Mental Illness' Correlation with Genius

I read a good article today about the connection between genius and mental illness. (alright, so this has nothing to do with Alaska, get over it.) The article spent more time going over historical geniuses and their potential mental illness than it did with any fact or theory based on research than I would have liked, but it was still a good article. Psychiatrists have been studying manuscripts and other texts from noted geniuses in history to try to diagnose their possible mental illnesses. It's likely that most of them had Asperger's, bipolar disorder, depression or a personality disorder. One researcher actually thinks that a 'touch of Asperger's' is a necessary ingredient in genius and thinks there is a genetic link. Many geniuses have been noted as having narrow vision when it came to their purpose, spending all of their time on one interest and working at it tirelessly. I was bothered by the article where it pointed out the Asperger's link couldn't be true because there are so many with Aspberger's that aren't geniuses. Says who? The measure of a genius is too often mistakenly dependent on great achievement through some sort of leap in human understanding or contribution to human society. Anybody who knows anything about Asperger's, don't get mad at me for bringing this up, but consider Rain Man (I know the specific skills and things in that movie aren't the norm in those on the autism spectrum, but with the restricted interests and intense focus it's a good example of what those traits can produce). One of the main diagnosis criteria in Asperger's is that the individual demonstrate an intense and almost obsessive interest and in a particular topic or thing. They're highly focused on that one topic and it can really take over them. If you've got that sort of drive, you're going to become an expert in that topic like Rain Man was an expert with numbers. (I sometimes think that motivation and drive are a type of genius.) The problem is that if we don't find their expertise useful, we don't acknowledge their specific intelligence as genius. Of course that brings the whole notion of genius into question and I won't bother going into that. Another researcher says that deep depression as well as the swings from depression to mania in bipolar disorder account for most of the great literature of our time.

I, for one, think it makes perfect sense. Normalcy in society means you go with the grain. What else is normalcy other than being similar to the majority of people? If the majority of people were schizophrenic, it would be normal to hear voices in your head. Anytime you put something slightly off balance in the human brain, interesting things can happen. There are those who are just plain stark raving mad and contribute nothing through their imbalance. At least they don't contribute anything that we find useful in the world, which goes back to the whole thing about the notion of genius that I'm not going into. Then there are those who are slightly off kilter and the world actually benefits from it. If your brain is different than the norm (or unbalanced or mentally ill, as we refer to this), you're going to think differently. Free thinkers do what they do because they're crazy enough to go outside the box. They brain isn't 'normal, so it LIVES outside the box. If everyone was 'normal' I don't think there would ever be any groundbreaking ideas. Another reason I think it makes perfect sense is in the case of writers throughout history. The astonishing poets and playwrights are overwhelmingly bipolar, depressed or have an anxiety disorder. If you have a mental illness, you analyze the world in a different way. You also tend to over-analyze if you have depression or any sort of anxiety disorder. It's that over-analysis that can breed creativity because you're constantly looking at things from new angles and trying to make sense of it. This makes for incredibly poignant writing because they can point out little things you may not have noticed and then describe it like no other. They feel things, see things and analyze things in ways a 'normal' person never could, which makes for good reading from a 'normal' person perspective, I guess. Analytical skills are imperative in the free thinker.

It's unfortunate that with this incredible creativity comes the burden of mental illness. Mental illness is such a tax on the sufferer and their surroundings. It makes you wonder if it's really worth it. If Marie Curie didn't (potentially) have asperger's, would we be doing x-rays today? Would we be eliminating creativity if mental illness was somehow eliminated? I'd certainly choose to keep mental illness around and have an interesting world than to get rid of it and live in a normal one. I speak from experience here, too=). All of this is yet another reason Hitler was an idiot (with his obsession for ridding the world of people he didn't consider to be perfect), although he was also mentally ill, I'm sure. Down the bunny hole I go. I'd better stop before I start talking about Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Ray Bradbury. Yikes. I'll try to keep my nerd article drivel to myself in the future.