Genius and Schizophrenia: Is High Intelligence Linked to Mental Disorders?

There is a widespread belief that it is a stone's throw from madness to genius. And that significant, and especially great, discoveries are often made on the verge of madness. Life hacker tells whether mental problems help or hinder scientists.

Psychiatrist Yuri Sivolap, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor of the Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatic Pathology of the RUDN Medical Institute, told whether it is true that mental illness is almost an obligatory feature of a genius.

What do the Nobel Prize and schizophrenia have in common?

In 2001, the film “A Beautiful Mind” was released. It is based on real events and tells the story of John Nash, a brilliant American mathematician.

Nash is not a fictional character, but an outstanding scientist. There are many facts in his biography that cause Delight. This is one of the most famous American mathematicians. Once his teacher, supporting Nash in his desire to study at the university, wrote the shortest letter of recommendation. It contained only two words: "He is a genius." And this description was confirmed.

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At 21, the guy wrote a brilliant dissertation on game theory. For this work, he received the Nobel Prize. True, with a great delay - more than 40 years after the publication of the study. Nash was awarded the prize in economics, because mathematicians had never been awarded a prize. But another 20 years later, shortly before his death, the scientist received the Abel Prize. It is considered the highest award for mathematicians.

John Nash is the only person in the world who has received both prizes. He also had paranoid schizophrenia. The illness accompanied the genius almost his entire active life.

"At times he became completely insane and dangerous for his wife and children. His wife Alicia left him at one time, thinking primarily about the children. But later she considered this a betrayal of her husband and returned to him. It was she, I insist, who brought him to the Nobel Committee," Sivolap emphasized.

How Schizophrenia Changes a Person's Consciousness

The film “A Beautiful Mind” poses an interesting question: did Nash’s schizophrenia help him in his research or, on the contrary, did it hinder and slow down his work.

Schizophrenia is a disease that manifests itself in different ways. Its symptoms are usually divided into positive and negative. The former add something to the usual mental state, the latter take something away.

Let's dwell on the negative manifestations. Those that take away some of the psyche's reactions and capabilities. With schizophrenia, many patients lose motivation and ambition, and their social activity decreases. Instead, fatigue, apathy, and depression appear. And a person with very great, even outstanding abilities, cannot study or work normally.

“It often happens that a brilliant boy, who in the 8th grade easily solved mathematical problems for the most difficult university, after entering this very university, falls ill in the second year. And then, unfortunately, he is no longer capable of anything,” explained the doctor of medical sciences.

Psychiatrists note another important point. A person with schizophrenia or a schizoactive mentality, as well as his healthy relatives, there may be a so-called formal disorder of thinking. Their intellect is completely preserved, their abilities are not affected. But these people think differently than others.

Their thinking is like a symphony orchestra with an incompetent conductor. Each instrument may be perfectly tuned. But if the conductor is unable to control the musicians, the orchestra sounds out of tune because the players are not coordinated.

However, sometimes this is not a disadvantage for thinking, but an advantage. The brain of patients with schizophrenia works according to a special principle called “equalizing the probability of alternative hypotheses.” This means that people with this type of psyche consider both obvious hypotheses and those that others would not pay attention to to be equally real.

Remember the tests from the “name the odd one out” series. A person is asked to remove the option from four words that does not fit into the general row.

“A typical example: dust, rain, frost, dew. You and I would most likely exclude dust, because the other three phenomena are aggregate states of water. One of my patients told me that he excludes rain. He says that rain is the only one of these four objects that does not have a sign of staticity. In addition, rain has a clear verticality,” Sivolap noted.

That is, this patient looks at things in an unconventional way, sees them from an unusual angle. This phenomenon is called heuristic thinking. It is often characteristic of people with schizophrenia and helps them make unconventional decisions.

It is very difficult for scientists to do without this quality. Focusing on signs and facts that mean nothing to most people can lead a researcher to the birth of an unexpected scientific concept.

Does Mental Illness Help You Become More Creative?

This question has been troubling scientists for centuries.

Schizophrenia

Paranoid schizophrenia, which John Nash struggled with, can manifest itself in the following way: when the patient is in an acute state, he experiences severe anxiety, it seems to him that the world has suddenly changed.

However, what exactly happened, what is happening to him now and around him, the person does not understand. But then it seems to dawn on him. The patient suddenly sees the connection between different events, and a clear picture of the world is built in his head.

To what extent the picture that appears in the patient's head reflects reality is a big question. But this type of thinking often helps to find truly non-standard solutions to scientific problems.

Bipolar disorder

At the end of the 19th century, the Italian psychiatrist Cesare Lombroso wrote a book called “Genius and Madness.” He wondered whether it was possible to compare scientific talent with mental disorder. He tried to determine whether the former was always accompanied by the latter. Today’s scientists are also conducting research to determine whether mental illness is associated with special abilities.

The results of scientific research are similar: unfortunately or fortunately, talent is not a consequence of mental illness.

In a recent study, scientists tried to determine whether bipolar disorder helps people become more creative. After all, in this condition, a person alternates between a hypomanic stage, that is, an upsurge and a surge of energy, and a depressive period.

It turns out that with mild bipolar disorder, creativity can actually increase. In the hypomanic stage, a slight upswing in mood does indeed cause productivity to increase. At this time, people are more creative. They hardly get tired, they enjoy creating, and they can easily handle a wide variety of tasks. At the same time, they can really find unexpected and very successful solutions. But then comes a decline.

The higher the peak, the deeper the fall. In severe bipolar disorder, it is very difficult for people to recover from a depressive period. The loss of productivity can be so severe that even the previous rise does not compensate for it.

"The trouble is that, unfortunately, any hypomania always carries the threat of a decline in mood, and this is, of course, not good. Therefore, bipolar disorder must be treated. Severe mental illnesses, unfortunately, do not allow people to achieve good professional, creative - any kind of success," explained the professor of the Department of Psychiatry.

Should you be upset if you don't have a mental disorder?

The authors of the study on bipolar disorder concluded that the level of intelligence, creativity and talent are not directly related to mental problems. A person with the same bipolar disorder or schizophrenia may indeed have rare abilities. But many people with the same diagnosis live without special talents and with average intelligence.

Scientists believe that there are more significant factors for success in science and creativity. This is a person's openness, the ability to see logical connections. And divergent thinking - that is, a developed skill to generate unexpected ideas and offer multiple solutions to one problem.

“Do you need to have schizophrenia to become a Nobel laureate? It is not desirable. And it is certainly not useful. In general, if you want to receive any award, it is better not to have any illness. There are no good diseases,” concluded Doctor of Medical Sciences Sivolap. “Genius cannot be derived from any mental disorder. For a person to become a genius, like John Nash, it is necessary to have a high intellect, special scientific abilities. And people with schizophrenia, like any other, can be very smart, gifted. Or they can be very average, banal, stupid, like any ordinary person.”

So it is worth developing creativity and training your thinking. Anyone can do it. But it is easier for a person without mental disorders - he will not have to fight the negative manifestations of the disease.