Madness and Genius
It figures: Some of my favorite people were crazy. Or, rather, they suffered from a form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome. At least that's the diagnosis given by a psychiatrist in a soon-to-be-published study that claims to prove that there really is a link between madness and genius.
Michael Fitzgerald of Trinity College, Dublin, has named 21 writers, painters, musicians and philsophers who he says had Asperger's syndrome. They include George Orwell, Lewis Carroll, Beethoven, Mozart, Hans Christian Andersen and Immanuel Kant.
Asperger's affects its victims' social relationships but not their intellect. Fitzgerald claims that people with Asperger's can have exceptional artistic creativity, as well as mathematical genius. He contends that some of the same genes that cause Asperger's are a source of creative brilliance.
According to the story in The Telegraph, "[o]ne of the characteristics of Asperger's is thought to be an inability to engage in creative play. But Prof Fitzgerald says the syndrome almost certainly drove Orwell, Lowry and Carroll to writing and painting as a form of 'self-help.'"
Fitzgerald's claims are set out in The Genesis of Artistic Creativity, to be published later this month.During a 30-year psychiatric career, Fitzgerald has diagnosed more than 900 people with Asperger's. For his study, he assessed the personalities of 21 geniuses against the criteria for Asperger's.
autism, Asperger's syndrome, psychiatry, literature, arts, philosophy, history, madness, genius, intelligence, creativity, Orwell, Kant, Beethoven, Mozart, mental illness, medicine
2 Comments:
I can't agree with this - it's too vague and pat. I suspect people like their heroes a bit 'mad', but to jump to a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome (presumably a mild version, since the full-blown version is extremely debilitating) is to trample over any notions of proof or evidence, and to paint yesterday's heroes in today's faddish colours. For example, what actual evidence is there that Beethoven had Aspergers? Eccentric, a keen handwasher, but what else?
Psychiatrical diagnoses seem to be too little exact to 'outsiders', including 99 % of doctors. A bit of scepticism never makes any harm, but people should also be aware that psychiatrists are experts in their field. What is vague to a complete layman, may be clear to one who knows something about the matter, and scepticism may mean an empty head. I see the problem of Asperger's syndrome diagnosis, and similar ones, in the fact that the diagnosis tries to sum up a circle of various phenomena and grasp this whole in one concept. One generalised concept is so convenient! But while all broken legs, e.g., have something very similar in common, it is not the same with individual cases of Asp. syndrome. There is something like fashion in using such diagnoses. It can be predicted that today's Asp. syndrome diagnosis will fall apart into several different diagnoses after some time, because it seems to comprise too different cases. But there is no problem in making diagnoses of people from the past, if we know something about them. Such diagnoses are, of course, based on present level of knowledge, and cannot change anything about how were these people evaluated in their time. ...wrote father of 16-year-old son with the diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome.
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