Insanity and genius!

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Of course we have all heard the cliche that there is a fine line between insanity and genius. My take on that is that some people defined as insane have extraordinary pattern recognition abilities.
A person with extraordinary pattern recognition abilities will see faces in wall paper or animals (etc) in cloud formations. This also works for sounds. For example,my wife was away,I was in the house alone trying to sleep. Unfortunately, I kept hearing music. Finally I decided to confront the partying neighbours. When I went outside I realized that the sound was an electrical generator (those things that look like trash cans mounted on an electrical pole). I went back to bed. I kept hearing that music! Am I insane? No. I just see patterns everywhere. Similarly, perhaps a person hearing voices is not necessarily insane.

Misinterpreting existing stimuli is different than perceiving things that don't exist at all.

Suppose, you are convinced that the big dipper exists. Suppose that you are really into astrology and think you were born under the sign Taurus. Are people that believe a face in wall paper is real mentally ill?
I saw the movie "a beautiful mind". Nash * was schizophrenic. However, his intellect told him to see the patterns he saw as unreal. He learned to cope. But he was still delusional.
*Nash won the noble prize for math (ironically game theory). Math =pattern recognition!

But I do notice faces in wallpaper and I don't believe they are real people or anything significant. Everybody sees patterns but not all of those people have delusions about them.

Myself also. I see faces,hear non existent music etc and know they are unreal. We all see and hear things that do not exist. Like Nash, our intellect is what keeps our actions rational. I have seen designs in wallpaper that are so perfect,I could not draw them! However, my intellect tells me that since I see a lot of wall paper, eventually a truly accurate design will appear.

There is no actual link between psychosis and genius.

However, there is a link between bipolar disorder and creativity, and a link between AS/autism and genius.

With bipolar disorder, I suspect it's mainly that extreme emotions give you something to draw/write/sing/etc about. Creativity is about expressing how you feel, so if you're feeling extremely intense emotions a lot, you have more motivation to be creative. Practice then leads to greater skill. In addition, disinhibition (which can be part of mania) is also linked to creativity, because instead of suppressing weird ideas you express them instead.

AS/autism causes skill scatter and intense interests. Skill scatter makes it more likely that some skills will be unusually high, as well as some being unusually low. And intense interests cause the kind of focus that tends to build expertise in an area.

Now, bipolar people can be psychotic, so in that way there is a link. But it's the mood disturbance that contributes to creativity, not the psychosis.

I've heard symphonies playing in my head, and I often hear music as I wake. I have great pattern finding abilities and was recently diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder. Doctor also wanted to diagnose me with Schizophrenia, but that didn't happen. Thing is, I was pushing myself really hard on some problems I had been working on, staying up really late and then I snapped. It could be that geniuses are pushing their minds too hard, and develop various disorders because of it. As I've since calmed down, I have not had any incidents since.

I sometimes misinterpret my computer noises as voices when working on my math homework. I am also good at making connections between concepts.

BTW, although misinterpreting stimuli is different than perceiving things that don't exist, mistaking noises for voices and shadows for people are common signs of schizotypal personality disorder.

On several occasions I have thought myself to be a genius on par with Einstein or even greater.- one time I went to a NASA engineers house and I told him about my theories. He set me on to Richard Feynman who I never heard anything about at the time.

We watched a tape cassette of Feynman in BBC Horizon video. I remember feeling humiliated, because it was so clear I hadn't done any actual work it was all speculation and ego inflating and little research.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtMX_0jDsrw[/youtube]

Geniuses are much more likely to see the distinction between insanity and genius than the insane are. Geniuses and the insane are the same in that they both do a lot of thinking, but what they think about is different.

What separates genius from an ordinary person is two things, 1.) the ability to notice things - in particular what makes things interesting 2. The questions they ask.

From this point on I am much more skeptical of the feeling of being a genius or of some great discoverer. But whenever I solve a problem (which some bright 14 year old probably solves in less time, I start to feel real good about myself). Maybe this dysfunction is the result of needing to feel important.

Generally speaking, different mind = different brain = different behavior.

It's not really hearing voices that is the issue but what they are saying to you that makes you insane, or lose touch with reality. I've heard enough accounts of schizophrenics hearing voices and their reaction them to know it's not a normal state of mind. I hear voices myself but I can't comprehend them and the fear I experience over it takes me very far away from reality.
I've had few very brief visual hallucinations too and it's not the same as mistaking your hand bag for a cat, but it's a separate sentient entity. It was actually a pleasing experience for me despite the fact I was being operated on by an alien. I think it was induced by temporal lobe epilepsy. I haven't had a hallucination as a vivid as that since.

I often mistake certain noises as something else because I'm good at seeing patterns, and also hearing damage that made the placement of sounds either closer or more further away than they actually were.

I've heard voices on the street I guess you could say. It sounds like people are speaking about you negatively and even want to do ill things to you. That is not the mind of a sane person.

I don't think it's just about emotions. I can have high emotions and not be creative, then I can get creative ideas that really come to fruition during a manic episode. Before it occurs the ideas are just floating around my head yet I haven't the motivation to even begin them. And I disagree; psychosis can contribute to creativity. Psychosis is not simply turning into this raging hulk character but whenever one becomes delusional which often includes hallucinations. For me, delusions and a distorted reality lead to creativity and I have pages and pages of my writings to prove it. I've even wanted to paint my TLE hallucinations.

My own theory about the whole genius and mental illness thing is that a perfectly functioning human brain just needs to have a balance of the skills, when this is tipped toward one way, then you get disorder but also a special skill set. This is just some silly theory that makes me feel better about myself and see other non-disordered people as too balanced and thus ordinary. You can get someone with a special talent and only traits of a disorder or mild mental illness, and so they are still able to function, but because of the artists that surround me I just see something more passionate and original in their art verses people with more balanced brains/ neurochemicals.

But back to bipolar, mania is high emotions but there's also an overproduction of certain brain chemicals that leads to it, and it's a lot different to high emotions in hyperactive ADHD or other disorders with unstable emotions. There is just something very different about the wave of creative ideas that happen in mania verses the others. People take drugs to get the same type of inspiration a simple glass of red or lack of sleep or cup of coffee can do in me.

And yes, I know I sound like I'm praising mania. Well, it's hard not to and I have been driven insane by it. What I would call insanity at least.

Anyway, it's time to draw.

I feel like some of my best ideas come when I am just about to become psychotic. I felt alive, important, The world seemed so fantastic and fun there was no fear no sadness for weeks. It was like this, imagine you could appreciate the miracle of existence and appreciation itself, just how astounding that is. I would turn on a sink and say, look at how amazing this is, we can conjure practically limitless amounts of water - all the water we could ever need, and we can change the temperature of it! We can change the temperature of the air in a room, we can see things from other places on the earth, we can see things from the past, we can fly! or move faster than our feet can take us, much faster. I will never allow myself to forget that feeling, of being born yesterday.

I think genius like Tesla's is so far above most "geniuses" it isn't funny what about the ideas he had that others could not comprehend hence drove him to the verdge of madness. True genius is a lonely road I wouldn't wish on anyone! Einstein couldn't remember his own address to much going on up in his head for trivial things. I remember meeting the man who designed the Torsen limited slip differential in his head but couldn't remember what car was his or even what brand.I wish there was no such thing as I.Q. test some people are fast thinkers and talk well others are just fixated on one thing a are bright on that subject but not on any other. I dont want to hear some one say there a genius unless they are out there testing there ideas I have a workshop full of ideas that didn't work a few that did but would be used wrong if shared. I want to know what you all do with you mania if you bipolar or if you are bright what do you do with it?

The ASD/AS-Trannsexuals are smart group of people, who might qualify as "genius", and thought of by the uninformed as "insane" at the same time.

The most notable example of a person AS-trans would appear to be Ted Kaczynski "Unabomber" who wanted a "sex-change" in college, and has the social isolation "hermit" like characteristic of an AS person.

I read college literature professors say his "Manifesto" was perfectly written. That makes me think of the AS trait of having such order as to be perfection. Also, he worked as a math professor which would be an indication of high systemizing capability.

He as called a genius and insane at the same time. His "insantity" appears to be that he got no help in transitioning to be a woman.

Quoted: "Convicted Unabomber Theodore J. Kaczynski considered having a sex change operation when he was in his twenties and his confusion over
his gender identity filled him with a rage that contributed to his bombing spree, according to documents released today ..."

See here .. http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-673313.html

Perfectly written in what sense? Grammar? Much of what is judged good/bad about writing is merely a matter of taste; only simple elements such as grammar or spelling are significantly objectively judgeable (and even those vary by dialect), and excelling in the correct use of the simple elements of a language is not enough to indicate genius.

And of what value is the opinion of a professor of literature when it comes to political tracts, beyond writing mechanics?