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Those Crazy Creatives

By Peter Lloyd

Inventors, innovators, artists, musicians—all kinds of creative people—suffer some of the worst calumnies: We never show up on time. We have to be reigned in. There is a creative type. We dress funny... I can live with all of those. It’s the most unfair and untrue myth aimed at creative people that I’d like to dispel.

We’re All Crazy
The idea that creative people and mental illness come come as a gift set goes way back to Aristotle. He and his Greek pals believed creativity came from the nine daughters of Zeus—the Muses. Pretty crazy, huh?

Later the Romantics, personified in the “mad, bad” poet Lord Byron, celebrated terror and horror, especially as it came from nature. The thing for the artist to do was to follow the natural orders from one’s inner source of inspiration, even if that meant disregarding contemporary mores. In other words, act a little crazy.

More recently, suicides by creative greats Hemingway, Woolf, Cobain, and Plath haven’t helped our image. Neither has self-destructive behavior from VanGogh, Bobby Fisher, John Nash, Charlie Parker, and Jackson Pollack. But for every creative enfant terrible or mad scientist you name me, I can fire back a dozen very well adjusted creative giants.

Several thoughts might help explain why creative people seem to suffer a disproportionate degree of emotional turmoil and their bad rap.

1. Creative life can be difficult.
As tough as it can be to come up with new ideas, nothing rises to the challenge of introducing them to masses disinclined (to say the least) to embrace change. Every inventor, innovator, artist, or musician meets rejection. The greatest, most daring meet it their whole lives. Some see no success. Some literally starve for their creations. It can drive you crazy or at least make you act that way.

2. Mentally challenged people can be creative, too.
Every time a lone, gun-wielding avenger goes on a rampage, we instantly link violence with mental illness. Unfair! Most mentally troubled people live quiet lives punctuated with serious anguish. Many make no significant creative contributions. Some rise above their pain or use its unique perspective to create great works of art and monumental scientific advances. Is it any surprise that the point of view of a tortured soul like Dostoyevski might manage great art?

3. Everyone is creative but not nuts.
Creative eccentrics have no monopoly over creativity. Accountants, fire fighters, doctors, tailors, daycare workers, receptionists, nuns, flutists, circus clowns, window washers, drug dealers, even corporate executives can do creative deeds. Among them you may find a number who do or should seek professional psychiatric help. That’s no excuse for linking all creative people with insanity.

Conclusion
Researchers talk about the relationship between creativity and mental health, especially mood disorders. But need I remind you, just because A follows B, it doesn’t prove that B caused A. For the reasons above, the two will never marry. And if they did, it wouldn’t last.

See also:

• Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, by Kay Redfield Jamison
  
• Mental illness link to art and sex by Ian Sample, The Guardian
  

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.