ART AND THE WARPED VISION
177
It seems meaningless to speak of
neurotic
art, except in refer–
ring to the exercises of mental patients, which might yield some–
thing neurotic--or psychotic
2
-but not art. On the other hand, it
is equally meaningless to speak of a
healthy
art or of the creative
act as a triumph of health over illness, since the term healthy can
only be pejorative: it does not describe a specific form or content.
If
all we mean by a triumph of such health is that instead of
collapsing a writer produced a poem or story, then this is only
another way of saying that his neurosis did not completely paralyze
him. To characterize, for example, Rilke's spurts of productivity,
in between long fallow periods, as signs of health is simply to juggle
the word so as to define writing as healthy. One might just as well
call it neurotic, since the process of composition was obsessive and
dreamlike. Certainly the creative ,act often resembles compulsive
fits and states of hallucination, and all we gain by calling it
healthy rather than neurotic is the reassurance of knowing that we
are not reveling in disease.
In what sense, then, does neurosis have something to do with
art? To begin with, there is the fact that many, if not most, writers,
painters, and musicians in the modern period have been neurotic.
It is true, of course, that people who are not creative may also be
neurotic; hence the popular belief that the connection between art
and neurosis has been much exaggerated. Perhaps the only way to
settle this question in a seemingly scientific way would be to tabulate
neuroses to determine whether creative people suffer more than
others, and whether their neuroses are different in kind or degree.
In a time when every conceivable question
has
become the subject
of a poll,
it
is surprising that no statistical study of neurosis has ever
been attempted. But even if such a study showed, as I suspect it
would, that creative people are distinguished not by their neurosis
but by their creations, it still might be true that neurosis, though
not
sufficient
for the production of art, may be
necessary
for it.
Recently a study of a German writer and thinker appeared under
the title,
The Mind of a Genius.
Though it was obviously not
its intent, what struck one most about the book was the fact that
2 I have been using mainly the more common and less extreme term
"neurotic," but much of what I have been saying could apply to psychosis or
psychotic tendencies.
