Creativity and Mental Illness ― The Mad Genius in Question

Is there really a thin line between madness and genius? While many of us are inclined to believe so, history is full of ideas that science has disproved. There has been a recent surge in studies both investigating creativity as well as the ancient idea of a link between creativity and mental illness. This book provides a thorough review of the current state of knowledge on this age old idea, and presents new empirical findings. Can we now once and for all conclude that Aristotle's assertion of the correlation between melancholia and great achievements was true? The new research presented here involving more than one million people hopes to put an end to this debate, but also to open up discussion about the implications of its findings.

Simon Kyaga is a Senior Consultant in Psychiatry and Researcher at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. He was part of a research team that published the largest study on the connection between creativity and mental illness, and is currently scientific secretary of the Swedish Society of Medicine.