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19 - Creativity and mental illness: reasons to care and beware

from Part VI - Creativity and mental illness: what now?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2014

By
James C. Kaufman
Edited by
James C. Kaufman
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
University of Connecticut
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Summary

As I was finishing up this project, a colleague asked me a question that stuck with me – Why exactly was I doing this book? I ask myself that question every time I am in the final stages of an edited project, as I track down the last chapters and begin the marketing questionnaires. But, of course, this question was a bit deeper. Why creativity and mental illness? Why study it?

Some would argue the topic has been done to death. There have been hundreds and hundreds of studies, most of them analyzing one small piece of the puzzle. Small effects or mixed results are overstated – or consistent patterns are minimized. The benchmark papers are flawed and, even if perfectly executed, would only shed light on one aspect of the question. The analogy of the blind men and the elephant (all touching a different part of the creature and reaching quite distinct assumptions about its essence) is overused but particularly apt in this field.

Part of me is ready for this question with two quotes. One is from my favorite play, Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia. The quote is spoken by an academic; her first sentence refers to her friends’ different research interests in mathematics, history, and English literature:

It’s all trivial – your grouse, my hermit, Bernard’s Byron. Comparing what we’re looking for misses the point. It’s wanting to know that makes us matter . . . If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final.

(Stoppard, 1993, pp. 75–76)
Type
Chapter
Information
Creativity and Mental Illness , pp. 403 - 407
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2014

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References

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