The mythconception of the mad genius

Frontiers in Psychology

Arne Dietrich¹ 

关键词: availability heuristic;    base rate fallacy;    bipolar disorder;    cognitive bias;    creativity;    illusionary correlations;    madness;    mental illness;   

DOI  :  10.3389/fpsyg.2014.00079

学科分类：心理学（综合）

来源: Frontiers

【 摘 要 】

Take troubled Vincent van Gogh, famed 19th century painter who suffered from bipolar disorder, cut off part of his left ear, and eventually committed suicide. Or Isaac Newton, eccentric 17th century physicist, general headcase, and judging from his leviathan superego, a candidate for making the diagnostic criteria of at least half a dozen psychological disorders. No sooner do we contemplate this aberrant pair, a whole army of mad geniuses springs to mind led by such illustrious figures as autistic Wolfgang Amadeus, depressed Ludwig van, or tortured Edgar Allan. Like Franz Kafka, Robert Schumann, Michelangelo, Virginia Wolf, Richard Strauss, John Nash, or Ernest Hemingway, they were all, at some point in their lives, anguished, tormented, alcoholic, angst-ridden, manic, outright psychotic, or just plain weird. Add the mind-boggling savant syndrome, throw in a quote from a venerable ancient Greek for good measure—say, Aristotle: “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness”—and we have the making of mythconception (for more details, see Rothenberg, 1990; Schlesinger, 2009, 2012; Simonton, in press).

【 授权许可】

CC BY