Biology 202

2006 Book Commentaries

On Serendip

She does not go into the details of what exactly causes mental illness. She quotes one of Edgar Allen Poe's poems, "and by a strange alchemy of the brain/His pleasure always turn'd to pain" (p 120). A 'strange alchemy' is appropriate way of describing any brain. The brain is a sea of firing neurons awash with neurotransmitters. Chemical and electrical signals enervate tissues. Sensory information provides input and motor signals produce behavior. Meanwhile, through corollary discharge and other signals, interneurons keep tabs on the multitudinous processes of the brain. Signals create patterns and patterns are followed or recreated or ignored. There is disorder, yet, at the same time, there is life and thought and behavior. Look at what arises out of the tangled intricacies of the brain: humanity. It seems only logical that a more disorganized brain would be more creative; that the erratic brain of a Manic-Depressive would produce artistic masterpieces.
While Jamison does not concentrate on the etiology of mental illness; she does, however, allocate a section of her book to tracing the emerging drug therapy designed to combat and cope with mood disorders: lithium, antidepressants and anticonvulsants. She emphasizes the fact that drug therapy has been a crucial advancement in the treatment of psychological disorders and that drugs save lives. Even though modern artists may voluntarily forgo treatment, artists now have choices and options when seeking relief from mental illness. Jamison quotes Virginia Woolf as saying "I feel certain that I am gong mad again" (p224). There is a sense of dread which accompanies her words. After the advent of lithium drug therapy, poet Robert Lowell was quoted as saying to his publisher, Robert Giroux, "It's terrible, Bob, to think that all I've suffered, and all the suffering I've caused, might have arisen from the lack of a little salt in my brain." (p 250)
Jamison does not examine the work of artists who have not been documented as suffering from some type of mental disorder. She does, however, point out that artists who do not have some type of psychological illness are in a minority.
Many writers and artists have no family history of these illnesses, nor do they themselves suffer from depression or manic-depressive illness... not all writers and artist are depressed, suicidal, or manic. It is, rather, that a greatly disproportionate number of them are; that the manic-depressive and artistic temperaments are causally related to on another. (p 237)

Also, there are cases where symptoms may have been subclinical. Cases may have been undiagnosed or covered up. Symptoms may also have simply been ignored, disregarded as artistic quirks. In the case of poet Robert Lowell, Hardwick, Lowell's wife, was 'convinced that Lowell was sick' but could not convince his colleagues that something was wrong; "what to her was 'mad' was to them another mark of Lowell's genius." (p 5) "Biographic studies indicate that writers, artists, and composers often describe in great detail their periods of melancholy or depression, but that other aspects of mood swings... and even at times overt psychosis, are subsumed under 'eccentricity,' 'creative inspiration,' or 'artistic temperament.'" (p 58)
"Certain lifestyles provide cover for deviant and bizarre behavior, and the arts, especially, have long given latitude to extremes in behavior and mood." (p 57) So what exactly is art? Is creativity the product of a mentally disturbed mind? Is art is the product of genius or madness? Could it be a product of both? How different are genius and madness from on another? Where does art and creativity come from? Is it the brain? The 'I function'? Can an artistic genius produce masterpieces without being aware of doing so; like a sleepwalker with a paint brush? This idea conflicts with the clichéd image of the struggling artist; especially one who is mentally ill and anguishing over life and work. Perhaps creativity is the result of an overactive neocortex, the storyteller in the brain. The storyteller takes in too much, it cannot filter information and it is overwhelmed. Signals of the brain which are usually ignored stimulate stories that are beautiful and poignant when penned on paper but which are disruptive for the artist to have in the brain.
Where is creativity and artistry in the brain? Are they connected to manic-depressive illness and other psychological disorders? In her book, Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, Kay Jamison asks, "Do artists create in spite of their often-debilitating problems with mood...or is there something about the experience of prolonged periods of melancholia –broken at times by episodes of manic intensity and expansiveness – that leads to a different kind of insight, compassion, and expression of the human condition?" (p 102) Genius and madness seem to be related and, perhaps, like Emily Dickinson wrote in her poem, "Wider than the Sky", "the one the other will contain". When exploring art and mental illness, specifically Manic-Depressive Illness, it is easy to see a relationship between the two.
Many of the changes in mood, thinking, and perception that characterize the mildly manic states – restlessness, ebullience, expansiveness, irritability, grandiosity, quickened and more finely tuned senses, intensity of emotional experiences, diversity of thought, and rapidity of associational processes – are highly characteristic of creative thought as well. (p105)

Yet, there is still the question of how the two are related. Is art the product of madness? Is madness genius or vice versa? What is normal? And, if creativity arises from madness yet is also considered a human trait, are not we all, then, a little mad?

References:
Jamison, Kay R. Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. New York: Macmillian, 1993.


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