The Mind Creative AUGUST 2014 | Page 6

The Mind Creative All of us at some stage in our lives, have heard of or come across cases of “creative” people plagued with mental instabilities or disorders like depression and bipolar disorder. So much so, that mental illness has often been described as “the dark side” of creativity. Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin, Tennessee Williams, and Eugene O'Neill all appeared to suffer from clinical depression. And the list goes on. Ernest Hemingway, Leo Tolstoy, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Vincent Van Gogh and many other, who led lives that were finely balanced between talent and mental torment. Psychoanalysts, psychologists and psychiatrists have long been fascinated with the link b