La creatividad y la psicopatología

What is the relation between creativity and psychopathology? Does psychopathology facilitate creativity? Does creative activity induce psychopathology? We expose here an historical bibliographic review, in search of responses to these questions posed from ancient Greece to these days. For Plato, talent was the enthusiasm which drags one away from oneself. For Aristotle, creativity was a rational process originated in nature, but he noticed that the greatest artists and scientists were melancholic. In the Middle Ages the idea of an association between creativity and mental pathology arose. In 1867, Maudsley postulated that genius was the maximum expression of human potentiality and of mental abnormality. In 1869, Galton began his scientific study on creativity. Since then several researchers have studied it by means of: a) biographical studies (Juda, Fernandes da Fonseca, Ludwig, Jamison, Schildkraut, Post, Espinel, who found a there was stronger relation between creativity and affective disorders, specially bipolar spectrum, in artists); b) research on the psychopathology of creative living subjects (Andreasen, Ludwig, Mraz and Runco), and c) research on the creativity of psychiatric patients (Jamison, Steinberg, Richards, Crowell, Stoll, Berrettini, Miller, Dowker). We also reviewed the concepts of Peréz-Rincón, Whybrow, Silverman, Pöldinger and Rothenberg. Dabrowski, in his positive desintegration theory, suggested that psychoneurosis is critical to development. In a person with a strong potential, symptoms may be a sign of his high developmental potencial, wich can be used for becoming an authentic, autonomous human being. Kopacz and Janikak explained the association between creativity and bipolar disorder: creativity is the product of bipolar desease; creativity and bipolar disease are different but they have related genes, and creative temperament is phenomenologically similar to hipomania. However, we agree with Feder’s concept: creativity is a natural process implying ambivalence as well as procreativity.