Positive Mood, Mental Illness and Creativity
Mood-creativity research reveals that people are most creative when they are in a positive mood and that mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia actually decrease creativity. People who have worked in the field of arts throughout the history have had problems with poverty, persecution, social alienation, psychological trauma, substance abuse, high stress and other such environmental factors which are associated with developing and perhaps causing mental illness. It is thus likely that when creativity itself is associated with positive moods, happiness, and mental health, pursuing a career in the arts may bring problems with stressful environment and income. Other factors such as the centuries-old stereotype of the suffering of a "mad artist" help to fuel the link by putting expectations on how an artist should act. It also helps the field to be more attractive to those with mental illness.
Read more about this topic: Creativity And Mental Illness
Famous quotes containing the words positive, mental, illness and/or creativity:
“The most positive men are the most credulous.”
—Jonathan Swift (1667–1745)
“A method of child-rearing is not—or should not be—a whim, a fashion or a shibboleth. It should derive from an understanding of the developing child, of his physical and mental equipment at any given stage, and, therefore, his readiness at any given stage to adapt, to learn, to regulate his behavior according to parental expectations.”
—Selma H. Fraiberg (20th century)
“Man is not merely the sum of his masks. Behind the shifting face of personality is a hard nugget of self, a genetic gift.... The self is malleable but elastic, snapping back to its original shape like a rubber band. Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Service ... is love in action, love “made flesh”; service is the body, the incarnation of love. Love is the impetus, service the act, and creativity the result with many by-products.”
—Sarah Patton Boyle, U.S. civil rights activist and author. The Desegregated Heart, part 3, ch. 3 (1962)