Talent Development Resources

Don’t mess with my brain

In One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), criminal Randle Patrick McMurphy (Jack Nicholson) is transferred to a mental institution due to his apparently deranged behavior, which turns out to be a deliberate gambit by him to serve out his sentence in an easier place than prison.

Jack Nicholson He is passionately antiauthoritarian, constantly disruptive in response to the stifling hospital routine, especially the iron rule of Nurse Ratched (Louise Fletcher).

He is even given electro-shock therapy [photo] to subdue his defiance. (It doesn’t work.) Later on, reacting to her insensitive tyranny about other patients, he explodes into a violent rage, viciously throttling the nurse, and is punished with a lobotomy.

That horror taps into a primal fear: having our mind - particularly any exceptional talents and creative abilities - compromised or taken away because of some medical intervention. Even if - unlike in “Cuckoo’s Nest” - it is supposed to help us.

Commenting about the article Elizabeth Swados on bipolar and burning rubber [in the High Ability section], designer Susan Kirkland said: “I wonder how much art product will be lost when we have cured all the mental angst suffered by gifted and creative people. I don’t think we know enough about it to differentiate between mental disharmony and a spiritual response to repressed creative expression. As an artist, I fear anything that might mess with my brain chemistry.”

In her article Creativity, the Arts, and Madness, Maureen Neihart, Psy.D. asks, “What do creativity and madness have in common? Observations from psychiatric studies suggest that there are three characteristics common to both high creative production and madness. These are disturbance of mood, certain types of thinking processes, and tolerance for irrationality.”

But, as the article Are Creativity and Mental Illness Linked? notes, “Most artists are not mentally ill, and most mentally ill people are not artists. However, several studies have suggested that artists are more likely than others to suffer from a class of mental illnesses called mood disorders, including major depression and manic-depressive illness.”

Psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison, a person with bipolar disorder, notes in her book “Touched with Fire” that the majority of people suffering from mood disorder “do not possess extraordinary imagination, and most accomplished artists do not suffer from recurring mood swings.” [From my article Creativity and Depression.]

In her article The Benefits of Restlessness and Jagged Edges, Dr. Jamison affirms that living with intensity and extremes are - or can be - positive traits.

She writes, “I believe that curiosity, wonder and passion are defining qualities of imaginative minds and great teachers; that restlessness and discontent are vital things; and that intense experience and suffering instruct us in ways that less intense emotions can never do.”

She adds, “It is important to value intellect and discipline, of course, but it is also important to recognize the power of irrationality, enthusiasm and vast energy. Intensity has its costs, of course — in pain, in hastily and poorly reckoned plans, in impetuousness — but it has its advantages as well.”

Dr. Jamison says she was “dealt a hand of intense emotions and volatile moods” and has had manic-depressive illness, or bipolar disorder, from age 18 years. “Exuberance and delight, tempered by deep depressions, have been lasting teachers.”

“But normal or manic I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know.”

But she does use medication - lithium - to modulate her bipolar extremes.

In my post To create we need high energy - not anxiety, I note that there seems to be an enduring mythology about creative inspiration and performing as an actor, for example - that it benefits from an “edge” of nervous tension or even anxiety.

But creativity coach and writer Eric Maisel, PhD comments in our interview Ten Zen Seconds (about his book) that this really is a false and distorting idea: “It isn’t at all clear that tension or anxiety is what’s needed for peak performance and lifelong creativity.”

And many artists do make use - to varying degrees of success - of their creative work to deal with mental health challenges. For example, Anne Sexton, who was institutionalized for psychosis, said “Poetry led me by the hand out of madness.” [The image is from Anne Sexton Reads (audiobook).]

In the book “Franny and Zooey” (1961) by J.D. Salinger, there is a scene which includes a view of psychotherapy as destructively “normalizing”:

“You go right ahead and call in some ignorant psychoanalyst. You just do that. You just call in some analyst who’s experienced in adjusting people to the joys of television, and Life magazine every Wednesday, and European travel, and the H-bomb, and the Presidential elections, and the front page of the Times, and the responsibilities of the Westport and Oyster Bay Parent-Teacher Association, and God knows what else that’s gloriously normal - you just do that, and I swear to you, in not more than a year Franny’ll either be in a nut ward or she’ll be wandering off into some goddamn desert with a burning cross in her hands…”

[Quote posted in SENG Community Forums > General Discussion > Gifted Adults > Mental Health & Counseling > Counselling for gifted, Different to non gifted?]

But many talented people acknowledge there can be real benefit to “good” psychotherapy.

Tony Kushner: “We forget that the unexpected has great entertainment value - that’s why psychoanalysis is so much fun.”

Jennifer Aniston: “I believe in therapy; I think it’s an incredible tool in educating the self on the self.”

Woody Allen: “People used to say, You’re using psychoanalysis as a crutch. And I would say, Yes. You’re hitting it exactly on the nose. I’m using it as a crutch.”

[Quotes from the page Counseling.]

Many of us have also chosen at times to use various substances to alter our brain chemistry, often as a self-medication strategy. But using alcohol and many other drugs can be very risky - see my articles Gifted, Talented, Addicted, and Actors and Addiction.

Also, there are non-drug alternatives to help manage anxiety and depression, for example. I have used St. John’s Wort for several years for mild depression. That and other herbal products are available from HBC Protocols and Native Remedies.

So, we need to figure out for ourselves what level of emotional discomfort - agitation, pain, angst, depression, whatever - is tolerable, or what is too much for us, too distracting, too corrosive for our sensitive, creative spirit and mind.