Mental Illness is Not Correlated with Genius

What madness may have to do with creativity and genius has continued to intrigue down to this day, with scholars arguing for and against the association, its benefits and its deficits. In 1995, in a large scale and statistically convincing study of 1,004 eminent individuals of the 20th century, psychiatrist Arnold Ludwig argued that no necessary or sufficient correlation, hence no causal connection, between mental illness and creative achievement was to be found. Individuals in artistic professions were somewhat more likely than, say, scientists to experience mild mental disturbance, but mental illness in its severe forms proved detrimental to their work.

At present scholars tentatively agree that creative eminence in general, across a range of professions, correlates with mental health—although a little eccentricity goes a long way, especially in the arts and literature, in promoting the novelty of experience and expression valuable to those fields. Indeed, Ludwig has suggested that a certain amount of mild psychological unease might actually accompany the onset of—and be relieved by—creative endeavors of all kinds. To the extent such tension heightens the pleasure of problem resolution, it may also result in "addiction" to creative thought processes and activities.