mental health & creative talent

The notion that inspiration requires regression and dipping into irrationality in order to access unconscious symbols and thought has been popular across disciplines for hundreds of years.

Marcel Proust said, "Everything great in the world is created by neurotics. They have composed our masterpieces, but we don't consider what they have cost their creators in sleepless nights, and worst of all, fear of death." ... A long-held view in psychiatry is that artistic endeavors heal the artist, whose work is then healing to others.

> from Creativity, the Arts, and Madness - By Maureen Neihart, Psy.D.

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I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness.... Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it.... I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences...

Psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison

> more on: bipolar disorder

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The truth is: Anxiety disorders are real, serious, and above all -- very treatable. You CAN triumph over painful physical symptoms, overcome obsessive thoughts, and stop limiting your activities.

Deanne Repich - ConquerAnxiety.com

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In a 1995 BBC television interview Diana revealed to the world that she was a self-injurer. She said that she had cut her arms and legs, explaining, "You have so much pain inside yourself that you try and hurt yourself on the outside because you want help."

> more on :..cutting/self-injury

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Personality development, especially accelerated development, cannot be realized without manifest nervousness and psychoneurosis.
Kazimierz Dabrowski

> more on :...Dabrowski on advanced development

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People with TS [Tourette Syndrome] are not crazy or dangerous. In fact, many of these folks are the most creative, talented, bright and funny people I know.
Neve Campbell

> more on :...dysfunction / disorder

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Mental illness is not the price people pay for their creative gifts.
While mental disturbances may provide individuals with an underlying sense of unease that seems necessary for sustained creative activity, these disturbances are not the only source for inner tension.

> psychiatrist Arnold M. Ludwig - from article:
Moods and the muse

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What's wrong in your shrink's office is what's wrong on the set. Nine times out of ten, the thing that makes a film suffer is the thing that the director really needs to deal with psychologically.

Jodie Foster

> more on :...mental health perspectives 2

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Most of us suffer through our dark emotions or grab at the pleasant ones like prizes at a county fair but we aren't able to maintain our focus or our equilibrium around the emotions.

Being creative means experiencing the emotions with consciousness and skill.
Karla McLaren

> more on :...depression

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Traits associated with giftedness like acute sensitivity, intensity,
complexity, multi-tasking, and divergent thinking can be misdiagnosed by therapists as anxiety disorder, OCD, bipolar disorder, or ADHD.

Paula Prober, M.S., M.Ed.

> more on :...counseling***

> related article: Misdiagnosis of the Gifted

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