Creativity and the Troubled Mind

[misty]

Misty..........Thread Started on Jun 24, 2006, 1:19am

"The mind is its own place, and of itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.":

So wrote John Milton in PARADISE LOST. Whether or not he suffered from an emotional disorder, Milton sounds like a man who knew firsthand the torments and elations of severe mood swings. If so, he was not unusual. Speculation on a connection between art and madness has gone on since the ancient Greeks. Now, a small handful of modern studies indicates there may be something to it. In particular, they indicate a striking association between creativity and manic depression, or bipolar illness. The phenomenon appears especially pronounced among writers, particularly poets.

Twentieth-century American poets have supplied poignant evidence for this. Some of the best known -- Robert Lowell, Delmore Schwartz, Randall Jarrell and Theodore Roethke -- were diagnosed as manic- depressive or had histories of such behavior. Quite a few, including John Berryman, Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, committed suicide.

Read the rest here:

www.pendulum.org/articles/articles_bipolar_troubled.html

[John]

I wonder if this is where the phrase ''tortured artist'' came from . . .

[lostmyshoe]

I remember this thread and it's a good one. I must admit that I myself have done some of my best writing and writtin some of my best poetry when feeling melancholy, depressed or elated. It has never been when my emotions are level. The benefit of today's technology is having the option of getting treatment. So many famous people that had learning disabilities and/or mental or emotional disorders didn't have the options we do today. Some of their stories are so tragic, like Vincent Van Gogh or Edgar Allen Poe and others mentioned in the original post. Were it not for those whose minds were put together "different", our world would have missed out on many marvelous things. The sadness is that for some, their lives were shortened because of lack of proper treatment and scientific advances in medicine, but the short time they lived they amazed and dazzled the world and left with us their gifts of greater knowledge about the world and ourselves.

[John]

Well put Losty . . . I think you hit the nail on the head there.

[lcdc1]

I just now found this thread and it is interesting to me at the moment and it seems to have a ring of truth to it. I wonder if it is related to trying to ground yourself again for Bp people. I don't know that I am bipolar? but, I know that when I feel like I do for the past few days, or weeks? I go back to that kind of stuff that soothes me or helps me get it out through artistic expression in writing a blog, palying guitar, or drawing and painting. The only times I do that is when I am hyped up and feeling a train wreck in the future. HUHMMMMMMMMM.

In the past I could not express myself enough and express the feelings directly to someone, so I would go play music or write adn Yup a lot of it was used to analyze me in a way that made me hide my talents as a youth, people thought some of what I did was "dark". As an adult I still have the dark side but I also have the fun side and hyper fun side of art!!!