Creativity is akin to insanity, say scientists from Sweden's Karolinska Institute, who have been studying how the mind works. Brain scans reveal striking similarities in the thought pathways of highly creative people and those with schizophrenia. Both groups lack important receptors used to filter and direct thought.
In some people, it leads to mental illness. But rather than a clear division, experts suspect a continuum, with some people having psychotic traits but few negative symptoms.
1 comment(s):
As creative who also suffers from a mild psychosis, I can speak to the spectrum of states that characterize both psychic types. They are, to my way of thinking, the same except in two key aspects: distinction and direction. A true psychotic state limits the ability to test perceptions against reality. This limitation leads to an impairment in how actions and thoughts are directed. While the artist, the creative, is focused - more like a scientist - in winnowing reality from perception, the psychotic mind becomes engulfed. They cannot differentiate. And, so the creative actively engages their perceptual paradigm to test its truths. The psychotic becomes lost in their paradigm and cannot interface with the world as most people experience it - more objectively.
Post a Comment