Creation of the Suffering Artist
Authors:   , Prins Laura Stéphanie Elise 
Published: January 2025

As an idea, the assumption that there is an association between creativity and mental illness can be traced back to classical antiquity. Best known is Plato's statement “the greatest of good things come to us through madness”. Over the centuries, thinkers, doctors and artists have pondered and commented on this assumption. Since the nineteenth century, the relationship between creativity and mental illness has also been investigated scientifically by psychiatrists and psychologists. In this dissertation, I analyze and describe how ideas about the relationship have developed historically and continue to develop, from the eighteenth century to the present. The focus here is on the image of the suffering artist, or, in other words, on the creative geniuses who were, and often still are, part of the reason for assuming the existence of the relationship. In the form of a history of ideas, I focus on two perspectives: that of the physician and that of the artist. How did they conceive of the relationship between creativity and mental illness?

In my history of ideas, I indicated two substantial changes. The first took place at the end of the eighteenth century when doctors began to interpret madness, previously in the sense of divine inspiration, as mental illness, while artists maintained the old idea of madness. The second substantial change took place in the second half of the twentieth century when genius was replaced by creativity: no longer did psychiatrists and psychologists study the historical and rare phenomenon of genius, but they focused their research on creativity as a trait of human beings that can be measured and demonstrated in everyone.

The common thread consists of the elusiveness of genius and creativity. Attempts to come to grips with this in scientific research proved fruitless. A recurring view is that people who were capable of great things seemed to go beyond themselves, were ‘possessed’. Throughout the centuries, therefore, the explanation was also sought in something beyond the control of the genius, for example, in the form of divine inspiration, an aberrant perception, such as hallucinations, uncontrolled emotions, a sensitive nervous system or hereditary factors. These explanations are still given to some extent, but now often described as a psychiatric diagnosis or symptoms thereof.

My research was not intended to show whether there is a relationship between creativity and mental illness. The purpose was to study the different views. For centuries, the assumption that there is a relationship between creativity and mental illness proved to be fruitful for the popular image of the artist suffering for the sake of his art. That image gained traction beginning in the late eighteenth century when the artist's position became vulnerable due to his grand ambitions and uncertain rewards, and found themselves on the fringes of society.

Whether the relationship exists, and what exactly it means, the answer to that has not been found, and the question is whether it ever will. Creativity, genius, many benefit from embracing it as a mystery - and this includes artists.