One Lucky Soul: The Intertwining of Genius and Insanity

The Intertwining of Genius and Insanity by Omar Cherif, by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul

More than two millennia ago Aristotle famously stated that no great genius has ever existed without a touch of madness. His teacher, Plato, had already discussed madness extensively, splitting the condition into two distinct realms: divine madness on one side — the creative, ecstatic fire that possess seers and inspires poets — and human madness on the other, the clinical insanity involving mental dysfunction and irrationality.

Today, the cultural cliché remains intact: Genius borders on insanity, and every exceptional mind carries a spark of the volatile. But how does the mechanism actually work? And what does “insanity” mean once you strip the medical jargon.

For someone who has been routinely called a wee crazy and unusual by those who know him and plenty of those who don’t, I’ve been meaning to delve into that elusive topic for quite a while. So here is the exposé

Let us first start our exploration by the definition of the word ‘crazy’ as it appears in dictionaries. For simplicity’s sake, I will be using ‘crazy’, ‘insane’, and ‘mad’ interchangeably in this exposé. There are two meaning to the adjective ‘crazy’ when describing people.

Mentally deranged, especially as manifested in a wild or aggressive way; a state of mind that prevents normal perception, behaviour, or social interaction; seriously mentally ill.

Synonyms:
Mad, insane, out of one’s mind, deranged, demented, not in one’s right mind, crazed, lunatic, non compos mentis, unhinged, mad as a hatter, mad as a March hare.

Informal:
Mental, nutty, nutty as a fruitcake, off ones’ rocker, not right in the head, round/around the bend, raving mad, batty, bonkers, cuckoo, loopy, ditzy, loony, bananas, loco, with a screw loose, touched, gaga, not all there, out to lunch, crackers, nutso, out of one’s tree, wacko, gonzo, batshit.
Extremely enthusiastic.

Synonyms:
Passionate about, (very) keen on, enamoured of, infatuated with, smitten with, devoted to.

(very) enthusiastic about, fanatical about.

Informal: Wild about, mad about, nuts about, hog-wild about, gone on.

There is an additional informal use for the word ‘mad’ often used in British English, meaning angry or furious.

So by definition, the term ‘crazy’ has already paradoxical meanings. To be wild in an aggressive way could actually be the opposite of passionate and devoted in an enthusiastic way. Or could they?

Well, before proceeding it is worth noting that the origin of the word ‘enthusiasm’ — which some use perhaps without knowing its actual etymology — comes from French enthousiasme (16th Century) and directly from Late Latin enthusiasmus; from Greek enthousiasmos “divine inspiration, enthusiasm (produced by certain kinds of music, etc.)”; from enthousiazein “be inspired or possessed by a god, be rapt, be in ecstasy”; from entheos “divinely inspired, possessed by a god”, from en ‘in’ + theos, god (from PIE root *dhes-, forming words for religious concepts).

Under the Puritans around 1650s, the word came to acquire a derogatory sense of “excessive religious emotion through the conceit of special revelation from God”; generalised meaning “fervour, zeal”, which is the main modern sense first recorded in 1716.

Personally, this deeper meaning of enthusiasm echoes with the Fire of the Soul I often speak of, especially when passionately talking about full moon drum circles. Thank you, Isaac Asimov for this linguistic nugget.

That being said, following in the same series here on One Lucky Soul there is The Intertwining of Music and Sexuality ― A Djembefola’s Tale (2017) as well as The Intertwining of Pain and Pleasure (2022).

Now we carry on the exploration.

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What’s a Genius?

The word ‘genius’ originates from Latin genius, meaning guardian deity or guiding spirit (tutelary deity) that watches over a person from birth; a spirit of wit, incarnation, talent; also “prophetic skill”, originally rooted in “generative power”. The noun is related to the Latin verb genui and genitus, “to bring into being, create, produce”. This sense comes from the Latin gignere, which means “to produce”, beautifully resembling the Arabic word jinnī (جنّي) and lives on in today’s modern vocabulary as genie.

Because the achievements of exceptional individuals seemed to indicate the presence of a particularly powerful guiding spirit, by the time of Augustus the word evolved to acquire its secondary meaning of “inspiration and talent”. The framework shifted from having a genius to being a genius — someone born with exceptional natural ability. This modern sense was commonly used in the English language by the beginning of the 17th Century.

Labelling someone a genius is not just a matter of being highly intelligent. Neither is it about possessing an exceptionally high IQ. Many see standard IQ metrics as an inaccurate way to reflect how smart a person truly is, since tests only measure a limited slice of the total intelligence, rather than the full cognitive abilities — like short-term memory, deep reasoning, and verbal components. Some even regard high test scores as having little to do with real genius; IQ remains an ambiguous, controversial measure that is only considered useful in conjunction with professional, multi-layered clinical assessments.

Then there is Emotional Intelligence (EI) — a whole different animal. Also known as Emotional Quotient (EQ), it is a dynamic that could, and probably should, be covered in an exposé by itself, especially since the subject is far less studied and understood than standard IQ.

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On a parallel note, other pieces in this lineage are:
• Dealing with High Awareness and Empathic Accuracy (2016)
• Theory of Mind: Thinking About Thinking and the Benefits of Observing the Observer (2020).

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How many times have we seen or known someone who possesses a brilliant memory but poor reasoning? Or great language skills but terrible memory retention? Or a superthinker who isn’t eloquent with words? A whole lot, especially if we open our mind’s eye in awareness. Such individuals are genuinely intelligent and can easily adapt to different circumstances. But, that alone is not enough for genius. Genius transcends the ‘intelligence’ label because they minds seem to excel in whatever they passionately put their focus into.

Not all intelligent people are geniuses, but all geniuses are highly intelligent. Genius, actually, possesses an additional talent which Einstein has gloriously called “Intelligence having fun”, and that’s CREATIVITY.

A genius has a creative mind that is much more imaginative and constructive than a merely intelligent person. This creativity can lead to invention, which is one of the essential requirements of genius. Resonating with the words of Arthur Schopenhauer words, Talent hits a target no one else can hit, while genius hits a target no one else can see. Indeed, no one has an eye for something nobody has seen before.

Intelligence, is defined as having the capacity for thought and reason, especially to a high level, while possessing sound knowledge. Linguistically speaking, the word ‘brilliant’ usually follows, denoting an unusual and impressive mental capacity. Then, at the peak comes genius — the brilliant, the talented, and the highly creative. That is exactly why they hit targets no one even knows about.

Conventional wisdom tells us that a genius is different from everyone else because they see the world through entirely different eyes. They are those who possess extraordinary intellectual capacity and profound originality. While exceptional intelligence is central to genius — with some scoring IQs of 140 and higher — not all geniuses track well on standard tests or perform cleanly in school. As a matter of fact, some prodigies were told by their teachers that they weren’t going to amount to anything, only to prove them spectacularly wrong. This friction occurs because to blindly conform often seems outright stupid to a genius.

Speaking of, a late 1960s longitudinal study of creative potential conducted by NASA and led by George Land found that a staggering 98 percent of 4 and 5-year-old preschoolers scored at the “creative genius” level. Once the children enter traditional education, the number dropped to 12 percent for 15-year-olds and to a meagre 2 percent for adults. That’s institutional education for you — dumbing down generation after generation of natural born geniuses while forcefully adjusting them to the world.

Aldous Huxley already knew: “The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.”

Verily, one essential key to a full and fulfilling life is to never lose the wondrous curiosity or childlike enthusiasm. To be a creative adult requires just the same.
And Remember the pristine etymology of enthusiasm? Entheos — divinely inspired, possessed by a god.

In the 18th Century, before Huxley it was Charles Baudelaire who remarked: “Genius is nothing more nor less than childhood recaptured at will.”

And Schopenhauer mirrored the sentiment: “Every child is in a way a genius; and every genius is in a way a child.”

Mayhap a future piece ought to tackle the explicit intertwining of genius and children.

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Now, apart from heightened brain activity, genius also demands a vigorous sense of curiosity. A genius is someone who can always see the macro, big picture of things; someone commonly known as “ahead of their times,” who breaks new ground with their discoveries, inventions, or works of art. Usually, the genius’s work — the creations — fundamentally changes the way people view the world or the specific field in which they excelled. Their influence is so immense that they can single-handedly shift global paradigms.

In many cases, the recognition only arrives after the creator is dead. This happens because it takes considerable time for the majority to catch up and comprehend the depth behind the work. As Timothy Leary put it, “Nobody ever understands what a pioneer is doing”. That’s because nobody has an eye for something no one has seen before.

But generally speaking, whoever earns the label of genius is he or she who transcends mere intelligence; their intellect must be coupled with the ability to use that capacity in a productive or inspiring way.

So beside the biological differences, what is the secret of genius?

Well, it is well-established that one of the core traits of highly creative people is the ability to disregard unimportant, insignificant distractions. Without the noise, they secure a better opportunity to concentrate fully on what they are doing in their Here and Now. Whatever it is they are into, they are able to execute it consistently and with relentless perseverance — with “indefatigable assiduity” — and that’s how geniuses habitually excel and achieve things no one has before. Even Einstein himself insisted that he possessed no special talent and that he was only passionately curious. And in such sense, being extremely enthusiastic and passionate, Einstein was definitely crazy... and highly crazy too.

In psychology, this “disregarding the unimportant” behaviour in a creative genius is described as low latent inhibition. Meaning, they possess a subconscious ability to reject unimportant or irrelevant stimuli, which naturally allows them to remain in direct contact with the extra streams of information constantly pouring in from everywhere around them. The genius is infinitely more aware and conscious of their surroundings than the average Joe; they are constantly observing the underlying patterns in life to learn from them. That is how they extract wisdom — sometimes without even knowing how that inner, intuitive knowing came to being. For patterns are the real guru.

American philosopher and psychologist William James considered this exquisite art of knowing what to overlook to be actual wisdom.

Much earlier, Rumi stated more or less the same: “The art of knowing is knowing what to ignore.”

There is also Henry David Thoreau who made a distinction between genius and artist: “The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. The Man of Genius, referred to mankind, is an originator, an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work in obedience to laws yet unexplored. The Artist is he who detects and applies the law from observation of the works of Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is he who merely applies the rules which others have detected. There has been no man of pure Genius; as there has been none wholly destitute of Genius.”

Another less discussed characteristic of genius is the rare capacity to spot and recognise genius in others — an observation that is, in itself, an act of distinct talent. It requires an innate sensitivity to see the precise, hidden method within the madness, or to look directly through the mask of apparent sanity. It takes one to know one.

Creativity, unconventional thinking, and a bit of chaos ought
to be embraced and celebrated, Alice.
— Burning Man Decompression

FoolWise

Now let us foolosophise a little, shall we.

Sanity is essentially a societal construct. Just as “normal” is an illusion — a myth, as Gabor Maté sophisticatedly articulated in his book Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, and Healing in a Toxic Culture.

And just like any other consensus concept, the average majority gets to form the rules. The average don’t like their safe worldview challenged. For them, anyone who transcends their baseline of sanity by acting, creating, or thinking differently is automatically labelled a lunatic, a deviant, or someone who isn't ‘normal’ according to their rigid beliefs.

In reality, anything that originates from outside our collective norms and isn’t immediately understood tends to be deemed insane by the general population —feared at first, then crucified as heresy or blasphemy. Just like Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, and just like the historical track record of prophets and seers, the fear of novelty — the unknown, or “the end of the known” — always stems from pure ignorance. , from not understanding. Because, again, it is the average majority that sets the the moving target of what is considered ‘normal’, ‘sane’.

Consider the Rock & Roll is the music of the devil moral panic in 1950s America. Before that, it was the Wright Brothers, Columbus, and Galileo among countless others who were cast out as ‘insane’ for daring to think outside the box. Less understanding always breeds more fear.

As mentioned in the opening, Plato explicitly distinguished between the good God-given madness — Theia mania — and the bad destructive human madness characterised by a clinical lack of self control. He systematically divided that divine madness into four distinct channels: that is the general forms of mental illness

• Prophetic Madness, delivered by Apollo.

• Poetic Madness, channelled from the Muses.

• Initiatory Madness, ignited by Dionysus

• Erotic Madness, sparked by Aphrodite and Eros

In both the Symposium and Phaedrus, Plato explains that absolute love cannot be pursued through cold soberness. Love is a divine madness, and because philosophers are madly in love with wisdom, rational madness becomes an essential pillar of “the good life”. Aristotle then took the baton, concluding that all geniuses, without exception, are of a melancholy temperament.

Emphasising Plato’s notion, centuries later, C.S Lewis said that the love of knowledge is its own kind of madness — a statement that resonates with my own framework.

Interestingly, many of these mammoth historical souls were wise and humble enough to also view themselves as fools — certain of absolutely nothing but their own ignorance. For only the true fool thinks he knows; only he sees the world in rigid, sterile absolutes; and only he ceases to learn.

The Intertwining of Genius and Insanity by Omar Cherif, One Lucky Soul

Uhhh

In the eye-opening asylum register displayed above, the documented reasons for institutional admission in the late 1800s included “Novel reading,” “Political Excitement,” “Religions Enthusiasm” “Tobacco and Masturbation,” and simply “Laziness”. Yep. Read that list again. And that wasn’t aeons ago. Homosexuality was officially classified as a psychiatric personality disorder requiring medical intervention until as recently as 1973. This historical reality may seem absurdly funny or ridiculous to a modern reader, but can you truly grasp how radically different the architecture of “truth” was a mere century ago?

Until not so long ago, people could legally report family members — including independent wives and ageing parents — who would be quietly sent off to the funny farm and often kept there against their will. That was how a countless number of sovereign souls rotted away in mental institutions.

Looking again at that 19th-century relic, I myself would have easily been admitted on a variety of counts. “Mental Excitement” alone would have sealed my fate, pff. According to their metrics, I am clinically insane in the membrane and require immediate help by way of being locked in a cage. It is quite scary, really: For an institutional authority, an entity, to hold such unchecked power over human consciousness is as vile as it is inhumane.

Astonishingly, a minority of modern psychiatrists still hold the audacity to suggest that non-conformity is an active mental illness.

As you can see, the concept of sanity and mental health in societies — and according to the law — keeps mutating over time, and likely, that will always be the case. Who knows? Maybe in the next 50 or 200 years, those who are wired differently will be celebrated as pioneers instead of being diagnosed, labelled, medicated, and dulled. If we have extracted anything from history, is that one rule remains certain: Future generations will keep pushing the envelope by challenging and refining the exhausted older paradigms, including the field of psychology itself. That is evolution, Ladies and Gentlemen. For Change Is The Only Constant.

It is of critical importance to note however, that not all sorts of mental suffering are fictitious or harmless. Let us not fall into the pit of romanticising actual insanity. Losing your grip on reality is not an artistic aesthetic — it ain’t pretty, let me tell you frankly. The Human Condition is infinitely more complex and nuanced than mere clinical boxes and insurance labels.

Severe conditions like bipolar disorder or deep clinical depression require real, compassionate support, because left untreated, they can spiral directly into addiction and suicide. In fact, Vincent van Gogh was among those geniuses who fought severe, terrifying illness; he suffered from profound depression, mutilated his own ear in 1888, entered an asylum, and ultimately shot himself in 1890 at the age of 37 — right whilst painting at the absolute height of his creative fire. That is the tragedy of serious illness.

Then again, who gets to decide who is truly insane? Does institutional psychiatry hold the final say?

Well, in 1973, Stanford psychologist David Rosenhan set out to test the validity of psychiatric diagnoses in mental health institutions by designing a legendary study: On Being Sane in Insane Places. He sent eight healthy, completely “normal” pseudopatients to different psychiatric hospitals across the United States. Their entry token? They simply claimed they could hear a vague, single voice saying words like “thud” or “hollow,” and nothing else; why the sting was universally dubbed the “Thud Experiment.” Once admitted, they dropped the act entirely, behaved normally, and spent their days taking meticulous field notes.

The result? Every single one of the eight volunteers was diagnosed with a severe mental illness — seven labelled with schizophrenia and one with manic-depressive psychosis. Their only way out of the self-induced trap was to agree with the doctors, admit they were mentally ill, and consent to taking psychotropic drugs (which, fortunately for them, were pocketed and discarded down the toilets).

The remarkable twist in the data is that 35 actual patients who came across the volunteers could see through the act. “You’re not crazy. You’re a journalist or a professor checking up on this place.” Ha! It takes one to know one, how about that?

When Rosenhan eventually published the results in Science, it shook the foundations of the medical establishment. It revealed how common misdiagnosis was, and proved that psychiatric labels are heavily manufactured by institutional perception rather than actual reality. The results showed how fragile, blurred, and completely nebulous the boundary line between sanity and insanity truly seems.

The Rosenhan Effect permanently changed the landscape, accelerating the historical movement to reform mental institutions and deinstitutionalise as many mislabelled patients as possible.

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However, as shared more recently in Random Stuff You May Not Know: Seventeen, this legendary piece of anti-psychiatry folklore contains a final, darker twist on the other side of the coin.

In her investigative book The Great Pretender: The Undercover Mission That Changed Our Understanding of Madness, author Susannah Cahalan sets out to track down Rosenhan’s original pseudopatients. Her findings are startling: she suggests that Rosenhan may have heavily “fudged” and manipulated his data to fit his preferred narrative. It appears that even the visionary psychologist who dedicated his career to exposing the “God complex” of institutional doctors may have possessed a bit of one himself — operating as a deceptive double agent in his own experiment.

For a visceral, cinematic look at this exact era of institutional dread, one can always turn to Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1962). While it doesn’t chronicle Rosenhan directly, the 1975 film adaptation starring Jack Nicholson remains the gold standard for watching a “sane” man become hopelessly trapped inside an insane system that refuses to let him out.

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Who’s Mad?

Science has long theorised that there is a distinct link associating heightened creativity and intelligence with mental illness. During the 19th Century, early clinical diagnoses seemed to confirm the ancient assumption of a certain alliance between genius and madness.

However, today the empirical evidence remains elusive, and psychologists are still unable to reach a consensus on why there should be any connection between the two — or whether madness enhances genius or ultimately diminishes it. What we do know is that some of the greatest, most creative minds in human history were exceptionally quirky, eccentric individuals who displayed apparent signs of mental oddity. Some fought severe depression, some showed signs of bipolar disorder or OCD, while others were never formally diagnosed. Because they never really presented symptoms of clinical insanity, they left us with nothing but speculations. Yet, all mad geniuses seem to have possessed a form of extra brain power that distinguished them from the collective baseline.

Sometimes, this cognitive oddness is paired with a remarkable ability to simplify highly complex ideas into accessible forms, thereby reaching a much wider audience. Indeed, simplicity tends to be deeper than complexity. ‘Tis the reason why that which is simple often passes unperceived by the complex. Resonating with Albert Einstein when he noted: “Genius is making complex ideas simple, not making simple ideas complex.”

He also famously stated: “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Truly, if we carefully observe the world around us, we will find that the more one masters a certain domain, the more simplification they will actively strive for.

Other times, it seems that only a select few can appreciate or perhaps truly comprehend the works of such exceptional spirits — whether due to its dense complexity, its utter simplicity, or likely a paradox of both. And as mentioned, true recognition may only follow long after the person departs this physical existence.

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May you always value and cherish the simple little things in Life.
For they make a significant difference and hence are the most essential.

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Historians believe that Tolstoy, Darwin, Beethoven, Michelangelo, Dickens, and Newton, to name a few, could easily fall into this category. It is established that more renowned creative minds like writers Mary Shelley, Virginia Woolf, and Ernest Hemingway also suffered from intense forms of mental illnesses. In some strange, groundbreaking way that has not been fully decoded, such bouts of madness directly influenced their masterpieces while inspiring countless other creatives across the ages. Indeed, they were a little mad, but they were also spectacularly great at whatever they chose to execute — certainly unique. So, call it the necessary price to pay for brilliance and genuine authenticity.

There is also Edgar Allen Poe who wrote:

“That what you mistake for madness is but overacuteness of the sense”.

Also Poe: “Men have called me mad; but the question is not yet settled, whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence – whether much that is glorious – whether all that is profound – does not spring from disease of thought – from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.”

Another gifted spirit is mathematician John Nash [photo below], whose staggering story was popularised by the award-winning film A Beautiful Mind. Despite struggling with severe paranoid schizophrenia and experiencing frequent hallucinations and delusions, this virtuoso transformed the face of modern science. a whole lot to science.

After 30 years of shifting in and out of psychiatric institutions, Nash was finally able to make a significant recovery from his illness by the late 1980s. In 1994, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences for his groundbreaking early work with Game Theory.

John Nash is the owner of a “Beautiful Mind”

What is fascinating is that when asked about his recovery, Nash suggested that irrational thought actually has its own benefits, emphasising that rationality wasn’t entirely a source of joy to him.

“One aspect of this is that rationality of thought imposes a limit on a person’s concept of his relation to the cosmos.”

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You are a sage and you are a lunatic. You are also the One capable of transcending this seeming duality just by observing the observer.

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Reflecting further on the matter, relying on cold rationality alone offers absolutely no guarantees for internal happiness or peace of mind, just as relying on reason alone offers zero solace in dealing with the raw uncertainties and absurdities of life. The logical rational mind, you see, has its limitations. Or again, in the eternal words of Albert Einstein, “Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.”

For the complete human experience, we require emotion and visceral experience, just as we require unbridled imagination, unquenched curiosity, and intuition. Intuition essentially means learning from within; in-sight, as an act of inner seeing. It is a direct, untaught perception of truth, a non inferential knowledge, which makes it an integral, foundational element of mysticism.  

More often than not, intuition and primal instinct will flatly contradict what the calculating rational mind is telling you. It is precisely why a massive portion of ancient Zen teachings are encapsulated in koans and paradoxes — to explicitly demonstrate the structural inadequacy of logical reasoning, and to teach how to transcend its limitations in order to reach the intuitive endeavour of true enlightenment.

 Courage, along with a certain fluid openness towards the unknown, must also join the arsenal. When all these elements are combined, an individual may finally become whole in the full, unvarnished sense of the word.

“The psychotic drowns in the same waters in which the mystic swims with delight.”
― Joseph Campbell

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Kim Peek is another brainiac savant — or megasavent as he is known. He was the literal inspiration for the character of Raymond Babbitt, played by Dustin Hoffman in yet another classic film, Rain Man. Cute-man Peek’s label was FG syndrome — a rare genetic condition linked to the X chromosome causing physical anomalies and developmental delays.

You can watch his full story in this documentary here: The Real Rain Man - Documentary.

“Madness is the acme of intelligence.”

― Naguib Mahfouz

Kim Peek: The actual Rain Man

We’re All Mad

This is where I personally think THE line is drawn. This is when you get to be kept outside of the loony bin: By doing your own thing; by being fully into something, anything; by embracing your madness — which is your own individuality and uniqueness — and not denying or fighting it; by channelling this difference into something productive and functional, such as creating something that wasn't there before. You see, it is relatively easy to lose one’s head in this life, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. But it seems that the point is how to use that loss as an advantage to gain something else.

When we really think about it, all these geniuses we mentioned were not crazy in any negative sense like the one portrayed in the dictionaries. Their madness may only be slightly different than the institutionalised mental illness. While the dramatic stories told about individual geniuses tend to distort the overall relationship of mental illness and creativity, many of them could still distinguish fantasy from reality and were able to rationally conduct their affairs without the impulsive behaviour of an actual case of psychosis.

The thing is that throughout the ages, the words ‘crazy’, ‘insane’, and ‘mad’ have carried shifting connotations across various contexts. They have come to include the mentally diseased, the genius, the wild and passionately enthusiastic, as well as... anyone different who isn’t understood and who is considered “not normal” compared to the average standard of normality.

Even though being mentally different entails lots of ups and downs, those mad geniuses simply live in a different reality, possibly due to their minds being wired differently. Their thinking patterns and brain connections may not match with the average. Oftentimes, the irregularity is diagnosed as an illness. Subsequently, they are labelled insane by the “normal” majority who get to form all concepts, sanity included.

However, one man’s normal is nothing but another man’s crazy, and vice versa. To each his own, for reality is relative and not absolute. As always, “those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” This is the reason why it is said that there is a mighty fine line between the realities of both genius and crazy. And sometimes, differentiating between where one ends and the other begins leaves us with nothing but a quagmire of uncertainty.

As we have seen, the diagnosis will always keep changing with the ages. But most probably, I think genius will always border on insanity. Scientifically speaking though, to establish a definitive connection or even distinction between psychological illness and creative thinking remains a slippery and ambitious task... for now.

“Geniuses are like thunderstorms. They go against the wind, terrify people,
cleanse the air.”
— Søren Kierkegaard

The Intertwining of Genius and Insanity by Omar Cherif, One Lucky SoulKim Peek: The actual Rain Man

Mad Matter: “ Have I gone mad?”
Alice: “ I’m afraid so. You’re entirely bonkers. But I’ll tell you a secret.
All the best people are.”

Other than my interest in the nature of human behaviour and personalities, as well as the Human Condition as a whole, the chief reason why the concept of insanity fascinates me personally is that since my early-mid teens I had been relentlessly called crazy, strange, and daring by friends and acquaintances. Now, by online friends and some readers. Back in the days, I never really new what it meant, though I was inclined to believe them. “You must have taken too many psychedelics,” my young brain was trying to convince itself, searching for any rational reason as to why so many tell me that so often. But the reality is, by that time this psychonaut hadn’t had enough time to experiment with many substances, for I was literally still finalising my teenage years.

Later, I realised that I was, and maybe still am, regarded as crazy mainly because I was rather different and unusual, perhaps not well understood. I simply am myself. Not because I am a brainiac genius or a full loony, for it seems I’m somewhere in between. But because others — or a large chunk of the majority — probably couldn’t relate to the unrestricted originality; to some of the things I say or do, especially whatever random joke or silly song I would blurt out in the most unexpected of times.

Be it at school, university, work, or regarding how I lead my life in general, I could often see that lost yet bemused gaze in their eyes, along with maybe a subtle amused smile depending on the situation. This taught me to repeat myself sometimes, rewording and simplifying for better clarity, which I think over the years led to being a decent communicator.

In the beginning of my writing journey, I would still receive similar reactions through my text. But then I kept on keeping on and stopped caring. Yet I’m someone who was never clinically diagnosed with a mental dysfunction. Just a little different, that is all, and I absolutely do not hide it. Because if I was really batshit ‘institution’ crazy, how come I’m still here in full liberty, coherently [or so I hope] writing a piece about insanity? Maybe I’ll get there later in life, like on bi-Polar Bear Day.

Besides, the batshit ‘institution’ crazy folks don’t know they’re crazy. I know I’m crazy, therefore I’m not crazy. Crazy, huh. Truly, if I had a dollar for every time someone called me crazy, I’d build a mental asylum and check them into it one by one.

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Now seriously, I do hold that everyone has a creative, crazy, genius child inside of them who just need to be fed right. Again here, madness refers to our own individuality, uniqueness, being our full unapologetic selves. Unfortunately, in the case of many, the child is dulled by the standardised, left-brain dominant education we find in schools today. They lose their shine and colours and wings to conform to a grim, grey reality — as exemplified in the NASA study. Children are slowly but surely conditioned to accept that being part of the herd is the well-adjusted, normal, non-crazy thing to do.

In some rare cases, however, the genius is kept into adulthood. And the price to pay for uniqueness and unconventionality is to be perceived as bizarre and idiosyncratic. That is why I found it of importance to elaborate on what insanity is and isn’t to others as well as to myself.

Looking back at those example from history made me see the other side of the equation. It actually made me appreciate being myself, which for others is being different. And if that comes with being perceived as odd or a bit bonkers by the commonly average — at least sometimes — then so be it. I have absolutely no problem with that. If anything in fact, it is a compliment; that is as opposed to being unremarkably ordinary, or trying to appear as such. This is who I really am at the core, without acting, pretending, or caring much about what others think. I see being honest with oneself as a blissful blessing, which naturally separates you from many, if not most people. I now enjoy the craziness and embrace it even more; I recognise and welcome it in a friendly manner à la Carl Jung, even use it to my favour by way of creativity — and as Plato would see it, as being touched by the otherness, enthusiastically so. Wink.

Others can, and even ought to do the same. Because let’s face it, we’re ALL crazy somehow... because we’re all unique. Some, you see, just constantly exert an effort to hide that difference — beyond their quirks, peculiarities, eccentricities — in a meagre attempt to appear normal and well-adjusted just to fit in. Certainly, this is neither natural nor healthy. In the words of Sigmund Freud, “The more perfect a person is on the outside, the more demons they have on the inside.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti echoed the same sentiment: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” Hear Hear.

Verily, one should not be afraid to show their true individualistic self behind the mask(s). The real deal, the authentic nefelibata. For being true to oneself is a fundamental aspect of our own well-being.

— ☙ ❊ ❧ —— ☙ ❊ ❧ —— ☙ ❊ ❧ —

In a purple fluorescent NUTshell, the connection between genius and insanity remains a fascinating and peculiar topic 2500 years after first being discussed in ancient Greece. Apart from the clinical definition, being called insane merely means being different than the rest. Sometimes it’s genetic, causing some oddities in the brain like the case of John Nash and Kim Peek, which allows them to excel in one field while facing difficulties in others. Other times, it’s just a lazy label the average gives to those they do not comprehend — perhaps some minor physical oddities exist here as well, yet are less noticeable, or not.

A genius is best defined by how they use their difference to create. Geniuses are certainly different, and as we have seen, most were abnormal to a certain degree. So if you are different for whatever reason, and feel it deep inside of you, act upon it while using that difference as an advantage. Your originality and creativity are gifts you are born with; for no one can come up with an idea quite like you.

There is also a collective benefit for doing so: The live example you give to others so that them, too, can be themselves. Who knows what you, or them, could achieve just by being yourselves. Perhaps you’ll be remembered in history as one of those geniuses and I get to add your photo on here. Or, you may end up in the funny farm but I’ll still write about you. It’s all but a choice what you do with your madness. Personally, I see it as a win-win situation.

No matter how weird or quirky you think you are, always be you. For the only way out is in. But how would I know? I’m just crazy.