Creative People: Personality and Mental Health 1
May 22, 2015
Creative People: Personality
and Mental Health
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Director Tim Burton:"I’ve always been blessed with
being easily ignored or avoided. I think maybe it’s
because people think I look a little crazy.”
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HuffPost Live program:"A Brilliant Sacrifice"[October 24, 2012]
Program description: “A new study confirms that certain mental disorders are linked to creative genius."
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Judith Schlesinger, PhD notes the widely-circulated Swedish
study [by the Karolinska Institute] mentioned in the
program has "significant issues" in terms of scientific validity.
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Cognitive psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman comments,
“I do believe that if the mental processes associated with
psychosis were evaporated entirely from this world, art
would suck..."
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Musician Sting: “Do I have to be in pain to write? I thought so, as most of my contemporaries did;
you had to be the struggling artist, the tortured, painful,
poetic wreck."
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In his article Mis-Diagnosis and Dual Diagnosis of Gifted Children (and his
related book), James T. Webb, Ph.D. notes, “Many gifted and talented children (and
adults) are being mis-diagnosed by psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians,
and other health care professionals” as having ADHD, OCD, Mood Disorders and
other conditions.
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Creativity coach Eric Maisel notes: “Only a small percentage of creative people work as often or as deeply as, by all
rights, they might be expected to work. “What stops them? Anxiety or some face
of anxiety like doubt, worry, or fear..."
[Photo: Nicolas Cage in "Adaptation"]
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See related notes, articles and other resources at:Creative People: Personality and Mental Health