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Creative minds 'mimic schizophrenia'

Thalassa

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Hahaha, I lol'd. John Nash is an interesting example, though. One that kind of refutes schizophrenia as being totally chemical/biolgical. First of all, I don't think that Nash actually hallucinated (not sure though). But the movie definitely exaggerated his illness. Anyways, didn't he just become "unschizophrenic" with time, possibly after a working out of his "confusion"?

His son is also schizo so there is something to be said about that.

I'm related to him, no shit, he's my maternal grandfather's cousin, and YES mental illness runs in that branch of my family. The movie didn't exaggerate his illness, but did romanticize it and make him seem much cooler than he actually was apparently. Of course I report this as second hand news, things that my older relatives have told my mother.

Oh, and no, he didn't become "unschizophrenic"...it's just at the time that he became ill there were not the advances in psychiatric medicine that we have today, and so schizophrenics were much less functional at that time.
 

ragashree

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This still bothers me a bit. I'm sure you would be a more proficient pianist or whatever, but would you be more creative? And I still feel as if there's plenty of people who attempt and want to improve, and practice at it, but still cannot cross a certain barrier. That's like saying with 10,000 hours of practice I could dunk on Lebron.

Someone with natural proficiency can certanily improve it with practice, but I don't think that's related to creativity, per se; often the most technically proficient in their chosen fields are not particularly gifted innovaters and vice versa... Some kind of basic grounding is needed to have the foundation on which talent can build, and hard work may be needed to realise it: but it's simply not the case that repetitive practice and talent are interlinked.

While we're on the subject of music, I can think of several great composers who were not able to make the grade as a performer despite a sound musical education, which is what gave them the necessary grounding in compositional ability. Sibelius, for instance, was simply not good enough to be a top professional violinist despite aspiring to it and putting intensive effort into learning the violin. He therefore turned aside from performance and eventually found his true vocation in composition. He later said himself of his own violin playing: "My talent for the violin is only as much as any relatively musical person and not much more!"
 

chooi

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I'm related to him, no shit, he's my maternal grandfather's cousin, and YES mental illness runs in that branch of my family. The movie didn't exaggerate his illness, but did romanticize it and make him seem much cooler than he actually was apparently. Of course I report this as second hand news, things that my older relatives have told my mother.

Whooaaa, kewl. So are you saying that he did hallucinate, but not as extravagantly as the movie portrayed? What did your family think of the movie?
 

chooi

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Someone with natural proficiency can certanily improve it with practice, but I don't think that's related to creativity, per se; often the most technically proficient in their chosen fields are not particularly gifted innovaters and vice versa... Some kind of basic grounding is needed to have the foundation on which talent can build, and hard work may be needed to realise it: but it's simply not the case that repetitive practice and talent are interlinked.

I agree with you raga. I was responding to Victor's argument that anyone could become a mozart with 10,000 hours of practice. I think your proficiency would increase, but not necessarily your creativity.

I feel like just as you would be limited in your athleticism (with the Lebron example) so you would be with creativity and other kinds of talent.
 

Thalassa

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Whooaaa, kewl. So are you saying that he did hallucinate, but not as extravagantly as the movie portrayed? What did your family think of the movie?

My relatives who actually knew him hated the movie, including my grandfather. I have never met him. He is like my fourth cousin twice removed or something ridiculous like that. I can only gauge by family members who also suffer from the illness (and their symptoms were strikingly similar to one another) that, yes, he most assuredly hallucinated. Hallucinations are one of the hallmarks of schizophrenic and schizoaffective-bipolar illness, anyway.

Of course a movie is going romanticize things. They want to make mental illness seem "cool" (it's not, it's very disturbing and sad to be around unmedicated schizophrenics, and they become quite dependent upon the care of others when they are in a bad state) when it's linked to a very interesting or intelligent person.

I do know that the illness took his ability to do math away from him in some regard, so it clearly was not beneficial to his natural talents.
 

ragashree

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I do know that the illness took his ability to do math away from him in some regard, so it clearly was not beneficial to his natural talents.

Oh, the illness, certainly not. I was thinking of it the other way around myself - that the same traits which drove him to become ill may have helped, when he was more functional, to enhance his imaginative faculties.

My elder brother was supposedly highly mathematically gifted; I met someone who'd taught him maths at school who said that he ""Was the most naturally gifted mathematician I'd ever met." this despite the fact that he was never in the conventional sense a very good student. But I never really saw this, as he suffered a psychotic breakdown within a few weeks of going into university, and was diagnosed as schizophrenic soon after. He spent the rest of his life drugged up to the eyeballs, undergoing various treatment including electroconvulsant therapy (he actually wanted this, he thought it would make him better).
 

Thalassa

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Oh, the illness, certainly not. I was thinking of it the other way around myself - that the same traits which drove him to become ill may have helped, when he was more functional, to enhance his imaginative faculties.

Possibly. I have mixed feelings about mental illness and the way that it is treated. On one hand it must be treated in a manner to allow the person to be functional and not tortured. Schizophrenia can outright torture a person - it's not like happy la la land, which is what some people seem to think. On the other hand, people who suffer from bipolar disorder report being more creative when unmedicated, and I do know that a rather shocking numbers of writers suffered from what is or what was probably what we now call bipolar disorder.


My elder brother was supposedly highly mathematically gifted; I met someone who'd taught him maths at school who said that he ""Was the most naturally gifted mathematician I'd ever met." this despite the fact that he was never in the conventional sense a very good student. But I never really saw this, as he suffered a psychotic breakdown within a few weeks of going into university, and was diagnosed as schizophrenic soon after. He spent the rest of his life drugged up to the eyeballs, undergoing various treatment including electroconvulsant therapy (he actually wanted this, he thought it would make him better).

I'm very sorry your brother went through this. :(

As I say, there must be different ways to treat mental illness than simply sedating people to the point of where they lose all personality, and there has been great progress in terms of the medications in the past 20 to 25 years, including vitamins and nutrition - something called orthomolecular therapy - used to treat schizophrenia which allows people to maintain their personality instead of merely being tranquilized.
 

Zarathustra

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Oh, the illness, certainly not. I was thinking of it the other way around myself - that the same traits which drove him to become ill may have helped, when he was more functional, to enhance his imaginative faculties.

SS is actually reading a book right now on genius and mental illness.

John Nash is one of several geniuses on the cover.

I was flipping through it the other day, and found a quote from him that goes something akin to, "Well, the reason I believed it was perfectly reasonable the I was indeed sent to Earth by an alien force to save it from itself was due to the fact that such thoughts came to me from the exact same place as my thoughts on mathematics."

Found that pretty interesting...
 

Mole

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On one hand it must be treated in a manner to allow the person to be functional and not tortured. Schizophrenia can outright torture a person - it's not like happy la la land, which is what some people seem to think.

Yes, schizophrenia is not the slightest bit Romantic. Schizophrenics do suffer from schizophrenia and torture is not too strong a word.

Whereas the hallmark of creativity is flow where time seems to stop and we do things entirely for their own sake. A little bit of heaven, you might say, in the quotidian world.
 

chooi

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Possibly. I have mixed feelings about mental illness and the way that it is treated. On one hand it must be treated in a manner to allow the person to be functional and not tortured. Schizophrenia can outright torture a person - it's not like happy la la land, which is what some people seem to think. On the other hand, people who suffer from bipolar disorder report being more creative when unmedicated, and I do know that a rather shocking numbers of writers suffered from what is or what was probably what we now call bipolar disorder.

Definitely not.

The reason I ask about the hallucinations is because here a Beautiful Mind it says that Nash was delusional, rather than having hallucinations. There is some bias, however, as the site is against the current classification and treatment of schizophrenia within the psychiatric/psychological field. However, the author of the article did have a phd in psychology, which adds validity to the argument. He agrees that the film is a romanticization, and also says that the initial treatment for Nash HURT, rather than helped him. I do disagree with him on one point though, he says that Nash's illness disappeared of its own accord. I've read elsewhere that he still struggles, but manages.

In my opinion schizophrenia, more than other mental illnesses, all of which the psychiatric community tend to regard as mostly chemical in nature, is an illness induced and fostered by cultural/communicative factors. I think, as you kind of do raga, that schizophrenics and people who suffer from some other mental illnesses, do share some of the same characteristics (biological and personal) that highly-creative people do - namely, that they are extremely sensitive and receptive to their environment, and qualify it differently from how the majority of people do. I talk about this in one of my posts maybe one or two pages back.

And mental illness runs in my family as well. Schizophrenia has particularly been of interest to me because of the reasons listed above. Also, I have noticed schizophrenic tendencies, which sometimes worry me, in my own personality. People also consider me highly creative.
 

ragashree

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I'm very sorry your brother went through this. :(

Thanks :)

As I say, there must be different ways to treat mental illness than simply sedating people to the point of where they lose all personality, and there has been great progress in terms of the medications in the past 20 to 25 years, including vitamins and nutrition - something called orthomolecular therapy - used to treat schizophrenia which allows people to maintain their personality instead of merely being tranquilized.

I'm reasonably sure that he was actually killed by being prescribed too high a dose of drugs, when he was sent back home for a while and began to lose control of his behaviour again, but couldn't be taken back into hospital due to a shortage of suitable places. The verdict was "natural causes" but he was 25years old, and despite not taking proper care of himself had no serious physical health problems that anyone knew about, so this was either a whitewash for the health services, or something I should myself be concerned about due to the likelihood of it being linked to Sudden Adult Death Syndrome, which has a strong genetic component and puts siblings at much higher risk. The latter is not a big worry, however, given what I've found out about the known risks of the drugs he was on. He was quite large (about 6'4) and had become somewhat overweight due to lack of physical activity; the dose he was being given to keep him sedated and stop him running amok when he became delusional and angry again was thus extremely high.

In general I think that giving people drugs can only mask the symptoms and make them more manageable; I don't think there's much evidence that they can really provide a cure, or that the condition is actually primarily a biological one, though there may be biological factors that increase susceptibility in an individual. To me it seems more like a bad life coping strategy that certain people, perhaps those with the characteristics indicated by the report, are prone to develop at much lower thresholds than others; the problem is that since it makes it so difficult for sufferers to engage with reality, a therapeutic cure is hard to find.
 

chooi

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In general I think that giving people drugs can only mask the symptoms and make them more manageable; I don't think there's much evidence that they can really provide a cure, or that the condition is actually primarily a biological one, though there may be biological factors that increase susceptibility in an individual. To me it seems more like a bad life coping strategy that certain people, perhaps those with the characteristics indicated by the report, are prone to develop at much lower thresholds than others; the problem is that since it makes it so difficult for sufferers to engage with reality, a therapeutic cure is hard to find.

Raga, I feel like you and I think very much alike. I would probably hate you if I met you in real life.:harhar:

Hahaha, kidding, kidding.
 

ragashree

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Raga, I feel like you and I think very much alike. I would probably hate you if I met you in real life.:harhar:

Hahaha, kidding, kidding.

:laugh: Have you ever been ennea-tested - you've got to be a four, surely?
 

Thalassa

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In my opinion schizophrenia, more than other mental illnesses, all of which the psychiatric community tend to regard as mostly chemical in nature, is an illness induced and fostered by cultural/communicative factors.

It's interesting that you say this. I know a guy who just came to the United States from Russia in the past three weeks, and he said "you have a lot of crazy people here." At first I thought he was kidding, but then he pointed out all of the people who walk around talking to themselves. I said that since we are in L.A., and before that he was in NYC, that there's a strong possibility that it's drug related, particularly to crystal meth. He said no, I think people here are very alone.

Totally anecdotal, but it resonates with what you just wrote.
 

Mole

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...he pointed out all of the people [in America] who walk around talking to themselves...I think people here are very alone.

And yes, we come onto this site in order to be listened to. But we all want to be listened to and no one wants to listen. So we end up talking to ourselves.

We come for company but end up alone.

But they say an American is never more American than when they are alone.
 

chooi

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:laugh: Have you ever been ennea-tested - you've got to be a four, surely?

Haha, just took it today. Still can't decide between 4 or 9 (posted in the ennegram forum). Thinking 4, though.
 

chooi

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Well, I take you at face value.

So what have you created that is new?

I created a sculpture. It's called "Victor chooses to ignore most people's criticism, including mine, of his argument that you can be Mozart in 10,000 hours, but wants to bust my balls". It's very abstract. Would you like to see it?

Creative enough?
 

KDude

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And yes, we come onto this site in order to be listened to. But we all want to be listened to and no one wants to listen. So we end up talking to ourselves.

We come for company but end up alone.

But they say an American is never more American than when they are alone.

Again, with the "we" stuff. Don't speak for others. I know I've made some cool acquaintances here, with a "satisfying" amount of back and forth in our conversations.

This thread is proceeding nicely with people talking to each other too.

Even I'm listening to you Victor, and talking to you right now. Even if you somehow imagine this is another "ad hominem". :hug: :D
 
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