I am half way through this book: Touched with Fire by Kay Redfield Jamison. She’s a manic depressive and psychologist based in the US, who clearly has an intense interest in documenting the relationship between creativity and psychosis. So far she has talked a lot about Byron and about that almost cliched supposition that artists are more likely to be affected by a mental illness. I distrust this perspective a little given that some of the most eloquent and capable individuals that I know are artists. She talks about one particular study where:
“The highest rates of psychiatric abnormality were found in poets (50 percent) and musicians (38 percent), painters (20 percent), sculptors (18 percent) and architects (17 percent).”
I guess my task through this blog and current thread of thought is extracting the outdated romantic perspective on the insane Byronesque artist and viewing it from a more contemporary perspective, both in terms of the artistic media used (digital and new technologies) and the way in which we understand the issues around mental health.
