Are people's creative behaviours symptoms of a mental health disorder? Or are they sourced in (creative) coping strategies? Any literary text is a compromise between unconscious/ conscious intent. Art was described as an alternative to neurosis, a social and formal manifestation. What are your views on this subject?
Being creative is a natural and important human behavior, that is part of the point of having a large brain, to use it to create/make things to hopefully improve life whether it be making tools (in a basic sense to increase the amount of food hunted/gathered, etc) or just creating something neat to look at. Making anything new is done through creativity, so basically everything human made was thought up and created by someone/s, nothing in human culture would exist without it.
Creativity and mental illness It has long been suggested that there is a connection between creativity and mental illness. Certainly, people prone to schizophrenia tend to come from creative families. And even if they themselves are not productively creative, then high rates of creativity are found among their siblings and other relatives. Furthermore, creative people tend to be more sensitive to the emotional environment around them and are less robust in withstanding hostility, intolerance or criticism. Indeed, the higher the level of emotional criticism within the family context, the higher the rate of schizophrenic and depressive relapses. When people go into a psychotic REM trance due to emotional arousal any criticism may well be acting like a post-hypnotic suggestion, compounding the condition
There are studies that suggest a link between the two, quite a few of them actually. Another interesting thing about it is that Bipolar/Schizophrenic patients who take L-Arginine (an amino acid) as a supplement tend to become extremely creative, but run an astoundingly high risk of psychosis while taking it.
My first assignment for my Intro to Liberal Arts was to read a passage by Cronon. He talks about how creativity expresses knowledge-at least that's how I took it. http://history.wisc.edu/cronon/Writings/Cronon_Only_Connect.pdf
Before I was diagnosed I often wondered what it would be like to be a crazy genius... somehow being this way isn't very glamorous. I write poetry, and draw and crochet, and try for the life of me to play music. I haven't found much of a link between creativity and mental illness. I've looked at a couple of sites and the common illness associated with creative thinking is bi-polar disorder. I may have more on this later.
Who knows? Most extremely-creative individuals are just unafraid of being/expressing themselves without any boundaries, thus they can come off as a little kooky, when in reality they're probably just as sane as you and me. Thinking outside the box has brought forth geniuses in science, literature, music, art... you name it, and it all has helped the progression of mankind greatly. So really, if being creative is crazy, then our whole world's insane!
I feel that. I'm a diagnosed bipolar, and really its not actually that fun to be crazy. My best work has been while I'm manic, but manic episodes never end well.
A couple of minutes ago I was really worked up (Still am kinda) and just started drawing and coloring, ended up with something I kinda like. I'm thinking creativity is a good way to channel a mental illness. But, that is nothing new. It's used in stress management as well. Maybe some people are just naturally creative while others do not really strive to be. I don't know..
