Artists & mental illnesses - The mad genius

Type :

Term papers

Pages :

6 pages

Format :

.doc

Published date :

07/14/2009

Category :

Philosophy & literature

Sub category :

Humanities/philosophy

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Summary :

Introduction
The concept mental illness
Hugo Wolf ? Composer
Hector Berlioz ? Composer
F. Scott Fitzgerald ? Writer
Lord Byron - Poet
Virginia Woolf
List of artists and poets
Conclusion
References

Abstract

Plato (427 - 347 B.C.), one of the earliest of the great philosophers claimed in his writing "The Ion" that artists, when creating, went temporarily out of their minds, that the artist was merely the medium used by the Gods to communicate with the audience. Plato used the term "inspire" or "breathed into" to describe the way the gods spoke through the artist and that the artists were merely divine mouthpieces. Plato was partially correct in saying artists were "out of their minds", but the cause was not because of these people being inspired by a higher power, rather the majority of the great artists suffer from a mental illness that causes a hypomanic state that allows them to experience periods of inspiration when their thought processes quicken, moods lift, and new associations are generated.

Benjamin Rush, founder of American Psychiatry and a signer of the U.S. Constitution observed that a part of the brain, not diseased, the mind sometimes discovers not only acuteness and unusual strengths, but certain talents it had never exhibited before.