A Tortured Artist: Creativity as a Way to Escape Mental Illness

creativity and mental illness two elements of the human psyche that have appeared to coexist in the minds of the best artists our world has had to offer it has become cliche at this point the artist whose personal life is steered by substance abuse and dysfunctionality yetu's art is so impressive that the miserable years that form the base of the artist's existence are outshined by these intermittent flashes of Brilliance whether a book album painting or any other type of medium The Works produced in these turbulent cases appear like the cerebral Flotsam of a sunken mind drowned

by the weights of its demons yet we don't pay attention in detail at least to that sunken ship instead we focus on the beautiful debris left to flow what happens next is the mythical figure these artists involuntarily adopt suddenly the artist has become Legend someone to look back on not as a human but as a divine creature placed on this Earth to provide with these books albums paintings and movies before dying a glorious death that will be reiterated in biographies and documentaries to come you watching right now could likely ascribe this vague description to a

number of artists the unwell creative mind has always seemed to thrive professionally but decline privately spawning many examples of artistic Martyrs the problem is is that creativity in itself is unstable and like the process of creation an artist's mind often Falls in line with the insecurity and subjectivity of producing something from chaos whether that chaos be external or internal thus the Arts tend to produce tragic figures with tragic lives but often we don't look back on these lives in pity rather we view these early deaths as a trade-off to be able to burn so bright

you must be willing to burn quickly the artist sells a functional life for domestic normalcy in exchange for a creative Brilliance only achievable through dysfunctionality substance abuse misery and often suicide but hey they're remembered it's a romantic notion but what needs to be addressed is that the artistic pursuit of the mentally ill man or woman was nothing more than an outlet they were not chosen they didn't need that illness instead writing painting filmmaking Etc were simply ways to escape a mind working against them which may explain why creativity and mental illness appear to go hand

in hand that relationship between creativity and mental illness is what I want to explore in today's video additionally I want to see why people with mental illnesses gravitate towards the Arts and how doing so helps them to heal it's a sad truth but a truth nonetheless the greatest works often do come from those who are suffering but that doesn't mean we need to encourage it nor does it mean we should romanticize it but regardless of this the Romantic notion remains and what better way to support this notion than by giving these artists their own group

instead of referring to these writers painters songwriters and Movie Makers as they are we congregate those that fit the sunken description not simply as an artist but as a tortured artist whilst the tortured artist label can be assigned to many people ranging across the various arts in painters we have Vincent van Gogh and in musicians there is Elliot Smith and David Berman in keeping with the tradition of this channel I will be focusing my attention on the writers writers are introspective and deep thinkers by Nature as the job of writing any form of literature has

required them to use a very minimal number of tools their mind and their words the act of writing itself requires long stretches of contemplation frustration and baby step progress a writer must have intense focus and a long line that can sink deep into their mind to translate their swelling thoughts into conclusive words sentences and paragraphs but what happens when that well of ideas and inspiration is influenced by mental illness does it benefit the writer hinder the writer or have no impacts at all the idea of suffering producing great art has been around for centuries Socrates

believed that the greatest poets were touched with Madness if a man comes to the door of poetry Untouched by The Madness of the muses believing that technique alone will make him a good poet he and his same compositions never reach Perfection but are utterly eclipsed by the performances of the inspired Madman these days we wouldn't turn the mentally ill as mad yet the sentiment of those struggling internally producing the greatest works evidently isn't a new revelation however these days we have a better understanding of mental illness in general and are rapidly learning more in a

study including near to 1.2 million Swedish patients researchers tried to determine whether artists were more prone to having mental illnesses excluding writers the researchers found that those were creative professions were only more susceptible to having bipolar disorder writers on the other hand were more prone to schizophrenia bipolar disorder unipolar depression anxiety disorders substance abuse and suicide bipolar disorder also referred to as manic depression has previously been at the center of attention when investigating the link between creativity and mental illness the most notable example was found in the American psychologist K Redfield Jameson's 1996 book touched

with fire manic depressive illness and the artistic temperament in the book Jameson argues the connection between manic depression and its impact on creativity in numerous artists and writers Jameson goes into the histories of artists and writers who are likely or did suffer from manic depression whilst using her background as a psychologist to outline the effects of the disorder and how these effects can benefit an artist creatively she describes it as a unique stamp on their work many highly creative and accomplished writers composers and artists function essentially within the rational world without losing access to their

psychic underground others the subject of this book are likewise privy to the unconscious streams of thought but they must contend with unusually tumultuous and unpredictable emotions as well the integration of these deeper truly irrational sources with more logical progresses can be a torturous task but if successful the resulting work often Bears a unique stamp A Touch of fire for what he has been through when Jameson refers to the others she is referring to the multiple case studies who appear in the book who are believed to be suffering from manic depression these include Hermann Melville Graham

green Leo Tolstoy Vincent van Gogh Mary Shelley Virginia Woolf Ernest Hemingway Edgar Allan Poe and many more with Ernest Hemingway Jameson delves into the psychiatric history of the Hemingway family and notes the unnerving number of suicides within two generations four members of the Hemingway family had taken their own lives these being Hemingway's father Hemingway's brother his sister and of course Hemingway himself Hemingway took his own life on the 2nd of July 1961. Hemingway had reportedly woken up walked downstairs picked out his favorite shotgun from an unlocked gun cabinet and shot himself Jameson notes Hemingway's history

of drinking to cope with his mental struggles as well as the multiple concussions he suffered throughout his lifetime which no doubt contributed to his deteriorating mental state in his older age Hemingway had used writing as an outlet however it was not as directly responsible for his creative Muse as it had been for the next author mentioned in Jameson's book that being Virginia Woolf Wolff is another example of a likely manic depressive who unfortunately took her own life like Hemingway Jameson outlines Wolff's family history with mental disorders her grandmother mother sister brother and niece all suffered

from recurrent depression her father and another brother were cyclothymic and a cousin James who had been institutionalized for Mania and depression died of mania wolf took her own life on the 28th of March 1941 at the age of 59 she had drowned herself by filling her coat Pockets with rocks before walking into the river ooze like Hemingway wolf left behind a body of work that is still celebrated today wolf and Hemingway are just two examples in the book that suffered from what appeared to be manic depression it is likely that in some ways the brief

intervals of the intensity of energy emotion and spirit were at times Cooperative with the creative process of writing however this is more evident for Wolf than it is for Hemingway as Wolff's transient descriptions of reality were at Wolf's own admission made better due to her experiences with Mania as I experienced Madness is terrific I can assure you and not to be sniffed at and in its lava I still find most of the things I write about it shoots out of one everything shaped final not in their dribbles as sanity goes and the six months not

free that I lay in bed taught me a good deal about what is called oneself regardless of Wolf's thoughts on her illness's ability to help her writing she would often spend periods unable to produce work due to her bouts of mania Hemingway suffered a similar fate of unproductivity and evidently both writers battles with mental illness cut the creative process short altogether as mentioned before there is a mixture of artists and writers included in Jameson's book in some examples like Hemingway and wolf we are provided with extensive histories of the writer or artist alongside descriptions and

graphs showing their families psychiatric histories in other cases an artist or writer will be given a brief mention to strengthen a point or simply to use a quote of theirs that better illustrates the effects of manic depression I'm not trying to insinuate that all artists and writers mentioned should have been given the same extensive treatment as wolf and Hemingway as I understand that there is simply not enough time to do so however I do want to pluck out a writer briefly mentioned in Jameson's book who had an acute awareness of is manic depression as well

as an openness about its benefits in a time when the stigma concerning mental illness was rampant the man in question is an underappreciated extensive traveler and prolific writer from England whose name is Graham green Graham Greene is an English writer and journalist who is most well known for writing books such as the power and the glory the end of the affair and The Quiet American among many more celebrated Works whilst not hoisted up on the same literary pedestal as its contemporaries Green's literary output and quality were consistent throughout his turbulent yet exciting life Green's never-ending

thirst for travel adventure and danger manifested itself in a life no different to the characters he wrote about in his novels when writing green would often pull from his life-threatening experiences when Conjuring up new stories and characters however while many may think green put his life on the line to collect content for his books and you wouldn't be wrong in saying that was part of the reasoning the overriding motive behind his multiple brushes with death amounted to a self-admitted need to quell his manic depression or as he liked to coin it his Affliction of boredom

green was born on the 2nd of October 1904 in berkhamsted as a child green attended the berkhamsted boarding school of which his father was the Headmaster green was fraught with night terrors as a child and was routinely bullied at school due to Green's classmates suspecting green of snitching on them to his father due to the stresses of school and likely the early manifestations of romantic depression that would plague him his whole life green attempted suicide a few times whilst in his early teens green tried taking his own life with eye drops allergy drops taken aspirin

before jumping in a pool and by ingesting deadly nightshade in an interview later in life Greenwood describe his Mania and how it had developed drastically during his adolescence at puberty it was very acute it had almost a physical feel about it more like a balloon inside my head which swelled and swelled and swelled and I felt might break following the multiple failed attempts on taking his own life green reached what he would later describe as an emotional crisis which resulted in him being sent to London to live with a therapist for several months green was

psychoanalyzed over the course of his treatment and returned to berkhamsted much happier this was due in part to the fun time green had experience whilst away from his tormentors at school but the main reason for his new positive outlook was down to his therapist's suggestion that green start writing following berkham's stead green would go on to attend Oxford University where he continued to write in his spare time however during this time Green's mental health took a turn for the worse prompting him according to Green to attempt suicide by playing Russian roulette despite this attempt green

never returned to his therapist as he began to use writing as a way to soothe his mind once out of Oxford and into the real world green had accepted the consequences his manic depression would afflict upon his life he knew he would not be capable of anything remotely resembling a conventional lifestyle green thus began living in London and working for the times was writing on the side he published his first book in 1929 called The Man Within by the mid-1930s green had begun traveling after a trip to Liberia was financed by his book publisher the

trip consisted of four weeks of traversing 350 miles of an unmapped region of Liberia which resulted in Green's travel book journey without Maps the trip ignited a new passion in green that he knew and laid dormant within him up until then traveling to exciting areas and putting himself in physically and mentally stressful scenarios would thus become a staple of Green's existence moving forward dream would thus begin to travel the world extensively whilst on assignments for various news outlets and occasionally mo6 green traveled to places like the Congo Vietnam Nicaragua Cuba Mexico chile China Haiti and

anywhere else where he could find conflict he experienced the first indo-china war The Six Day War the maumau Rebellion the Blitz and the rise of Fidel Castro yet whilst green entered these areas as an observer he unsurprisingly found himself staring death in the face numerous times he had bullets fly over his head during the Six-Day War had leeches pulled from his leg in Malaya stayed at a leper colony in the Congo saw a public execution in Mexico and saw a dead woman laying in a ditch cradling a dead baby in Vietnam one would think witnessing

one of these events would deter a person from entering another area riddled with danger however for green experiencing dangerous and thrilling scenes again and again acted like his writing as a form of escapism in the preface to his 1980 autobiography ways of Escape green acknowledged the role his travels and writing played in allowing him to quell the Mania inflicted on him by his manic depression I have added essays which I've written occasionally on episodes in my life and on some of the troubled places in the world where I found myself involved For No Good Reason

though I can see now that my travels as much as the act of writing were ways of Escape Green's manic depression evidently influences unconventional lifestyle and creative abilities in his life green produced countless novels short stories plays and articles green was incredibly disciplined in his writing no matter where he was what he was doing or how he felt green would write exactly 500 Words a day in a notebook he carried around in his jacket pocket despite Green's Mania influencing him in what could be deemed a positive way the negatives of his Mania impacted him greatly

he was a heavy drug user often taking Benzedrine in the morning and then butyl at night he also drank excessively and took opium when given the opportunity to additionally green had an unstable private life and was never able to remain faithful as he often found himself sleeping with married women in compromising places to add to the excitement of the moment it is no excuse but this inability to stay faithful is likely attributable to his manic Pro personality like his travels he was always looking for the next dangerous Terrain in a letter to his wife whom

he married in 1927 green blamed his disease for the flaws in his character the fact that has to be faced dear is that by my nature my selfishness even in some degree my profession I should always and with anyone have been a bad husband I think you see my restlessness moods Melancholia even my outside relationships are symptoms of a disease and not the disease itself and the disease which has been going on ever since my childhood and was only temporarily alleviated by psychoanalysis lies in a character profoundly antagonistic to ordinary domestic life and that character

was green never did succumb to an ordinary life true to his character he continued writing and traveling up until his old age and then on April 3rd 1991 he died at the age of 86. green led a life devoid of boredom in his attempts to combat his mind he experienced a life filled with exciting adventures and artistic achievements but it is worth remembering that beneath the surface of these positives lie equally strong negatives the Mania that propelled him into his travels and writing also propelled him into wronging people and substance abuse it is always a

hard case to make when acknowledging the benefits of mental illness when you're born you are dealt a hand some people get it all some people get next to nothing it is what you do with that hand that counts and green undeniably did a lot green was fortunate enough to have the intellectual abilities and the support to funnel his excess energy passion and spirit it into the creative medium of writing as well as this green was fortunate to have survived all the life-threatening situations he willingly walked into even if like when he played Russian Roulette he

was in a way trying to take his own life in an indirect way that leaves it all down to luck maybe green realized that when you're bordering on the edge of life and death you get a real idea of what side you want to be on maybe putting himself in these situations was the only way for him to remind himself that he actually did want to live after all who knows regardless green did what he could to withhold the swelling of that balloon in his head whether positive or negative green did what he felt he

had to do to survive through Restless traveling and writing two elements that were not always a source of Desire but in fact were simply two ways of Escape writing is a form of therapy sometimes I wonder how all those who do not write compose or paint can manage to escape the madness the Melancholia the Panic fear which is inherent in the human situation creativity as we all know is a form of expression whatever is going on in your mind whether indirectly or not will manifest itself in the creative Pursuit you choose the suffering cynicism introspection

and unhappiness all leak into the novel's green wrote yet just because the final product may seem negative or depressing doesn't necessarily mean the act of making that product was a negative or depressing process multiple studies on the mental benefits of writing have proven time and time again that writing can help with anxiety depression focus and stress researchers over the years have suggested several ways of writing which can benefit your mental and physical health however the first ever foray into the benefits of writing was solely focused on what was termed expressive writing James penabaker and Sandra

Beale conducted a study on the subject of writing and mental health in 1986 in the study 46 college students were assigned to write about either a personal traumatic event in their life or a superficial topic for 15 minutes they would be asked to return for three to four days to repeat the process the students were not aware of the process of the study all they knew was that they had signed up for a psychology experiment called writing and the college experience pennebaker encouraged the students to hold nothing back when writing about their traumatic experiences he

also advised them not to worry about spelling or grammar he just wanted them to let it flow once the students had finished writing about their experience pennebaker was handed 46 papers detailing struggles with addiction suicide witnessing accidental deaths and cases of public humiliation yet despite unearthing old negative memories that these students likely wanted to forget the study showed that all students reported fewer Health Center visits in the six months following the study one of the common factors among the participants was the secrecy to which these traumatic experiences were held penabaker found that writing about these

experiences over three to four days helped the students to recontextualize the trauma in their minds allowing them to see clearly how that trauma may have been seeping into other aspects of their lives green may have been expressing his trauma in his writing too as mentioned previously green was bullied whilst a perkhamsted boarding school green was particularly tormented by a boy named Carter who according to a Graeme green biographer called Richard green no relation believed there to be imitations of Carter in many of Green's novels many other writers have expressed the joys of writing and the

clarity it helps bring to their minds despite the act of writing itself being a ruthlessly difficult creative Pursuit Hunter S Thompson once wrote about the clarity writing brought him I find that by putting things in writing I can understand them and see them a little more objectively for words are merely tools and if you use the right ones you can actually put even your life in order if you don't lie to yourself and use the wrong words Joan Didion said something similar when she wrote these lines in her essay called why I write had I

been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking what I'm looking at what I see and what it means what I want and what I fear yet I think Stephen King best summed up the overall goal of writing in this excerpt from his Memoir on writing released in the year 2000 when he said writing isn't about making money getting famous getting dates getting laid or making friends in the end it's about enriching the lives of those who will

read your work and enriching your own life as well it's about getting up getting well and getting over getting happy okay getting happy the tortured artist is always going to Intrigue us when someone comes along and shines so bright for so little time before departing the world leaving behind something that is considered revolutionary or entirely unique it is hard not to connect the dots to assume the tragic ending was the price of artistic Vision but it's not many people suffer from these illnesses and don't get the Limelight they just have them and cope for some

hard work the right timing sacrifice and talent set the foundations on which their art whatever that may be can Thrive unfortunately it is mental illness that tears it all down but there is one thing to take away from those suffering who manage to make great paintings movies albums and novels and that is this that these people made these great works despite their struggles and not because of them