Genius and Madness - The Dark Side of the Sun

One of the things that bugs me most about some quarters of the ex-user/survivor movement is their non-too-subtle elision of genius and madness, and the appropriation of those few who are both brilliant and mad as folk heroes. While it might be argued that this is a good way of destigmatising 'mental illness', the self-serving nature of it is all too obvious.

Take the Icarus Project, an online forum for those who identify as suffering from bipolar disorder. Their mission statement includes the following:

"We believe we have a dangerous gift to be cultivated and taken care of, rather than a disease or disorder to be suppressed or eliminated. By joining together as individuals and as a community, the intertwined threads of madness and creativity can inspire hope and transformation in a repressed and damaged world. Our participation in The Icarus Project helps us overcome alienation and tap into the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness."

Much of this, such as the de-emphasis of the medical model and their re-emphasis on their relationship to the world at large, is laudable. But describing extreme mood swings as "dangerous gifts" and referring to "the true potential that lies between brilliance and madness", only serves to cloak the sheer hell of some "extreme states of consciousness" with the allure of the heavenly gift of poesy (together, I suppose, with the heavenly gifts of notoriety, alcoholism, affairs, wild parties and unauthorised biographies).

As Joanne Greenberg, author of the autobiographical novelI Never Promised You A Rose Garden noted in an interview, "Creativity and mental illness are opposites, not complements. It's a confusion of mental illness with creativity... Craziness is the opposite: it is a fort that's a prison... The thing is I want to choose my perceptions.I don't want them to come out of some kind of unconscious soup. I want it to be something I choose to say, not something that says me."*

I was once involved with an advocacy group which liked to speak of "psychiatric (dis)abilities". I never did figure out what a "psychiatric ability" was - tongueing your meds, perhaps? What gets lost in all this palaver about genius and madness is that while some 'mentally ill' people are very talented, they, along with the not-so-talented, are subject to significant and unrelenting emotional and perceptual problems, plus their inevitable mismanagement by mental health services, and this really, really hurts. It's not fun, it's not romantic, and for those who would cultivate their angst and try to short-cut their way to genius via madness, it's not worth it.

Take Harry Crosby, J P Morgan's nephew, Croix de Guerre recipient, founder of the Black Sun Press, but sadly derivative poet of 1920s Paris, who appears to have been an exponent of this manoeuvre:

INVOCATION TO THE MAD QUEEN

I would you were the hollow ship
fashioned to bear the cargo of my love
the unrelenting glove
hurled in defiance at our blackest world
or that great banner mad unfurled
the poet plants upon the hill of time
or else amphora for the gold of life
liquid and naked as a virgin wife.

Yourself the prize
I gird with Fire
The Great White Ruin
Of my Desire.

I burn to gold
fierce and unerring as a conquering sword
I burn to gold
fierce and undaunted as a lion lord
seeking your Bed
and leave to them the
burning of the dead.

Incorporating orgies, affairs, animal sacrifices and a double suicide at 31, Crosby's lifestyle, although perhaps unfairly sensationalised by his biographers at the expense of his good works, amounts to little more than carefully choreographed experimental excess, a life dedicated to chasing the 'black sun' that signified both life and death - but not art, unless life is art - in which case madness and eccentricity seem to be the preferred media.

Instead of presenting your life as art, there is the option of making art out of life experiences - which requires a certain degree of detachment from the self and the capacity to analyse it in its broader socio-political context. Among the unreadable mumbo-jumbo that constitutes Heinz Kohut's Analysis of the Self, lies the insight that one way out of pathological self-absorption is to to engage in useful, creative activities that involve "unsolved intellectual and and aesthetic problems", through which the ego is invested in projects outside of the self.

Bottom line: A lot of people suffer from emotional problems. Some of these people (perhaps a few more than you'd expect going by the general population) possess and utilise creative gifts of the highest order. But most don't, and some of those who don't do try to find meaning and justification for their experiences in fanciful notions of their own 'specialness' - the artist manque, or by assuming dominant, autocratic roles in what are supposed to be democratic ex-user/survivor movements. Ironically, this need to feel or be seen as 'special' may have been part of the problem in the first place.

* Laurice L McAfee, "Interview with Joanne Greenberg", in Ann-Louise Silver, ed., Psychoanalysis and Psychosis (1989) pp.513 - 531.