The Artistic Temperament
Bipolar Disorder and Creativity
More and more, writers with mood disorders are given the sound advice that the suffering that accompanies depression is not a necessary price to pay for their art. They’re reminded that treating the symptoms of depression can actually lead to a productive creative life. The patient voices her fear that medication will stifle her creativity, and the psychiatrist replies, “Are you writing now?” Usually, this persuades the reluctant patient to take her meds.
Alright, depression is one thing, but how about mania? Schumann composed volumes when he was manic, and virtually nothing in the years when he was hospitalized for depression or attempted suicide. Charlie Mingus, Michelangelo, Cole Porter, and Dostoyevsky presumably suffered from manic-depressive illness. It’s not that difficult, then, to make a case for going off mood stabilizers every now and then.
When my doctor is unavailable, I see a very sweet nurse practitioner who likes to point out the poster on her wall. It is a collage of signatures of great people—geniuses really—who were, as far as historians can gather, bipolar. Maybe because the office is so busy, she forgets that she has given me this pep talk before. I’m in good company, she tells me. Lucky me. Lucky me and Abraham Lincoln and Virginia Woolf and Robert Schumann.
Countless studies have examined the link between so-called ‘madness’ and creativity. While the correlation is overwhelming, there is no consensus as to the nature of the link. Champions of those who wish to erase the stigma of bipolar disorder, like Kay Redfield Jamison, point out that times of mental upset are more likely to yield increased creativity, since the very criteria for diagnosing mania reads “sharpened and unusually creative thinking.” Other investigators are more conservative, insisting that creative achievement occurs despite, not because of, mental illness. They suggest that the ‘connection’ is merely a coincidence.
To what extent should I identify with my illness? The word bipolar carries with it many benefits. To what extent should I advertise my diagnosis? If I run into my High School English teacher, I’ll be sure to mention it, because she explained to me over ten years ago that I had an “artistic temperament”. That sounded more than decent: I was part of the troubled club—it was as if having dramatic mood swings naturally accompanied rare talent. Again, lucky me.
But the word bipolar carries with it a great deal of baggage. I’ve had people literally back away from me when I mentioned it off-handedly. It must have seemed to them that I was severely unstable at all times—a veritable powder keg. When I reflect on this, I want to compare my condition with something as benign as diabetes or an allergy to peanuts. There ought to be no shame here. But I have to confess that sometimes the mere association with the illness is too much to bear: I recently broke down in tears upon seeing a television character erupt into an all-too-familiar fit. This can’t be who I am. And yet it—the behavior—happens to be a part of who I am. I continue to struggle with the images in TV and the movies. Which is more accurate: the tragic, artistic heroine in The Hours, or the irresponsible and burdensome characters on one-hour television dramas? I identify most with Jamison’s honest memoir, An Unquiet Mind. But in the end, I am none of these people.
So what do I do when I am allured by the temptation of giving myself over to my illness in the hopes that, by doing so, I will create something great and lasting? That I will create art? I still have no idea. Right now the fear of another episode is outweighing the temptation.
So I continue to navigate the territory between what is me and what is not me. Somewhere between the romance and the stigma of mental illness, this writer dwells.
Originally appeared in Maine in Print, March 2004.
