From Vincent van Gogh to Charles Dickens, the "tortured artist" rhetoric is a common one. Although there is no sound (nor scientific) correlation, there appears to be a link between depression and creativity.
Sylvia Plath, famed for both her tragic suicide and quixotic poetry, rawly expressed her experience with mental illness in her 1963 novel, "The Bell Jar." Plath used the titular item, a bell jar, to explain the suffocating reality of depression:
"[W]herever I sat — on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok — I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air."
The artist is invariably trapped inside themselves; the mind of someone that suffers from depression can be a personal hell.
And although Plath's torment was well-documented, she is not the only afflicted writer. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams all appeared to have depression. As did Virginia Woolf, who famously drowned herself in the River Ouse.
This must mean something. In the very least, it begets a myriad of questions. Why are so many creatives (writers, painters, architects, comedians, photographers...) plagued with bouts of melancholy and self-hatred? Is their creativity a product of their depression, or the other way around?
This is a topic near to my heart. I have clinical depression and consider myself a creative type -- or at least an aspiring one. I have a stake in the outcome.
Unfortunately, my depression did not aid my creative process. At my worst, my mental illness kept me apathetic and bedridden. It made remedial tasks difficult to accomplish. I was in constant battle with a damaged mind, one that would leave me exhausted by nightfall. There was not time to write the next great American novel. What was the purpose of all this senseless suffering? I mean, seriously...what gives?
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And my depression, as it turned out, was just depression.
It wasn't until I started taking anti-depressants that I began writing creatively again. And while I hadn't been writing fiction, I did keep a journal. It ended up reading a lot like Plath's "Bell Jar," whose main character Esther Greenwood is an undeniable iteration of the author herself. We are often our own greatest muse.
Psychologists have conducted a multitude of studies in attempt to derive an answer to this depression / creativity conundrum. And while there is plenty of anecdotal evidence to support the connection, we still don't have all the pieces to the puzzle.
One theory is reliant on rumination, or our tendency to repetitively reflect on a negative emotional experience. Rumination is something we all deal with, but it can, in excess, have an adverse effect.
Creatives tend to be contemplative, and will often replay events over and over in an effort to better understand them. Deep reflection -- particularly over a sad or painful event -- can lead to depression. Due to the fact that creatives tend to be thoughtful and inquisitive (to a fault), they are more likely to suffer severe and long-lasting depression; that is, more than the average individual.
As it seems, depression doesn't propagate creativity, it is more likely the other way around: creatives tend to over ruminate, which can lead to depression.
And though we tend to associate deep thought with writers, they are certainly not the sole sufferers.
When beloved comedian Robin Williams took his life in 2014, many (myself included) were left shocked and grieving. Although the mental illness discussion was reinvigorated with Williams' passing, comedians have always had a reputation of being sad. Woody Allen, Sarah Silverman, Jim Carrey and Ellen DeGeneres are just a few of the multitude of comedians who suffer from depression, and have spoken openly about it. Chris Farley, John Belushi and Greg Giraldo (all supposed sufferers of mental illness) died from drug overdoses.
Comedy is often a defense mechanism. A comedian may assume a caricature (the clown) to hid their dejection and self-hatred from the public. Who can hate the clown? Evidently, the clown can hate himself. Humor doesn't always equate to happiness.
Depression isn't discriminatory, and frankly, it doesn't make sense.
And yet creatives, whether it be Williams or van Gogh, manage to produce laughter and beauty regardless of their illness; they contributed to a world that never (or so they likely assumed) loved them. But in the words of another sufferer of depression, Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: "I assert that life is beautiful in spite of everything!”
And a truly brave assertion that is.
