to my own illness for over a decade. Depression does fuck all either way for creativity, but what it is very good at doing is making sure you're afraid to be rid of it lest you lose that, all the while actually serving to make every creative act an uphill battle you will probably lose. Getting out from under that rock produced the finest and most productive creative phase of my life. The myth of the tortured artist is one of the ugliest in modern culture. Go look at the lifestyle indulging that produces, and tell me that's a good route to creativity with a straight face. Because I will grant it one concession: guilt and self-recrimination can indeed be a pretty powerful quality control measure, but it is also a short jaunt from there to self-destruction and even suicide. Hemingway drank himself to death. Woolf drowned herself. I'm pretty sure you could lose count inventorying the lives of musicians who've spiraled down that hole. As far as I'm concerned, this romanticism for depression is no less destructive and unhelpful than "pro-ana" boards; it is an enabling fiction for the mentally ill, and nothing more.

andrewingram 12y ago
This is exactly how I feel. The worst trick depression plays on sufferers is to convince them that they're at least feeling something, and that if they cheer up they'll feel nothing. It's like being in an unhealthy relationship, with yourself.