What It's Like to Be Creative and Have a Mental Disorder

A new study investigates the phenomenology of both creativity and mental illness, focusing on their similarities and facilitating effects on each other.

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“There is only one difference between a madman and me. I am not mad.” —Salvador Dali

Mental illness is neither necessary nor sufficient for creativity, but there are some interesting connections between these states of consciousness. Research shows that the siblings of those with autism and first-degree relatives of patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and anorexia nervosa are significantly overrepresented in creative professions.

As the theory goes, those with full-blown mental illness inherit a watered-down version that may be conducive to creative thinking while avoiding the most debilitating aspects of the disorder. In particular, creative cognition requires opening up the flood gates and letting in as much information as possible— because you never know what bizarre associations will actually turn out to be a creative connection. This is backed up by neuroscience studies and investigations of behavioral measures of openness to experience and “latent inhibition”.

While most of the research (including my own) has focused on a quantitative analysis of the creativity-mental illness link, I was excited to encounter a new paper that investigated the lived experiences of professional and semi-professional artists with self-reported experience with mental illness. The research conducted in depth interviews with twenty-four participants— from musicians with bipolar disorder to visual artists with depression— and was really in the spirit of humanistic psychology and understanding what it’s like to have a certain way of being.

The participants reported that creativity and mental illness were inextricably linked to their identity, and that the two phenomenon influenced each other in various ways. In particular, the researchers found three patterns:

Pattern 1: Flow as a powerful force

Participants described the creative act as an increasing “surrender” to the “things being created”, resting in flow or hyper concentration, a movement toward a place “where time no longer matters” and where the final result stays uncertain until the process is completed.

This is consistent with Pablo Picasso’s famous reflections on the creative process, noting that he often doesn’t know where he’s going until he gets there.

Some participants explicitly noted that their mental illness makes it easier for them to enter a state of flow than other people:

Karen: I'm just making, I don't think at all, I don't have a plan at all. (..) I just start and then I see where it ends. Yes, when I'm drawing, I'm completely involved in that process, I'm only concerned with color and shape and what's on paper evokes the following. It is as if you surrender to the process. Not thinking at all.

Dylan: Eventually, until I'm done, I don't understand the whole story of what I was making. But then everything seems to fall into place at once, like 'hey how can that be?'

These descriptions are consistent with prior research showing similarities between “schizotypy” (a personality trait consisting of milder forms of schizophrenic thinking) and increased absorption in one’s artistic activities.

Interestingly, the flow state was described by multiple people as having “therapeutic potential”, mainly due to the fact that flow “opens the door to a different way of experiencing the mind,” a more direct experience without self-doubt and rumination.

People described flow as a “highly meditative experience” that can bring a sense of elation, relaxation, playfulness, and sometimes even euphoria. They said it can ease mental pain and for some participants it represents a “safe world” to escape to. For instance, mental experiences that may be disturbing in a different context, such as hearing voices or seeing hallucinations, can be experienced in a positive light when a person becomes one with what they are creating.

With that said, some participants noted that flow can also become “too much”, with the artistic process taking over one’s life and even jeopardizing self-care. Here’s an example:

Laura: That trance you enter, that can of course also make you forget that you still had to vacuum, and that you still had to do your dishes or whatever, because then your partner comes home and then there is still food on the table from this morning or something. So yes there are dark sides to it. I can get into it too much. It's very egocentric. (..) because when I do that, I really only spend time on myself and then I figuratively shit on everything around me, everything just has to wait.

Participants described searching for ways to push the boundaries in their art while trying to avoid ending up in a mental crisis that prevents them from creating anything of value whatsoever. This is why some have decided to live alone so they don’t have additional responsibilities such as taking care of a family:

Andrea: I told that psychiatrist about that voice, that psychiatrist said I have to take pills haha. And I brought those pills home, but it was really a choice, should I go on like a leaf or a human, okay that's hard, because then I would have nobody to help me, but I decided to go through it without medicines. And because of that I really have to keep working alone because I have to live in isolation, as a hermit, yes that social life for me does not exist. That's okay. When I was young I did it a little bit. But not anymore after that. Only good feeling I have is when I draw. So I can't do anything else.

To me, there is something really profound here. I am all about people finding their own style of self-actualization. I think we are too quick to judge people’s alternative lifestyles, especially if they aren’t married or have children. We never really know what people are going through on the inside, and what sacrifices they may feel they have to make in order to self-actualize and do what they love.

Pattern 2: Ambiguous self-manifestation

The second pattern linked the creative experience and mental illness to the opportunity to manifest oneself through art. This one was super interesting for me. People with mental illness often feel like they are “losing their minds” and often report having a weak sense of self. Many participants in this study reported that making art is a way of creating or recreating themselves. They said that feeling incomplete can even be an impetus for making art in the first place.

William: Or you can put it another way: I don't know exactly who I am and I have to figure that out every day. I have to rethink who I am every time. But you can also say it is not certain whether I have an already defined ‘self,’ and that my ‘self ’ must always be raised from what I make. It's a kind of structure that gets built every time and is gone the next day, as it were. Like a sand castle. (..) There's something very existential about it.

As the researchers note, when the artist reveals their art to the outside world, they can make themselves known to others. This can be a sort of connection with the outside world and a “statement of existence”. Many participants reported that making art is a positive response to the alienating destructiveness of their mental illness:

Emma: And well, an eating disorder like this, and that will undoubtedly apply to other psychological struggles, is also a search for who you are and what place you can take. How I experience it is that that creativity, or that makership, that also gives me a feeling of existence, a ‘me,’ an identity. If that piece grows, then the other [eating disorder] part shrinks. That is literally how I once drew it in a research for one of my performances, yes. I really believe that. One grows and the other shrinks.

However, this was not the case with everyone. Some reported further confusion through the creation process, especially when they no longer feel connected to their prior work.

Anne: Often the connection with what you have made is gone. So it doesn’t help, rather, it induces more fear because you think ‘hey I don't feel this at all anymore,’ ‘I don't understand why I made this,’ ‘I don't see the point in it.’ You know. Apparently I felt the point at the time and that discrepancy is just very frightening.

Despite some of the downsides of creating, the participants noted that they will never stop making art and that “art always wins.”

Pattern 3: Narrating experiences of suffering

The third pattern resolved around the ways that art can be a means of consolidating and communicating about one’s suffering. Many participants noted that art is a kind of language where their feelings and thoughts can be transferred to others who might really resonate, thereby creating a joint story between creator and consumer of the art.

Anne: When you're depressed, all people want to hear is ‘how are you feeling,’ which is almost indescribable, plus it's a very boring story. Same story every day. And people don't want to hear that, people want to hear that things went a little better than the day before. And the moment that is not the story you can tell, then art is indeed all that remains because in art it is about the form in which you cast it. So when words are not enough anymore, the verbal, the ordinary communicating with people, then you still have a means of communication left, and that is the art. The way it comes out is very different, but forming ideas about that meaninglessness, that's a conversation that still continues, so to speak.

Some participants explicitly depict the hallucinations they see in their work, or use their experiences with depression or anxiety as themes with the intention of publicly exploring their experiences and creating a dialogue with the outside world to help others realize that “they are not alone.” Many described art as creating a special space in society where suffering has a voice.

However, while not all participants intentionally set out to describe their suffering through their art, they at least retrospectively can see their inner experience reflected in their work (ether literally or symbolically). This can sometimes take the form of stories that depict the complete opposite, such as artistic creations about a world without suffering, a world of harmony, lightness, beautiful, childlikeness, and peace.

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This post is dedicated to all those creative souls out there who are struggling with a mental disorder. I see you and feel you. May you keep creating, and keep showing the world new meanings. The world needs you.