Must One Risk Madness to Achieve Genius?

[Zabrina Sarafina]

I don't know who is more cursed....the all-encompassing intellectual or the nimble minded arrogant

Is intelligence a gift or a heavy burden - "I want to know everything and nothing at all"

Some people were born to live - and some were born to just think

In "The Essential Psychopathology of Creativity", Andrea Kuszewski notes:

Genius requires penetrating insight into reality, whereas madness is confusion about reality. Nonetheless, both madness and genius appear likely to be positively related to the broad trait of Openness/Intellect. Without the tendency to perceive patterns that is fundamental to Openness, Intellect may by unlikely to lead to the creativity required for genius. Perhaps, then, genius is most likely to emerge given the combination of high Intellect and high Openness, and one must risk madness to achieve genius."

And what's wrong with risking madness? Of course no one likes going mad ....but if it's your natural state of being then so be it

"Were it not for those “disordered” genes, you wouldn’t have extremely creative, successful people. Being in the absolute middle of every trait spectrum, not too extreme in any one direction, makes you balanced, but rather boring. The tails of the spectrum, or the fringe, is where all the exciting stuff happens. Some of the exciting stuff goes uncontrolled and ends up being a psychological disorder, but some of those people with the traits that define Bipolar Disorder, Schizophrenia, ADHD, and other psychological conditions, have the fortunate gift of high cognitive control paired with those traits, and end up being the creative geniuses that we admire, aspire to be like, and desperately need in this world."

hell Yea

[JD Barleycorn]

It depends on how you define madness. Why do you define OCD, ADHD, and the rest as madmess. Is obsession to do something that no one else has done madness? The same thing for someone wanting to be the best at something? Is Michael Jordan mad? or Tiger Woods? Don't you think that both Obama and Hillary are obsessed with becoming president? If they are mad then aren't they disqualified from performing the job?

You come up with a lot of stuff like this. It sounds good in some magazine but you need to think about it all means in the real world.

[Zabrina Sarafina]

I have always felt it was more of a curse than a gift. It has always seemed and I have envied the slow relaxed more natural pace others minds seem to be. Also, frustrates me how my mind rushes at lightning speed and I struggle to keep up - the rest of me. I wish I could make projects manifest faster, it seems in the physical reality, everything moves at a sluggish pace ....and it drives me mad

I'm just used to moving at a faster pace, when things happen instantaneously. I wish to experience that god-like stage once again...

[Jewish Lawyer]

Are you saying people who are organically already "mad" can suppress it by not thinking about it? Does delving into one's pathology risk manifestation of it past the point of no return?