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Creativity and Insanity - discuss

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Elizzybeth:
My 21-year-old brother has high-functioning autism and bipolar disorder, which probably qualifies him as "crazy" by most definitions.  Unmedicated, his thinking is frequently delusional (e.g., "You're trying to kill me," "I've got to call the police because my sister is being bad"); with the help of anti-psychotics, it's only occasionally delusional (and generally in much more benign ways, e.g., "I've got to get to the next city for some reason and so I'm going to walk there," "My dad is going to run for president some day").

Much of his moment-to-moment cogitation is wrapped up in plans for a video game he's been designing in his head (and in literally hundreds of Wordpad documents that list statistics and level names) over the last seven years called Super Warfare.  The world he's designed is incredibly complex and filled with fanciful creatures (the CatScratches, the Unwelcome Stranger, etc.).  This is certainly some sort of creativity, but in terms of execution, my brother's stuck.  He refuses to learn to program, and his slow, repetitive monologue style makes it unlikely that he'll ever be able to communicate those ideas in any useable manner.

My parents for a time were convinced that he could make all this video game stuff make sense to other people if he could draw it out and sketch levels, so Eddie took a community college art class.  Unfortunately, he ultimately demonstrated only very mild interest in art and no patience for working on a piece (despite my dad's prayers that he'd become some sort of outsider art phenomenon).  So that was a flop.

Ultimately, I agree with those of you who have been saying that though insanity may allow people to see things in new and "creative" ways, it can also serve as a huge hinderance to the communication of that vision.

I think Daniel Johnston is a perfect example of someone who walks the amazingly creative / too crazy to function line.

Zingoleb:

--- Quote from: pwhodges on 04 May 2009, 00:38 ---Er, haven't you just pretty much defined hypochondria? 

Also, I was playing with the thought of the inhabitants of this thread starting Synaesthetes Anonymous...  it has a nice ring to it (or should that be colour?).

--- End quote ---

Was a joke.

Most of my problems are things I can deal with, but I've blacked out a time or two without realizing it, and only when people tell me later that I was acting really rude to them and wouldn't refer to myself as "Edward" do I start to realize that there may be something seriously wrong, and that terrifies me. I haven't had any recent incidents...I think. It's not like, "Oh, hey, it's Wednesday, what happened to Tuesday?", it's just something I can not notice whatsoever. I can deal with voices in my head and people that follow me and my manic depression and all that good stuff, but blacking out and thinking I'm someone else makes me think I'm going to be arrested for triple homicide some day.

I'm also insanely paranoid about everything, ha!

Darkbluerabbit:
I agree that creativity and insanity aren't necessarily correlated.  Just as an example, I saw part of the Cremaster series by Matthew Barney and was pretty sure that he had to be completely insane.  I recently saw an interview with him and learned more about his background, and he's actually pretty dang "normal."  He played football in high school and paid his way through college by modeling for companies like J.Crew.  Not exactly the quirky artist type, yet he's done some very strange video art.

KvP:

--- Quote from: Boro_Bandito on 03 May 2009, 22:23 ---Synesthesia is an incredibly rare occurance, and so far it sounds like somehow this forum is an absolute magnet for it, how extraordinary!

--- End quote ---
I don't know if I'd call it incredibly rare, it seems like the sort of thing that people could have without realizing it - it's difficult to conceive of one's own senses as being abnormal, no? Besides, like a lot of other psychological phenomena it exists in degrees - most people have "a bit" of it. Consonants sound sharp while vowels sound smooth, etc.


--- Quote from: Boro_Bandito on 03 May 2009, 22:23 ---I can see things like Asperger's being a boon in disguise though, anything that basically forces your brain to stay on one subject for long periods of time and you're eventually bound to think of something new and exciting about it, after the long and exhaustive hours of work that is.
--- End quote ---
Maybe I'm atypical for an aspie, but my fixations never manifested themselves in a creative urge. I mean I consistently played video games for 12 hours a day at one point but I've never had any particular insight into game design (despite knowing more about it than most people, I would imagine) That's the thing about aspie fixations, they're not always useful. Some kids have memorized huge sheets of baseball stats from the 70's. How is that useful? Impressive at a certain kind of party, maybe (our intense interests and lack of tact more often result in putting people off) but it's not immediately useful.

Zingoleb:
Unless you're on Jeopardy someday.

"Yes, Alex, I'll take "70's Baseball" for 2000, please."

Then you better hope that they choose your one little almost insignificant niche to ask about.

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