The Weight of Brilliance
Why do the Gifted Lose Themselves
y J. A. McCreery
“No great mind ever existed without a touch of madness”
– Aristotle
Chaplin, Pythagoras, Tesla, Michelangelo, Dali, Newton, van Gogh, Mozart, Freud, Beethoven, Hemingway and Nietzsche. All tormented by their minds. From being plagued by anxiety and egotism to rage, narcissism and mania, all these ‘legendary’ characters suffered – but was it a product of their brilliance?
“Creativity and psychosis often go hand in hand. Or, for that matter, genius and madness.” – Fleming.
In a 2022 review, Schmitt reveals how writers of the romantic era dubbed bi-polar disorder “a disease of men of genius” and theorized that the depressive episodes lead to perfectionism and the periods of mania produced illusions of grandeur and fueled ferocious levels of productivity. Clearly the notion that creativity comes at a cost is well established in public thought but is there empirical support?
Researchers note the incidence of bipolar amongst artists is ten times higher than the general population. Further, a 2014 by Dean Keith Simonton found an increased rate of psychopathology in 204 eminent figures. This study further indicated that great thinkers appeared the most troubled and scientists the least, artists, writers and composers, being somewhere in the middle.
However, a paradox is at play. Creativity and psychopathology were found to be both positively and negatively correlated. This is the product of two independent propositions: (1) among all creative individuals, the most creative are at higher risk for mental illness and (2) among all people, creative individuals exhibit better mental health than do non-creative individuals. Thus, as put by Simonton “Even if psychopathology is specified to correlate positively with creative productivity, creators as a whole can still display appreciably less psychopathology than do people in the general population because the creative geniuses who are most at risk represent and extremely tiny proportion of those contributing to the domain.”
Analysts posit that this is a result of the hallmark symptoms which include; an increased rate of idea production, verbal fluency and formation of loose associations. Schmitt expects this is a result of the inability to tune out information which would otherwise be irrelevant in their surrounding environment, a process called cognitive disinhibition. The stream of information is often overwhelming and disruptive yet it may allow for the consideration of left-field ideas that many simply would not consider. Other symptoms of mania are increased energy and insomnia which by their nature are likely to aid in the creative process.
Intelligence, in the form of IQ scores, is another area which notes great correlation with psychological disorders. Those with high levels (>130) being more likely to experience adhd and autism or anxiety and mood disorders.
A Mensa study, consisting of more than 4000 individuals of considerable IQ, found that of those 4000, nearly 40% had either a mood or anxiety disorder. That rate is around four times higher than the number you would expect to find from a random sample of the population.
Theories suggest this may occur as those who have very high levels of intellect are more prone to rumination and worry (‘overthinking’) due to persistently high levels of frontal lobe activation – a cornerstone of anxiety and depression. Others suggest that the arrogance and alienation that comes with superiority may remove some from peers and cause strain in relations, in turn catalyzing a form of identity crisis where individuals have the choice between altering their actions to fit in or embracing the role of the pariah.
These studies may seem decisive yet there is enduring controversy amongst academics, some disregarding this phenomenon as a myth. Arne Dietrich published a paper titled “The mythconception of the mad genius” whereby he argued the rate of mental illness is high enough (50% experiencing it within their lifetime) that the differences between correlation and causation within such a small sample size cannot be declared. Quite scathingly Dietrich declares:
“Like no other field of psychology, the study of creativity is beset with nebulous concepts, combustible propositions and myopic theorizing, to say nothing of all the vacuous fluff out there. The fog enshrouding this particular Potemkin village is nevertheless easy to lift. We need only to drill into some basic numbers on mental illness that continue to be enthusiastically ignored—incidence and prevalence data, to be precise—take the wraps off an astonishing medley of cognitive biases—base rate fallacy, availability heuristic, illusionary correlations and the like—and unpack a few question-begging definitions of creativity.”
That is the downfall of studying humanity, the social sciences afterall are a soft-science. They are prone to accidental confirmation bias and the mental blurs of researchers themselves. It is the immeasurable complexity of the subject matter which both makes questions intriguing and near unanswerable.
Nevertheless, the bulk of researchers confirm a hypothesis that psychopathology and genius are linked. That’s your excuse to stop thinking so much!