“To assume, then, that such diseases usually promote artistic talent wrongly reinforces simplistic notions of the ‘mad genius.’” Kay Redfield Jamison

In an interview for the NPR radio program Fresh Air with Terry Gross, science writer Jonah Lehrer commented, “One of the surprising things that’s emerged from the study of moods…is that putting [people] in a bad mood — making them a little bit sad or melancholy — comes with some cognitive benefits.

“So sadness, although it is not fun and is not pleasant, it does sharpen the mind a little bit.

“And one of the long-standing mysteries in the field of creativity is this correlation — and this was first identified by Kay Redfield Jamison and others — is people suffering from various kinds of depression and creative output.”

He continued, “People who are successful creators — especially writers — are anywhere between 8 and 40 times more likely to suffer from bipolar depression than the general public. And no one’s known what to make of this.”

Molière: “No matter what Aristotle and the Philosophers say, nothing is equal to tobacco; it’s the passion of the well-bred, and he who lives without tobacco lives a life not worth living.”

“While I was doing Eraserhead I had 40 coffees every day and I smoked 40 cigarettes.” – David Lynch

Filmmaker, musician and visual artist David Lynch has also said, “Cigarettes are pretty much my worst vice, and I even stopped smoking for 20 years. I spend most of my free time with my family and working on art.”

But he is apparently still a chain smoker – a nicotine addict – like many other artists have been.

“It is no coincidence that one of the most prominent pro-smokers in Britain is David Hockney; and he is just one of many artists who can’t do without nicotine…consider a group photograph called The Irascibles, portraying the New York school of painters at the moment of their breakthrough in 1950.

“While Jackson Pollock manages to conceal any booze he may have about his person, Mark Rothko nervously holds a cigarette. In fact, almost every photo of Rothko shows this unhappy man smoking, without a trace of pleasure.”

Research and historical studies show there are high rates of bipolar disorder among people in the arts, including visual artists, musicians, poets and writers.

“We don’t know why this is the case, but there may be something about the gene for creativity that runs not only in those types of professions but in bipolar as well,” said Dr. Lori Altshuler of the UCLA Mood Disorders Research Program.

From the article: Bipolar Explorer, by Hilary MacGregor – which also quotes former entertainment lawyer Terri Cheney about her book Manic: A Memoir – the source of the image here.

In her Psych Central article The Link Between Bipolar Disorder and Creativity, Jane Collingwood notes an Oregon State University study that “looked at the occupational status of a large group of typical patients and found that ‘those with bipolar illness appear to be disproportionately concentrated in the most creative occupational category.’ They also found that the likelihood of ‘engaging in creative activities on the job’ is significantly higher for bipolar than nonbipolar workers.”

“He has a passionate speech about a business plan, conceived when he was a college freshman, that he says will change the planet — making it more entertaining, more engaging, and giving humans a new way to interact with businesses and one another.”

That is a reference to a pitch for getting venture capital by entrepreneur Seth Priebatsch, in the article Just Manic Enough: Seeking Perfect Entrepreneurs, by David Segal (The New York Times, September 18, 2010).

Segal notes Priebatsch (age 21) “can work 96 hours in a row. He describes anything that distracts him and his future colleagues, even for minutes, as “evil.” … He displays many of the symptoms of a person having what psychologists call a hypomanic episode… grandiosity, an elevated and expansive mood, racing thoughts and little need for sleep.”

In a SALON magazine interview, Amy Tan said, “I think I was pushed in a way to write this book (‘The Hundred Secret Senses’) by certain spirits in my life – the yin people. They’ve always been there, I wouldn’t say to help, but to kick me in the ass to write.

“I’m educated, I’m reasonably sane, and I know that this subject is fodder for ridicule. But ultimately, I have to write what I have to write about, including the question of life continuing beyond our ordinary senses.”

Are there benevolent ghosts, angels, fairies or Muses? I don’t know, but I’d like to think so.

But Tan’s candor about such spirit beings may, for many people,  be “fodder for ridicule” or add fuel to the idea of the “crazy” artist.

Depression can erode vitality and motivation, especially for creative people.

And shutting off our need for creative expression, not honoring this key aspect of who we really are, can itself be profoundly depressing.

In the article “The mind, as it evolves – Depression as a survival tool?” by Julia M. Klein, psychiatrist J. Anderson Thomson Jr. talks about treating an 18-year-old college freshman he describes as “intensely depressed, feeling suicidal and doing self-cutting.”

The article notes, “He decided that her symptoms might be a way of signaling her unhappiness to people close to her. He discovered that his client’s parents had pressured her to attend the university and major in science, even though her real interest lay in the arts.”

Many prominent artists experience depression, some of them, like Sylvia Plath and Virginia Woolf, end up dying by suicide.

One of the myths of creativity is that you need to be depressed to be creatively successful. You don’t.

But many creative people may be particularly susceptible to mood disorders.

Musician Shawn Colvin explained on an episode of the Oprah show (Depressed, Mentally Ill and Famous) that one way she dealt with her depressions in the past was to “just check out. There have been times when I’ve not shown up at work.”