The Shadows of Creation
On the tortured genius and angels without wings
Tortured genius
In 1897, Austrian poet and writer Rainer Maria Rilke met Russian psychoanalyst, author, and intellectual omnivore Lou Andreas-Salomé. Despite their age difference (he was 20 at the time; she was 36), they struck up a romance, which lasted for a few years. Even after their love turned platonic, they continued an intense correspondence - hundreds of letters over decades - and Andreas-Salomé remained Rilke’s muse and closest confidante until his death by leukemia in 1926, aged 51.
As you can imagine, the poet and his muse had interesting conversations about the mind, human experience, and Rilke’s bouts of melancholy. When Salomé suggested that Rilke should see one of her mentors, Sigmund Freud, to help him deal with the depressive episodes that stifled him, Rilke replied:
If my devils are to leave me, I am afraid my angels will take flight as well.
In his typical elegiac prose, Rilke expresses the idea of the tortured genius here — the price of transcendent creativity is deep despair; can’t have the first without the second. This idea even has a specific name when applied to poets: the ‘Sylvia Plath effect’, named after the American poet and novelist who overdosed on sleeping pills at age 30.
Is the idea of the tortured genius true, though? Well, a little yes. And mostly no. Surely you didn’t expect a simple answer? Wrong newsletter for that, I’m afraid.
Yes, there are several studies (mostly on writers) that find a higher-than-average prevalence of certain mood disorders among creative individuals. If we look at earlier, small studies, we tend to see that writers and other artists are more likely to deal with mood disorders, especially bipolar disorder and - in some studies - unipolar depression. However, those studies only look at a handful of people, a few dozen at best.
So… what about a 2013 study that looks at over a million (!) people?
Except for bipolar disorder, individuals with overall creative professions were not more likely to suffer from investigated psychiatric disorders than controls.
There was one exception, though. Can you guess?
However, being an author was specifically associated with increased likelihood of schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, unipolar depression, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and suicide.
That’s it then? Case closed?
Far from it, my dear Watsons. We’re just getting started.
Angels without wings
Two important points can help us save the tortured genius by keeping creativity’s angel grounded: Measuring creativity is tricky, and correlation is not causation
First, how do you measure creativity? Many of these studies look at awards for creative work, making a living in a creative profession, or pursuing a degree in certain arts. For example, the million-plus people study above used ‘artistic or scientific occupation’ as a measure of creativity1.
That choice of how to compare creative and non-creative people (and where the cut-off lies, creativity is not a black-and-white thing, after all) is quite relevant because this review finds that:
… the relationship between creativity and mood disorder differs according to the research approach.
But let’s say we find a somewhat robust tendency between mood disorders and creativity in writers and poets. Even then, as the author of the review highlights in this Aeon essay, it’s dangerous2 to lean into the ‘tortured genius’ trope, which brings me to the second point. Even beyond the measurement difficulties, a link tells us little about the causes of that link. Are people with bipolar disorder/depression more likely to seek refuge in (written) creativity3? Are creative people more sensitive to negative thoughts? Or are depression and creativity merely two factors in a much more complex story?
As I mentioned earlier, I don’t do simple answers. Option three it is.
What makes me think so? A few curious findings. For example, adverse life events show a link with both creativity and the risk for mood disorders/psychosis. And let’s not forget that posttraumatic growth often manifests in a creative-focused way.
But an even more intriguing insight comes from the million-plus people study. The researchers found:
… an association between creative professions and first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia nervosa, and for siblings of patients with autism.
‘Relatives and siblings’ sounds like there’s a role for both environment and genetics, doesn’t it? But which role? What can predispose to both creativity and mood disorders and then swing one way or the other?
Let’s take a look at the brain. Interestingly, the originality component of creativity and schizotypy (a set of personality traits that, at the extreme end, becomes schizophrenia, and is also linked to hypomanic states) show similar patterns of brain (de)activation. In the words of the authors, this is:
… congruent with the idea that more-creative people may include many more events/stimuli in their mental processes than do less-creative people.
In other words, it depends on the setting of your brain’s filter.
So, the story of creation’s shadows, in a simplified form that omits many details, is this: Genetics and upbringing tweak the sensitivity of the brain to ex- and internal stimuli. The quality, quantity, and nature of those stimuli feed back to the brain and provide the raw materials for creativity. But, depending on the stimuli and/or the brain’s settings, this might lead to an overload with negative effects.
Despair is not the price you need to pay for creativity: You’re not creative because of the despair, but you can be creative despite the despair.
Now go and create things.
Info nibbles:
✍️ I have a tiny story, ‘Mirror Test’, in Crepuscular Magazine. Schrödinger’s criminal justice system, in less than 250 words. Let me know what you think.
🦠 Big study finds a decline in cellulose-munching gut bacteria that correlates with more industrialized lifestyles and a strongly reduced consumption of fiber, “potentially impacting energy balance and other health-related aspects.“
🤖 AI is no substitute for having something to say - a survey of science communicators and researchers finds that…
Good writing is about having something interesting and original to say. Generative AI tools might provide technical help, but they are no substitute for your unique perspective.
Does that mean that creative science writers with a scientific background are uniquely messed up? Guess what I do in the day job…
It might, for example, make creative people doubt themselves - can I create to my full potential if I’m not struggling? Vice versa, people struggling with mood disorders might feel even worse/guiltier for not creating some award-winning piece.
There might be something to this. Writing therapy helps some people deal with various traumas and a specific form of this - journaling - is growing increasingly popular on social media, even if the evidence for its efficacy is mixed.
I believe your essay is more important to another critical debate; how useful are humans compared to computers? But let’s start of with the idea of a “stable genius”. When we think of creative genius we think of Van Gough rather than Picasso, because creativity is somehow different from driving a car. But the greatest genius’s have been very stable, like Issac Newton and Einstein. So what exactly is creativity and is it associated with genius?
There is a condition in which blind people can see, called blindsight. They cannot identify something, yet they can grasp it! So blindsight is a faculty we all have intuitively, and people with apperceptive ataxia are mindblind. Note, mindblind is not mindless, just like colour blind is not colourless. The condition is found in ASD and Asperger’s, who compensate with a high degree of savants and a proclivity for numbers.
In your excellent essay you say that creativity is associated with traumatic events in the mind, and I’m wondering whether people with a greater facility for blindsight are better at generating apperceptions? Consider the case of Issac Newton who sat under a tree and observed an apple fall, and from this he discovered the gravitational constant of the Universe. In other words, are apperceptions the key to human creativity and genius?
Lastly, we are in an age of AI, where we are constantly compared to computers, which are faster and smarter, which is correct, but here is the important distinction; AI is better and faster than us at connecting the dots, but human creativity is better at connecting unconnected dots. These two distinctions are like oil and water, they will not mix, because of what Geoffrey Hinton calls algorithmic dominance over ephemeral creativity. We cannot have both, we must choose between a net zero biosphere and AI global-sphere.