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“Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence... "They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.  In their grey vision they obtain glimpses of eternity....” Edgar Allan Poe

Seneca recorded Aristotle as having said, "No great genius was without a mixture of insanity.” One of Shakespeare's characters says, "The lunatic, the lover and the poet are of imagination all compact," and Marcel Proust  said, "Everything great in the world is created by neurotics. They have composed our masterpieces..." > from article: Creativity, the Arts, and Madness - by Maureen Neihart, Psy.D.

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I have an obsessive character. I manicure my nails at three in the morning because nobody else can do it the right way. Maybe that's the secret to my success. Scarlett Johansson .. [imdb.com bio] [photo: Jean-Paul Aussenard/WireImage] ~ ~ The artist is obsessed in an everyday sense of the word - and more than happy to be so! ... For a contemporary intelligent, sensitive person, it may well make more sense to opt for a life of positive obsessions... Psychologist Eric Maisel - from dysfunction / disorder 3

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Neve Campbell on Tourette Syndrome People with TS are not crazy or dangerous. In fact, many of these folks are the most creative, talented, bright and funny people I know. It's been called "the world's most common unknown disorder." ... It is a neurological disorder characterized by sudden involuntary movements and repeated vocalizations called tics. TS has really taught me a lesson about judging people who are different.

Now when I see somebody do or say something I don't understand, I try to look beyond appearances and ask myself what makes that person tick - no pun intended. Think about it: When you keep an open mind about things that seem unusual or strange, all sorts of new understanding comes to you. The world gets bigger, and so do you. Neve Campbell - TeenPeople", April 2000 posted on official.nevecampbell.org Her younger brother, Damian, was diagnosed with the disorder when he was eight. > photo from Tourette Syndrome Association > related: TSFC Tourette Syndrome Found. of Canada

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Carrie Fisher : "I think I'm very sane about how crazy I am." [She has bipolar disorder.] ~ ~ > excerpt from book Misdiagnosis And Dual Diagnoses of Gifted Children and Adults Many of our brightest, most creative, most independent thinking children and adults are being incorrectly diagnosed as having behavioral, emotional, or mental disorders. They are then given medication and/or counseling to change their way of being so that they will be more acceptable within the school, the family, or the neighborhood, or so that they will be more content with themselves and their situation.

The tragedy for these mistakenly diagnosed children and adults is that they receive needless stigmatizing labels that harm their sense of self and result in treatment that is both unnecessary and even harmful to them, their families, and society. Other equally bright children and adults experience another misfortune. Their disorders are obscured because, with their intelligence, they are able to cover up or compensate for their problems, or people mistakenly think that they are simply quirkily gifted. > quotes from book excerpt page > more quotes by Carrie Fisher on nurturing mental health 2 > more about the book on page:...learning differences

> related article : Misdiagnosis of the Gifted - by Lynne Azpeitia, M.A. and Mary Rocamora, M.A.

> related interview including topic of "pathologizing the gifted" : Kathleen Noble, Ph.D.

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Mental health professionals... deal with pathology, are accustomed to looking for it, and label anything that they perceive to have a downside for the individual to be a problem... Some of the very greatest gifts bring an inevitable downside which you cannot 'cure' without curing the gift at the same time.*****Stephanie Tolan  [from interview]

 

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.. Howard Hughes Another trait Leonardo DiCaprio [right] shares with Howard Hughes [above] is a form of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Hughes's compulsions eventually fuelled his descent into madness in later years while DiCaprio has a firm control of his mild symptoms, and used them to good effect while portraying Hughes. Not yet a recognised condition when Hughes was a sufferer, it increasingly took over his life, causing him to repeat phrases over and over, continually wash his hands and break down at the sight of a spot on another man's suit.  A scene in the film ["The Aviator"] depicts him stark naked in his screening room, unable to face anybody and conducting a deranged experiment with bottles of his own urine. "I think being obsessive-compulsive tied into his women, too," said DiCaprio. "He was never able to stay with one woman because he looked on them like aeroplanes: he literally wanted to get the faster, sleeker aeroplane with the bigger turbines." DiCaprio's disorder is more likely to take the form of making him reluctant to step on cracks in the pavement or something similar, although he has little difficulty overcoming his urges. "I'm able to say at some point, 'OK, you're being ridiculous, stop stepping on every gum stain you see. You don't need to do that. You don't need to walk 20 feet back and put your foot on that thing. Nothing bad is going to happen.'

"I can talk myself through it, you know, whereas Howard Hughes couldn't do that and people with hard-core OCD can't. "During filming I let it all go and I never listened to the other voice, so I remember my make-up artist and assistant walking me to the set and going, 'Oh, God, here he goes again. We're going to need 10 minutes to get him to the set today because he has to walk back and step on that thing and touch the door in a certain way and then walk in and walk out again.' "I let myself do it because I wanted that to come out. I was trying to be the character. It became real bothersome, even after the filming." > from article Leonardo DiCaprio's magnificent obsessive,  by John Hiscock, telegraph.co.uk 04/12/2004 > above : DiCaprio as Howard Hughes in The Aviator (2004) photo of Hughes from book: Hughes: The Private Diaries, Memos and Letters: The Definitive Biography  of the First American Billionaire -  by Richard Hack

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An Exact Mind : An Artist With Asperger Syndrome  by Peter Myers et al. Peter Myers' drawings and other pictures would be striking and engaging even if one knew nothing about him. The fact that he has Asperger Syndrome adds to the interest of his work, and in this book psychologists offer some speculation as to how his artistic style is affected by the mental characteristics associated with his condition.

Nevertheless, not everyone with Asperger's is a talented artist, and it's important to recognize that Myers' abilities may be in some ways enhanced by the capacities that come with Asperger's, but his talent is unique to him.   An Exact Mind is one of the best books about the work of an artist with a psychological disorder that I have seen. It is divided into three parts, all of which are amply illustrated with Myers' work.      from Metapsychology review by Christian Perring, Ph.D. > more related titles on books: learning differences

 

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So, women are supposed to be cheerleaders, right? We do not have room in this culture for a woman to be what's considered self-indulgent, that is, to take the time away from being supportive of other people to indulge in doing whatever she can with her own gifts and creativity. ...  We then have to say nasty things about women who are gifted and creative, and one way to say a very nasty and dangerous thing is to say they're mentally ill.  There are a lot of people who have a lot of anguish, and there are some people who are dangerous to other people or themselves, but I just don't find the term 'mental illness' particularly useful. Paula Caplan, Ph.D. - from interview > book: Paula J. Caplan, Ph.D. They Say You're Crazy: How the World's  Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal

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Woody Allen is afraid of elevators, tunnels and even certain kinds of shower drains. Some people might call that neurotic -- he certainly does. "I am a neurotic in a more benign way. I mean I have a lot of neurotic habits," the quirky American director and actor told Reuters Television.  "I don't like to go into elevators, I don't go through tunnels, I like the drain in the shower to be in the corner and not in the middle," Allen said in an interview after showing his new comedy "Anything Else" at the 60th Venice Film Festival.  His fear of elevators forced the cast, including Christina Ricci and Jason Biggs, to climb three flights of stairs for a news conference ahead of the premier on the Lido. "I cut my banana into seven slices every morning before I put it in my cereal," said the creator of off-beat characters like Isaac Davis in the romantic comedy "Manhattan" (1979). "These things don't hurt anybody else, but they are neurotic."

.. ..  His famously unstable characters, frequently played by himself, have suffered a wide range of phobias, fears and neuroses, often seeking solutions on the psychiatrist's couch.  [Reuters article by Nicola Christie, Aug 29 2003] **Woody Allen on Woody Allen

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DSM [the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders] diagnoses of Shakespeare's characters - by Albert H. Schrut, M.D., who teaches both psychiatry and Shakespeare at UCLA :         King Lear       Major Depression (Involutional type)         Shylock         Dysthymic Disorder         Lady Macbeth    Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (with Sleepwalking Disorder)         Macbeth         Transient Impulse Control Disorder Not Otherwise Specific         Iago & Othello            Paranoid Personality Disorder         Hamlet          Major Depressive Disorder, Single Episode         Ophelia         Psychotic Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified, With Marked Stressors from article in current issue of Academy Forum (Am Acad of Psas and Dynamic Psychiatry) -  posted 3.16.03 on PSYART list - Institute for Psychological Study of the Arts < painting of Ophelia by Antoine-Auguste-Ernest Hebert > photo: John Hurt as The Fool, Laurence Olivier as King Lear [1984]

*related interview: Paula Caplan, PhD - formerly a consultant to those who construct the DSM - the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders - on some of the major problems with the manual

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Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) image from cover of book: Lost in the Mirror >

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I think, for most people, even putting a definition to BPD that isn't hard to articulate is difficult enough that myths haven't yet been able to form in the general population.  Terms such as "too sensitive" or "too touchy" come to mind, perhaps even "clingy" or "thin-skinned." These are all terms invented by those around the sufferer who are trying to put some order to the disorder, in my opinion.  In a world where one is constantly bombarded with unnecessary stimuli in the form of bad news on the radio, television, and in the newspaper, it's hard for me to imagine that anyone who throws up their hands and has a tantrum is too "thin-skinned." It may just take less of this kind of stimulation to set off the BPD sufferer, that's all. No matter what the level of stimulation that it takes to cause pain, however, it still amounts to emotional pain, and shouldn't be reduced to being too touchy.

.. .. I'm sure Genghis Khan would find even the sturdiest of the sturdy in modern society too touchy by his own emotional standards.  from interview with Quinn Tyler Jackson, Ph.D. - about his novel, Janus Incubus - see his website

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Janus Incubus by Quinn Tyler Jackson ******book review by Douglas Eby Exceptional creative ability often bears a cachet of dysfunction. Giftedness itself may be seen as pathology; intensity and high sensitivity as treatable "issues." There are, of course, very real problems experienced more often by creative people, notably mood disorders such as depression. Mark, the protagonist of Janus Incubus, is a gifted young writer struggling with the double edged, double faced nature of his talents, confronting sometimes overwhelmingly intense feelings. Speaking of one of his lovers, Mark comments that she "challenged me to ask questions about myself and my art.. that were immensely painful to ask myself." In an argument with another character, he finds he "had gotten so angry.. that my nose was bleeding profusely." Part of the value for the reader is that Mark is willing to keep asking questions about his creative work and his both charmed and conflicted life. An often charismatic charmer, he gains the affection and support of others on his journeys, but is also led at times to act in dangerously self-defeating, even self-destructive ways.  This combination of sensitivities and behavior can be symptomatic of borderline personality disorder, though some therapists are saying that label is too reductive and stigmatizing. In an interview, author Jackson said it was his intention to "humanize this often misunderstood problem." In creating the story of Mark, he has done so, helping us glimpse it from the inside.

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some [nonfiction] books on BPD:

Life at the Border by Leland Heller, MD
The term "borderline personality disorder" is a horrible, insulting label for a real medical illness. The name alone reduces serious research, stigmatizes victims, and implies the person is crazy. It denies the medical nature of the process, and implies simply a personality problem... a character problem. While I've encountered many people with a bad character who had the BPD, most borderlines I've treated (over 2100) do not have character problems. "Borderline" means patients live "at the border" between psychosis and reality. When borderlines are well treated medically, psychotic experiences are few and far between - and can be treated well. Borderlines don't live at that border, they simply go into psychosis too easily under stress.  Leland Heller, MD

Lost in the Mirror: An Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder by Richard A. Moskovitz M.D.

New Hope for People with Borderline Personality Disorder.. by Neil R. Bockian et al.

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.. You know how the mad come into a room, too boldly, their eyes exploding on the air like roses, their entrances from space we never entered. They're always attended by someone small and friendly who goes between their awful world and ours as though explaining but really only smiling,a snowy gull that dips above a wreck. They see not us, nor any Sunday caller among the geraniums and wicker chairs, for they are jacks who climb the beanstalk country, a place of hammers and tremendous beams, compared to which the glassed solarium in which we rise to greet them has no light.

The news we bring them, common, reassuring, drenched with the cheerful idiocy of noon, cannot compete with what they have to tell of what they saw through cracks in the ogre's oven. And we draw back. The snowy someone says, Don't mind their talk, they are disturbed today! **from:*The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams

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movie depictions of asylums and psychiatric patients -- not necessarily with sympathy or accuracy -- include: One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest with Jack Nicholson [left] 12 Monkeys with Brad Pitt

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One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche image: detail of M.C. Escher: "Bond of Union"

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**more :   dysfunction / disorder 2..........dysfunction / disorder 3........

dysfunction / disorder resources : articles books sites.... 

> related pages:  the shadow self.........mental health.........mental health : teen/young adult

       nurturing mental health.........books: mental health......... 

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