Creativity and mood: the ups and downs of bipolar disorder

Reblogged from my post on NeuWriteSD.org:

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night.
–Edgar Allen Poe [1]

If the emotions are sometimes so strong that one works without knowing one works, when sometimes the strokes come with a continuity and a coherence like words in a speech or a letter, then one must remember that it has not always been so, and that in time to come there will again be hard days, empty of inspiration.

So one must strike while the iron is hot, and put the forged bars on one side.

–Vincent Van Gogh

 “We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.” These are the words of the poet Lord Byron, whom Kay Redfield Jamison quotes in her book Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. In this book, Jamison explores the link between so-called creative “genius” and a predisposition toward mood disorders, such as depression and, in particular, bipolar disorder (also known as manic-depressive disorder).

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