Creativity and Madness

 Several have postulated that there is a link between "madness" and creativity. I have a theory here (which someone else might have postulated as well) that it is a specific kind of madness and creativity that are linked. The specific kind is being on the schizo spectrum i.e. not full blown schizophrenia but on the spectrum somewhere AND having high analytical IQ. Such individuals are the most creative. 

There have been several cases in history of highly creative individuals having these schizo genes. Newton definitely had them. He made all his major contributions long before the age of 30, and then the schizo sorta took over and he spent his time trying to find hidden meanings in the Bible and turning metal into gold. Newton was what we classify today as a 'schizotypal' or a 'schizoid' personality. One of the main manifestations of this personality type is being unforgiving and holding grudges, and Newton was known for that. Apart from being solitary and distrustful. 

The same can be said of Einstein. He also definitely had the schizo genes. He was also solitary, held grudges forever, and had a son who later became a full blown schizophrenic who had to be institutionalized. 

Creativity has something to do with forming associations between ideas i.e. connecting the dots. Highly creative people can connect dots that are far apart and still make sense (though very radical ideas are sometimes rejected first since the dots being connected are too far apart). And people with schizo genes are better able to do this (there is speculation that people with schizo genes have a less developed pre-frontal cortex whose main role is inhibitory and hence such radial connections are not filtered by it). There is a fine line, however. Cross that line and the dots being connected make no sense at all and that is what we call psychosis (the govt. is spying on me, aliens are watching etc.)

Having high analytical IQ is important here to filter out the really crazy associations. Being on the schizo spectrum and having a low analytical IQ doesn't help. However if the schizo goes beyond a certain line (which is further apart for high IQ people), then even their IQ doesn't stop the crazy ideas from taking root, which happened in Newton's case for some time and also John Nash.

A friend of mine sent me a study today which shows lower association of mental illness with intelligence i.e. the higher the IQ the lower the rate of mental illnesses later in life (study link). However that doesn't debunk my thesis here since -

Intelligence has many facets, so it depends on how it was measured in the study. There is analytical, verbal etc. And the way we measure intelligence in some tests is not exactly correlated with creativity in the sense of creativity is 'coming up with new explanations (or new knowledge that is hard to come by)'. 

Now even if we assume that they measured intelligence in the creativity sense and found lower incidence of mental illness in these individuals. Now again there are factors here - 

1. My thesis is primarily that highly creative individuals are much higher on the bipolar / schizo spectrum. (there is a link between bipolar and schizophrenia and some think they are basically the same condition). This paper did find that for bipolar the risk is not lower for high IQ individuals

2. High IQ individuals are better able to cope with their mental illness and find solutions and ways of life to mitigate the ill effects to the point the condition does not show up or bother them. So for if bipolar distribution is same in high and low iq people (which this paper found), then we can assume that actually bipolar is higher in high IQ individuals since they are better able to cope with it, understand it etc. due to their high intelligence. (and if bipolar is same, then schizo will also be similar)

3. For other conditions like PTSD, depression etc. it makes sense that high IQ individuals will have less of these later in life since they are better equipped to come up with solutions for these problems for themselves. 

The problem with studies like these is that they draw conclusions based on correlations and without even trying to have an underlying theory (however crude).