“Is there a link between creativity and madness?” (Sawyer 163). Socrates describes madness as a divine gift (Golden 7). The madness we will explore is the poetic type that Socrates explains as, “a divine release of the soul from the yoke of custom and convention” (Golden 7). Why seemingly so many poets are considered mad or suffering from some form of mental illness?
Dr. Nancy Andreasen of the University of Iowa conducted a study in which “30 creative writers, 30 matched control subjects, and the first-degree relatives of both groups. The writers had a substantially higher rate of mental illness, predominantly affective disorder, with a tendency toward the bipolar subtype” (Andreasen). Dr. James Kaufman of California State University “conducted a retrospective study of 1,629 writers that showed poets — specifically, female poets — were more likely than non-fiction writers, playwrights and fiction writers to have some type of mental illness. As such, the link between creativity and mental illness is frequently referred to as “The Sylvia Plath Effect” (McCann). Sylvia Plath met Anne Sexton while both were in therapy. As many, who are lovers of poetry know, both these women committed suicide; Plath in 1963 and Sexton in 1974. Plath wrote Tulips, one of her favorite poems, she had a tattoo of a tulip on her ankle. There is a famous photograph of Sexton leaning over Plath’s ankle as she is lying on the morgue’s table.
Sylvia Plath’s poem, “Tulips” follows:
The tulips are too excitable, it is winter here./Look how white everything is, how quiet, how snowed-in./I am learning peacefulness, lying by myself quietly/As the light lies on these white walls, this bed, these hands./I am nobody; I have nothing to do with explosions./I have given my name and my day-clothes up to the nurses/And my history to the anesthetist and my body to surgeons./They have propped my head between the pillow and the sheet-cuff /Like an eye between two white lids that will not shut./Stupid pupil, it has to take everything in./The nurses pass and pass, they are no trouble,/They pass the way gulls pass inland in their white caps,/Doing things with their hands, one just the same as another,/So it is impossible to tell how many there are./My body is a pebble to them, they tend it as water/Tends to the pebbles it must run over, smoothing them gently./ They bring me numbness in their bright needles, they bring me sleep./Now I have lost myself I am sick of baggage——/My patent leather overnight case like a black pillbox,/ My husband and child smiling out of the family photo;/Their smiles catch onto my skin, little smiling hooks./I have let things slip, a thirty-year-old cargo boat/stubbornly hanging on to my name and address./They have swabbed me clear of my loving associations./ Scared and bare on the green plastic-pillowed trolley/I watched my teaset, my bureaus of linen, my books/ Sink out of sight, and the water went over my head./I am a nun now, I have never been so pure./I didn’t want any flowers, I only wanted/To lie with my hands turned up and be utterly empty./How free it is, you have no idea how free——/The
peacefulness is so big it dazes you,/And it asks nothing, a name tag, a few trinkets./It is what the dead close on, finally; I imagine them/Shutting their mouths on it, like a Communion tablet./The tulips are too red in the first place, they hurt me./Even through the gift paper I could hear them breathe/Lightly, through their white swaddlings, like an awful baby./Their redness talks to my wound, it corresponds./They are subtle : they seem to float, though they weigh me down,/Upsetting me with their sudden tongues and their color,/A dozen red lead sinkers round my neck./Nobody watched me before, now I am watched./The tulips turn to me, and the window behind me/Where once a day the light slowly widens and slowly thins,/And I see myself, flat, ridiculous, a cut-paper shadow/Between the eye of the sun and the eyes of the tulips,/And I have no face, I have wanted to efface myself./The vivid tulips eat my oxygen./Before they came the air was calm enough,/Coming and going, breath by breath, without any fuss./Then the tulips filled it up like a loud noise./ Now the air snags and eddies round them the way a river/ Snags and eddies round a sunken rust-red engine./They concentrate my attention, that was happy/Playing and resting without committing itself./The walls, also, seem to be warming themselves./The tulips should be behind bars like dangerous animals;/ They are opening like the mouth of some great African cat,/And I am aware of my heart: it opens and closes/Its bowl of red blooms out of sheer love of me./The water I taste is warm and salt, like the sea,/And comes from a country far away as health. (Plath)
Sexton wrote, Wanting To Die
Since you ask, most days I cannot remember./I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage./Then the almost unnameable lust returns./Even then I have nothing against life./I know well the grass blades you mention,/the furniture you have placed under the sun./But suicides have a special language./Like carpenters they want to know which tools./They never ask why build./Twice I have so simply declared myself,/have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,/have taken on his craft, his magic./In this way, heavy and thoughtful,/warmer than oil or water,/I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole./I did not think of my body at needle point./Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone./Suicides have already betrayed the body./Still-born, they don’t always die,/but dazzled, they can’t forget a drug so sweet/that even children would look on and smile./To thrust all that life under your tongue!— /that, all by itself, becomes a passion./Death’s a sad bone; bruised, you’d say,/and yet she waits for me, year after year,/to so delicately undo an old wound,/to empty my breath from its bad prison./Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,/raging at the fruit a pumped-up moon,/leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss, /leaving the page of the book carelessly open,/something unsaid, the phone off the hook/and the love whatever it was, an infection. (Sexton)
Robert Lowell was another tortured soul. He suffered manic episodes and was hospitalized several times. He wrote, The Dolphin My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise,/a captive as Racine, the man of craft,/drawn through his maze of iron composition/by the
incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre./When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body/ caught in its hangman’s-knot of sinking lines,/the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . ./I have sat and listened to too many/words of the collaborating muse,/and plotted perhaps too freely with my life,/not avoiding injury to others,/not avoiding injury to myself--/to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction,/an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting/my eyes have seen what my hand did. (Lowell)
These are just a few examples, there are countless more. When I talked with my doctor about beginning antidepressants, expressed my concern that my creativity ability would be diminished or snuffed out. He assured me it would not, that I would still have the creativity to produce poems. I wrote After the War Doctor, doctor/fix me, heal me./My body is rotting,/my mind blackened./I fought the war,/I carry the scars,/I lost the field,/my spear and shield. /They took more than I thought./I see how much I have surrendered./My reserve stripped away./Driven to the edge of the abyss/footing unstable/I dread the descent./Doctor, doctor/what little pill do you have for me?
So, the question arises; are those creative people afflicted with mental issues creative because of their illness? Is it as Dr. Maron suggests, “the creative juices of the mentally ill flow more freely…if you are not mentally ill, you will have to work much harder to get up to the level of creativity” (Sawyer 164). Or is it as psychologist, Arne Dietrich, of the American University of Beirut suggests? “"…the link is actually negative, not positive" (Jones). Or is it a question of stereotyping as Dr. Cathy Malchiodi writes, “…to promote and ponder once again the well-worn perception that artistic creativity and mental illness are somehow inevitably linked” (Malchiodi). Malchiodi also explains, “Manic states may provide the catalyst for heightened creativity; I know and agree with that premise from my own involvement with art making. There are indeed geniuses who happen to also have bipolar disorder and whose creative contributions have made a significant impact on the arts, science, medicine, and other fields” (Malchiodi). I think her brilliant insight should be noted that, “The changes in brain function that occur during manic episodes are conducive to creative endeavor, artists and writers recount of periods of inspiration, euphoria, and novel associations during hypomania. Research also suggests that creative individuals do share more personality traits with people with mental illness than people who are less inclined to creative activities” (Malchiodi).
Her idea of "neurodiversity" is one worth exploring. I think a great way to put this paper aside is with her notion of, “Human creativity is complex and ultimately, it is appreciated for its merit, innovation, and imagination” (Malchiodi). I, therefore, think I have only scratched the surface of this complex matter.
Works Cited
Andreasen, NC. "Creativity and mental illness: prevalence rates in writers and their first-degree relatives." Am J Psychiatry (1987): 1288-92.
Golden, Elden. A Creativity Reader. 2013.
Jones, Orion. "How Creativity Might Be Tied to Sanity and Madness Alike." 29 6 2014. The Big Think. 26 10 2014 <http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/how-creativity-might-be-tied-to-sanity-and-madness-alike>.
Lowell, Robert. Selected Poems. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., 1976.
Ludwig, AM. "Creative achievement and psychopathology: comparison among professions." Am J Psychother (1992): 330-56.
Malchiodi, Cathy. "Arts and Health The integrative, reparative and restorative powers of the arts." 5 1 2009.
Psychology Today. 26 10 2014 <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-healing-arts/200901/art-and-mental-illness-stop-the-insanity>.
McCann, Kim. "5 Writers Who Suffered from Mental Illnesses & the Impact It Had on Their Art." 2014.
The Airship. <http://airshipdaily.com/blog/022620145-writers-mental-illness>.
Nuzzo-Morgan, T. (n.d.). After the War.
Plath, Sylvia. Collected Poems. HarperCollins, 1992.
Sawyer, R. Keith. Explaining Creativity. New York: Oxford University Press, 2012.
Sexton, Anne. The Complete Poems of Anne Sexton. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1981.