There has always been anecdotal interest in the coexistence of 'great wits and madness', and in the familial aspects of both genius and mental illness, but it is only in recent years that systematic studies have been made of groups of gifted artists, especially writers. They are relevant to our subject.
In summary, they show that such groups have very high rates of manic-depressive psychosis, especially bipolar illness. Schizophrenia is entirely absent. In the families of those gifted individuals the relatives have high rates of creativity, not necessarily literary, and high rates of affective disorder. These rates are higher in siblings but also significant in the parents of creative individuals.
The most impressive of these studies is by Andreasen 1987, who over 15 years studied the faculty members appointed to the creative writing workshop at the University of Iowa. All were distinguished writers, some household names. The study examined 30 creative writers, 30 controls, matched for intelligence and social class, and the first degree relatives of both these groups.
The writers had a substantially higher rate of mental illness, predominantly affective, with a tendency towards bipolar attacks. There was also a higher prevalence of affective disorder and creativity in the writer's first degree relatives, suggesting that these traits run together in families and may be genetically connected. Both writers and controls had superior IQ's, the writers' better only in WAIS vocabulary subtests, confirming previous observations that intelligence and creativity are independent mental abilities.
The detailed statistics are striking. If any kind of mood illness is counted, then 80% of the writers had suffered an attack at some time, compared with 30% of the controls. 13% had had mild attacks of both mania and depression, 30% severe ones -'mild' defined as requiring medical treatment of some kind, 'severe' as usually requiring admission to hospital. The figures for the controls are 0% and 10% respectively. Not one of the group had suffered from schizophrenia.
37% of the writers had had a major depression(17%controls); 30% alcoholism (7); and 7(7) drug abuse.
Of the relatives Andriessen writes 'Families of the affected individuals were riddled with both creativity and mental illness.' The creativity was far broader than literary, and included high ability in art, music, dance, and mathematics, suggesting a familial creativity factor, rather than the influence of social factors.
She found that most of the writers wrote when their mood was normal, and not when it was elevated or depressed.
Criticisms have been made of the paper, specifically the point that while these connections are with writing they are not necessarily with creativity, the trade of writing being an uncertain and unsettling one. Andreasen has replied that writers have a cognitive style likely to generate more events in their life - they are curious, risk-taking, adventuresome, and refuse to see the world conventionally. This style may run in families and make them creative.
Other studies include one by Kay Jamison of 47 important British writers and artists. 87% were male, their average age 53 years. 38% had been treated for affective illness. Writers had the most psychiatric problems and poets topped the list. Half the poets had had treatment for depression, as had two-thirds of the playwrights. 20% of the biographers and 13% of the painters had been treated for depression, mostly by psychotherapy, suggesting milder symptoms.
Of the whole group. one third of the 47 had severe mood swings. 17% of the poets had been treated for mania. The biographers reported no mood swings
These studies lack control groups, for obvious reasons - distinguished artists are thin on the ground. Attempts have been made to circumvent this problem by studying biographies, and comparing creative individuals in the arts with those successful in business, science and other areas of public life.
Arnold M. Ludwig has published an extensive biographical survey of 1,005 famous 20th-century artists, writers and other professionals. He found that the artists and writers had rates of psychosis, suicide attempts, mood disorders and drug and alcohol abuse two to three times higher than comparably successful people in business, science and public life. He found, as have others, that the poets in this sample had most often been manic and hospitalized, and had the highest suicide rates.
All this fits Virginia Woolf well - and her relatives. She came from a long line of writers. some like her father, distinguished. But he was also an outstanding alpine pioneer, her sister Vanessa was a talented painter, and one of her brothers an early psychoanalyst.
Virginia Woolf had a bipolar affective illness, and a long family history of affective illness on both the maternal and paternal sides. The doubtful relationship between her attacks and her creative periods has already been alluded to, and she became completely unproductive in terms of writing when unwell, although she was convinced that the ideas for most of her books, sometimes written years later, came to her during a prolonged manic illness. It would be possible to argue that her great years of productivity followed from the most serious and life-endangering breakdowns of 1912 to 1915.
The mystical quality of some of her writing and some of the less typical of her symptoms have sometimes raised the suspicion of schizophrenia. Schizophrenia is typically a chronic illness, affecting thinking, originality and drive. The fact that it is so rare in practising authors, adds strength to the diagnosis of affective illness in Virginia Woolf.
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