EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Why Creative People Are Eccentric

Giorgio Vasari's account of the lives of great artists is full of odd behavior. But even if Vasari's history is part-fiction - as we now know it is - eccentricity is a good sign in a creative mind and quite common. Shelley Carson, a psychologist and lecturer at Harvard, recounts how the composer Robert Schumann believed that his music was dictated to him by Beethoven just as, for instance, I show that some poetic painters felt they were a re-incarnation of an earlier master.¹ These forms of eccentricity are not unlike the modes of thinking associated with schizophrenia and while few artists are schizophrenic many may have, according to Carson, a schizotypal personality that while perfectly healthy lets them think differently. In one sign of it, those who score highly on "a measure of creative achievement in the arts are more likely to endorse magical thinking - such as belief in telepathic communication, dreams that portend the future, and memories of past lives." They may also hear voices whispering in the wind.

We all have mental filters to hide the vast amount of sensory data that comes through the senses. We would be overwhelmed by it if we did not. Subconsciously, though, our brains are constantly storing and retrieving images and memories to decode this incoming information, most of which never reaches awareness. Schizophrenics and schizotypal individuals have reduced functioning of these cognitive filters, a process called latent inhibition. Often associated with offbeat thoughts and hallucinations, it is easy to see how a sudden image, appearing in a mind with less filtering, might lead to strange perceptual experiences, such as seeing imaginary people. It is also a process essential to creative thinkers in all fields including science. As Carson explains: "During moments of insight, cognitive filters relax momentarily and allow ideas that are on the brain's back burners to leap forward into conscious awareness, in the same manner that bizarre thoughts surface in the mind of the psychotic individual." A Beautiful Mind, of course, is one of her examples, the account of a brilliant mathematician at Princeton diagnosed with schizophrenia. Asked why he was so convinced that aliens were contacting him from outer space, he answered: "Because the ideas I had about supernatural beings came to me the same way that my mathematical ideas did. So I took them seriously."

Carson concludes that the less-filtered mind is so filled with unusual stimuli that attention is bound to be more focussed on that inner universe that most of us ignore. Is it coincidence, then, that so many scenes in art are inside not outside?


 

1. Shelley Carson, "The Unleashed Mind: Why Creative People are Eccentric", Scientific American, April 14, 2011.  Retrieved Aug. 5, 2013.