Sexy schizo artists ... (dodgy science)
Thursday, 1. December 2005, 09:45:08
The old "artists are mad" chestnut has come up again with a supposedly scientific study of artists showing that they display a surprising similarity to schizophrenics, particularly in the bed department. Artists have twice as many sexual partners as mentally healthy non-artists (whatever they are).
The research involved an unbelievably large sample of 425 people selected through a poetry magazine a randomly distributed questionnaire and a less randomly selected number of diagnosed schizophrenics. (Only a cheap comedian would suggest that the responses from the schizophrenics counted twice.)
According to the head scientist (as it were), 'artists and schizophrenics scored equally high on "unusual cognition", a trait which gives rise to a greater tendency to feel in between reality and a dream state, or to feel overwhelmed by one's own thoughts.'
Dr Daniel Nettle goes on to argue that his results suggest that the creativity of some artists is fuelled by the unique world view mental illness can provide, but without the completely debilitating aspects of the condition. Instead, the artists are able to direct their creativity into artistic projects.
It is a theory he has put across before in a book called Strong Imagination: madness, creativity and human nature and I have to wonder whether the research has been designed specifically to prove his theory.
His thesis is essentially this.
(1) Given Darwinian natural selection, why would the genes for schizophrenia (and also manic depression) persist? Surely, given that they seem to confer no evolutionary advantage, then surely they would have disappeared from the gene pool Yet 1% of the polulation suffers from schizophrenia (it is claimed).
(2) So maybe these genes are carried in healthy people who do not develop a debilitating illness yet they enjoy the "creative" benefits that are somehow part of the condition. In other words, the schizophrenic and the manic depressive suffer and other members of their gene pool reap the genetic benefits.
There are more than a few problems with this line of argument. Here are five for starters.
(1) It's based on a very "hard" form of Darwinism and genetic predetermination.
(2) It assumes that schizophreniza and manic depression are entirely caused by genetic factors.
(3) Schizophrenics and artists are put in separate categories, as if to say that a person with schizophrenia cannot also be an artist.
(4) It ignores completely any social, environmental or cultural factors involved in the perception and categorisation of so-called "mental illness", which it assumes to be constant and universal.
(5) It ends up pathologising normal and health experience (creativity), which is also a trait of the psychiatric profession which is forever "discovering" new illnesses in perfectly normal behaviour patterns.
You can read about it here:[URL= http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1653761,00.html?gusrc=rss]research
And, for a riposte from an artist, here: artist hits back
The artist - Dinos Chapman - does not seem to have much time for Dr Nettle:
"What a pile of crap. Those responsible should be shot. Better still, they should be forced to have several thousand sexual partners. Preferably schizoid artists, bad, ugly, psychotic ones. Then shot."
The research involved an unbelievably large sample of 425 people selected through a poetry magazine a randomly distributed questionnaire and a less randomly selected number of diagnosed schizophrenics. (Only a cheap comedian would suggest that the responses from the schizophrenics counted twice.)
According to the head scientist (as it were), 'artists and schizophrenics scored equally high on "unusual cognition", a trait which gives rise to a greater tendency to feel in between reality and a dream state, or to feel overwhelmed by one's own thoughts.'
Dr Daniel Nettle goes on to argue that his results suggest that the creativity of some artists is fuelled by the unique world view mental illness can provide, but without the completely debilitating aspects of the condition. Instead, the artists are able to direct their creativity into artistic projects.
It is a theory he has put across before in a book called Strong Imagination: madness, creativity and human nature and I have to wonder whether the research has been designed specifically to prove his theory.
His thesis is essentially this.
(1) Given Darwinian natural selection, why would the genes for schizophrenia (and also manic depression) persist? Surely, given that they seem to confer no evolutionary advantage, then surely they would have disappeared from the gene pool Yet 1% of the polulation suffers from schizophrenia (it is claimed).
(2) So maybe these genes are carried in healthy people who do not develop a debilitating illness yet they enjoy the "creative" benefits that are somehow part of the condition. In other words, the schizophrenic and the manic depressive suffer and other members of their gene pool reap the genetic benefits.
There are more than a few problems with this line of argument. Here are five for starters.
(1) It's based on a very "hard" form of Darwinism and genetic predetermination.
(2) It assumes that schizophreniza and manic depression are entirely caused by genetic factors.
(3) Schizophrenics and artists are put in separate categories, as if to say that a person with schizophrenia cannot also be an artist.
(4) It ignores completely any social, environmental or cultural factors involved in the perception and categorisation of so-called "mental illness", which it assumes to be constant and universal.
(5) It ends up pathologising normal and health experience (creativity), which is also a trait of the psychiatric profession which is forever "discovering" new illnesses in perfectly normal behaviour patterns.
You can read about it here:[URL= http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1653761,00.html?gusrc=rss]research
And, for a riposte from an artist, here: artist hits back
The artist - Dinos Chapman - does not seem to have much time for Dr Nettle:
"What a pile of crap. Those responsible should be shot. Better still, they should be forced to have several thousand sexual partners. Preferably schizoid artists, bad, ugly, psychotic ones. Then shot."
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