Customer Reviews

The Key to Genius/Manic-Depression and the Creative Life

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While Bipolar illness is a dangerous psychiatric disorder, often leading to suicide if untreated, it also has an upside for civilization. While it is obvious that not all individuals with bipolar illness(aka manic depression)possess genius, there are those who do....probably in the same proportion as in the rest of society.

However, this book argues that if you compare two individuals of equal talent and equal intelligence, the one who has bipolar illness is more likely to produce works of genius because of the spurts of energy and insight that come with the illness.

A great illustration of this is the movie 'Amadeus' in which Mozart and Salieri are rival composers, but the obviously manic Mozart keeps frustrating Salieri because of the surpassing beauty of his compositions while Salieri's are brilliant but not extraordinary.

"Key to Genius" gives a startling psychohistory of 4 geniuses including Mozart and Sir Iassic Newdon. Using source documents, we see contemporary reports of these geniuses which clearly fit the DSM-IV description of manic depressive illness. We see the inflated ego of Sir Iassic Newton not sleeping for a week. The remarkable 'vision' of Mozart's Jupiter symphony entirely conceived in a split second of insight.

This book leaves one with incredible insight as to the unromantic nature of the suffering of bipolar illness, yet gives one enormous respect towards the human spirit for those few who can harness its energy, and survive its dangers. Of course there are those who do
not survive, and the book shows that Van Gogh was bipolar, not schizophrenic. Yet before he succumbed to depression, he gave the world a legacy of art that supercedes any individual genius, and shows us the best of human nature and reminds us the genius in each of us.