Is there really a thin line between madness and genius? While many of us inherently are inclined to believe so, history is full of ideas that science has disproven. The aim of this book is to discuss the present state of knowledge on the alleged association between creativity and mental illness: if there is a true association, and if so, how this association is manifested.

Comments on the mad genius link have been made almost as long as Western society itself. Often referred is Aristotle’s (384–322 BC) question put in Problemata XXX, written by his pupil Theophrast (371–287 BC), ‘Why is it that all those who have become eminent in philosophy, politics, poetry, or the arts are clearly melancholics and some of them to such an extent as to be affected by diseases caused by the black bile?’ (Aristotle, 1984). This quote was later modified by Seneca the Younger (4 BC–AD 65) citing Aristotle to have said, ‘No great genius has existed without a strain of madness’ (Motto and Clark, 1992). Later times saw the poet John Dryden allude to this quote, arguing that, ‘Great wits are sure to madness near ally’d; and thin partitions do their bounds divide’ (Motto and Clark, 1992). A famous quote by the romantic poet Samuel Coleridge, was that his madness was, ‘a madness, indeed celestial, and glowing from a divine mind’ (Sanborn, 1886). The end of the ninteenth century also saw the birth of more scientifically inclined studies on the alleged association of creativity and mental illness. Of these, Cesare Lombroso’s study had an enduring impact on public apprehension (1891). However, as can be found in the quote by James Cattell above (1903), Lombroso fell into disrepute, and his work has since been considered as a mere collection of anecdotes.

Lombroso’s study of genius linked to madness was contemporary with other attempts to approach the question of genius with a burgeoning empirical approach. Francis Galton’s Hereditary Genius – An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences published in 1869 was a comprehensive attempt to investigate hereditary aspects of exceptional behaviour (1869). In English Men of Science: Their nature and nurture published in 1874 (1874), Galton concluded with a reference to Thomas Carlyle that, ‘It is maintained by Helvetius and his set, that an infant of genius is quite the same as any other infant, only that certain surprisingly favourable influences accompany him through life … I should as soon agree as with this other – that acorn might, by favourable or unfavourable influences of soil and climate, be nursed into a cabbage, or the cabbage-seed into an oak’ (p. ix).

Although there had been early attempts to characterize the creative process, it was Joy Paul Guilford who introduced creativity as an important field for psychological research. In his 1950s inaugural address to the American Psychological Association, Guilford characterized creativity as the most important resource available to human society (1950). He told that efforts to promote creativity would pay high dividends for society as a whole. Guilford also promoted the use of psychometrics, the measurement of creativity objectively, and argued for divergent thinking being at the heart of the creative process. Divergent thinking does not result in one right answer but rather in a number of possible solutions to an open-ended problem. Although Guilford’s idea of divergent thinking as a common factor for creativity has been debated in recent research, his influence still carries weight in the field (Runco, 2010).

Increasingly studies using sound methods have investigated the question of a link between genius and madness or more specifically creativity and psychopathology.