Schizophrenia, modernism, and the "creative imagination": On creativity and psychopathology

In this article, I consider the relation between creativity and the schizophrenia spectrum of personality and mental disorders in the light of differing notions of creativity and the creative process. Prevailing conceptions of creativity in psychology and psychiatry derive from romanticist ideas about the creative imagination; they differ considerably fi om notions central in modernism and postmodernism. Whereas romanticism views creative inspiration as a highly emotional, Dionysian, or primitive state, modernism and postmodernism emphasize processes involving hyper-self-consciousness and alienation (hyperreflexivity). Although manic-depressive or cyclothymic tendencies seem especially suited to creativity of the romantic sort, schizoid, schizotypal, schizophreniform, and schizophrenic tendencies have more in common with the (in many respects, antiromantic) sensibilities of modernism and postmodemism. I criticize a book by psychologist Jamison (1993), Touched With Fire: Manio-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament,for treating romantic notions of creativity as if they defined creativity in general. I also argue that Jamison's denial or neglect of the creative potential of persons in the schizophrenia spectrum relies on certain diagnostic oversimplifications: an overly broad conception of affective illness and an excessively narrow conception of schizophrenia that ignores the creative potential of the schizophrenia spectrum.