Strong Imagination Madness, Creativity and Human Nature

by Nettle, Daniel

• ISBN13: 9780198507062
• ISBN10: 0198507062
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-05-03
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Madness is the central mystery of the human psyche. Our minds evolved to give us a faithful understanding of reality, to allow us to integrate into our communities, and to help us adapt our behaviour to our environment. Yet in serious mental illness, the mind does exactly the opposite ofthese things. The sufferer builds castles of imaginative delusion, fails to adapt, and becomes a stranger among his own people. Yet mental illness is no marginal phenomenon: it is found in all societies and all historical epochs, and the genes that underlie it are quite common. Furthermore, thetraits that identify the madman are found in attenuated form in normal thinking and feeling. The persistence of madness, then, is a terrible puzzle from both an evolutionary and a human point of view. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare suggested a link between madness and artisticcreativity: 'The lunatic, the lover, and the poet', he wrote, 'Are of imagination all compact'. Recent studies have shown that there is indeed a connection. Rates of mental illness are hugely elevated in the families of poets, writers and artists, suggesting that the same genes, the sametemperaments, and the same imaginative capacities are at work in insanity and in creative ability. Thus the reason madness continues to exist is that the traits behind it have psychological benefits as well as psychological costs. In Strong Imagination, Daniel Nettle explores the nature of mentalillness, the biological mechanisms that underlie it, and its link to creative genius. He goes on to consider the place of both madness and creative imagination in the evolution of our species.

Author Biography

Daniel Nettle studied psychology at Oxford, before completing his PhD in Anthropology at University College London. In 1996 he was elected a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College, Oxford. He has lectured in London, Oxford, Cambridge and Nigeria, and written widely across many areas of the human sciences. He is also active in the theatre. He lives in Oxford.

Table of Contents

Introduction	1	(11)
From disease to difference and back again	12	(24)
From nature to nurture and back again	36	(22)
This taint of blood	58	(32)
The storm-tossed soul	90	(23)
The sleep of reason produces monsters	113	(24)
Such tricks hath strong imagination	137	(24)
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet	161	(26)
Civilization and its discontents	187	(14)
Staying sane	201	(12)
Epilogue	213	(3)
Further reading	216	(4)
References	220	(11)
Index	231