The Link Between Genius and Insanity

An anonymous reader writes in a story about the link between certain mental illnesses and high intelligence. "Genius and insanity may actually go together, according to scientists who found that mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder are often found in highly creative and intelligent people. The link is being investigated by a group of scientists who had all suffered some form of mental disorder. Bipolar sufferer Kay Redfield Jamison, a clinical psychologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said that findings of some 20 or 30 scientific studies confirms the idea of the 'tortured genius' or 'mad scientist.'"

Re:Why isn't everyone a genius?

[chadenright]

Compared to 1960 test results for IQ, slightly-above-average intelligences from today would be considered genius. IQ shifted almost a full standard deviation upward between 1960 and 1990.

Re:schizophrenia

[Anonymous Coward]

And neither of you know that schizophrenia and split personality disorder aren't actually the same thing.

Re:Why isn't everyone a genius?

[timeOday]

This is the Flynn Effect [wikipedia.org]. But it is much more obvious and less controversial on a longer timescale - we are all geniuses compared to our single-celled ancestors.

Re:Not unique

[interkin3tic]

Many people who *aren't* prodigies display self-destructive behaviors *all the time*.

Quote from the article

people who excelled when they were 16 years old were four times as likely to go on to develop bipolar disorder

The story here is that people who are gifted are more likely to be cursed with bipolar disorder, depression, or schizophrenia. No one is saying the reverse is true, that people who are bipolar or depressed are more likely to be gifted.

There seem to be multiple causes of bipolar and schizophrenia. Perhaps some combination of genetics may predispose one to genius and also increases the likelihood of a disorder. That doesn't mean ALL the causes of disorder will have increased creativity or intelligence too, in fact they probably don't.

Re:schizophrenia

[Anonymous Coward]

Why was this comment modded down? Multiple personalities would be classified as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It is usually caused by trauma (typically child abuse and molestation). DID is a defense mechanism against further psychological trauma (for example, you partition your mind so that the repeated molestation is happening to someone else).

Schizophrenia is most likely a genetic disorder and does not appear to be caused by psychological trauma or abuse. It does not involve splitting personalities. It involves hallucinations, delusions, and disorganization in thoughts and behavior.

Really, schizophrenia and DID hardly resemble each other. While a person might be generally disorganized and confused in both cases, a little digging will reveal the cause. One is abused, the other is genetic.

Re:Ive thought this for a long time

[FrootLoops]

Other examples:
  * Nikola Tesla (OCD and more)
  * Glenn Gould [wikipedia.org] (one of the greatest 20th century classical pianists; maybe autistic, definitely eccentric)
  * Paul Erdos [wikipedia.org] (20th century mathematician, also eccentric, referred to children as "epsilons", which is hilarious)
  * Alexander Grothendieck [wikipedia.org] (20th century mathematician; he's probably a hermit in the Pyrenees right now; Grothendieck is basically the definition of the reclusive genius)
  * Grisha Perelman [wikipedia.org] (mathematician of Poincare conjecture fame; also withdrawn)

Re:Not unique

[Anonymous Coward]

Look lower...

Re:This just in...

[naroom]

Mod parent up - great post.

The supposed connection between genius and insanity appeals to two irrational modes of thinking:
(1) The Just World Fallacy [wikipedia.org].
(2) The availability heuristic [youtube.com].

Briefly, these are:
(1) The world isn't fair - being a genius doesn't automatically mean you have compensating disadvantages. It's quite nice actually!
(2) Just because you can think of some famous people who are eccentric geniuses, this does not imply an actual correlation. Famous crazy people are just easy to remember.

Re:This just in...

[dov_0]

You can question and probably should until you are satisfied. Just don't be blinded by your own opinions when you do question things. Case in point. This guy I know has been tested to have an IQ way higher than average. He's designed and built beautiful gardens, is generally considered by his friends to be able to fix anything from their washing machine to their cars (and generally can), he learned html, css, javascript etc on the fly just because someone asked him to build a website for them. He writes all his code/markup by hand - no editors - it works in all common browsers equally and is standards compliant. It's good solid code. He reads and writes in 4 alphabets and was a top grade student of ancient languages. He's written beautiful music, poetry that people want to publish etc etc. When he's up he just do what he want to do and learns what he want to learn, figures out whatever he puts his mind to generally without any formal training at all. He thinks of elegant solutions to problems that suprise professionals - while doing things he's never done before. When he's down however... He suffers terribly from depression. He finds it hard to remember to wash his clothes or trim his beard. It is almost impossible for him sometimes accomplish even do the basics of life. Stability has never been his strong point, but pretty much everyone I know still considers him to be brilliant. While there may be discrepancies in IQ testing, surely people can be considered to be brilliant by their accomplishments.