Bipolar Creativity Learning from Mental Illness Reflections on THE ABSTRACT MIND MURAL Created by Aldo Castillo (curat

1. Bipolar Creativity Learning from Mental Illness Reflections on THE ABSTRACT MIND MURAL Created by Aldo Castillo (curator) and the Neumann Association Chicago Festival of Disability Arts and Culture (2006) Hector Sabelli, M.D., Ph. D. Chicago Center for Creative Development (CCCD)

2. The birth of Venus, the Spirit of Love, from the waves of the ocean offers an interesting metaphor for evolution: the creation of complexity by waves. Waves, such as light waves and swings of mood, are swings between opposites.

3. Magdalena Fernandez Common places Abstract Mind Mural. 2006

5. CREATION: natural and human ACTION + BIPOLARITY, + CONNECTION= DEVELOPMENT(simple origin, new, unique, and complex outcome)

6. Ingrid Garcia-Moya Freshness. Abstract Mind Mural. 2006

7. Creation is a tree

8. Creation is a tree Tree of mathematical bifurcations Ingrid Garcia-Moya Freshness.Abstract Mind Mural. 2006

9. Creation is continually accompanied by destruction: illness, ageing, environmental pollution, global warming, crime, war, terrorism, preventive war Fostering creativity is an essential component in the treatment of every loss and every illness. Objective: to be creative by intent and design, not by chance

10. How can we promote creation rather than destruction?What are the psychological traits that enhance creativity? Some answers to this question may be found in considering the well documented relation between bipolar illness and artistic creativity.

11. Incidence of Mental Illness Artists 27% Poets 50% Architects 17% Scientists 19% General population 10-12% Adele Juda (1949) Germany

12. The artistic creativity of bipolar persons Bipolar traits: 66% of award-winning writers, poets, painters and sculptors Mood disorder 40 % artists Mood disorder 80% of creative writers Akiskal H, Akiskal K. Psychiatry and Psychobiology 1988 Andreasen NC, Glick ID: Comprehensive Psychiatry, 1988 Jamison KR: Touched with fire. 1993 Ludwig AM. Creative achievement and psychopathology: comparison among professions. Am J Psychotherapy 1992; 46:330–356. Schildkraut and coworkers American Journal Psychiatry, 1994

13. Depressed and Bipolar Musicians Beethoven, Berlioz, Donizetti, Handel, Mahler, Ochs, Rachmaninoff, Schumann, Tchaikovsky Irving Berlin, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Cole Porter Alohe Jean Burke, Rosemary Clooney, DMX Earl Simmons, Ray Davies, Lenny Dee, Peter Gabriel, Jimi Hendrix, Kristen Hersh, Phyllis HymanJack Irons, Daniel Johnston, Otto Klemperer, Oscar Levant, Phil, John Ogden, Jaco PastoriusCharley Pride, Mac Rebennack, Jeannie C. Riley,Alys Robi, Axl Rose, Nick Traina, Del Shannon,Phil Spector, Sting, Gordon Tom Waits, Brian Wilson, Townes Van Zandtr

14. Depressed and Bipolar Artists Severe depression: Baziotes. Gaugin, Guston, Michelangelo, Pollock, Rothko, Georgia O'Keefe Bipolars: van Gogh, Gorky, Klein, Munch, Motherwell, Smit

15. Depressed and Bipolar Writers Andersen, Balzac, Berryman, Conrad, Dickens, Dickinson, Eliot, Emerson, Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Goethe, Greene, Hemingway, Hugo, Keats, Ibsen, Melville, Sylvia Plath, Poe, Anne Sexton, Mary Shelley, Tolstoy, Williams, Virginia Woolf

16. More depressed and bipolar Writers Louis Althusser, Art Buchwald, Neal Cassady, Patricia Cornwell, Margot  Early, Kaye Gibbons, Abbie Hoffman, Kay Redfield Jamison, Peter Nolan Lawrence, Frances Lear, Rika Lesser, Kate Millet, Robert Munsch, Margo Orum, Theodore Roethke, Lori Schiller, Frances Sherwood, Scott Simmie, August Strindberg, Mark Twain, Joseph Vasquez, Mark Vonnegut, Sol Wachtler, Mary Jane Ward

17. Being creative: using simple materials to make something new, different, usually more complex. Language: from a limited vocabulary, an infinite number of dialogues, always new, and great creations: Homer, Alighieri, Cervantes, Shakespeare, Moliere Mind: continually new thoughts Behavior: continually new sequences of actions Heartbeats: continually new rhythms

18. CREATIVITY IN PSYCHIATRY -is the hallmark of mental health -is the core of psychotherapy -requires three components: 1. ACTION is necessary for health and for therapy 2. BIPOLARITY: ability to see opposite views and to reverse role with others; neurotics, borderlines and anti-social psychopaths see the world in black and white 3. PERSONAL CONNECTIONS AND CULTURAL CONSERVATION

19. Bipolar Illness results from changes in ActionAction = energy change in time Consider togetherphysical and mental energy (biological and psychological treatment must go together)Consider togetherchanges in energy and in tempoAgency (Active, not passive change)

20. Bipolar Illness results from changes in Action Mania and Hypomania: greater energy and faster tempo: increased wakefulness and alertness, emotional reactivity, greater sensitivity, greater physical, sexual, and intellectual energy, freer expression Depression: slower and weaker action: motor retardation, longer sleep, circular obsessions, disorganized (chaotic) mood.

21. Manic depressive, an amplification of BipolarityMore love and more conflicts More creation and more destruction Ingrained contrariness and opposition to established beliefs, which frequently antagonizes other people Bifurcating personalities: more friends and more enemies Highs and lows provide the bipolar person with a dual perspective and thus greater creativity

22. In Bipolar Illness there are more Connections:interpersonal (intense affection, love, solidarity) and intrapsychic (“loose associations”, unconscious connections, imagination)and more disconnecting and branching (bifurcations): interpersonal (career changes, emigration, break-ups, lost jobs) and intrapsychic (intellectual leaps, shifts in mood, diversity of interests)

23. Learning to think creatively from Bipolar Illness: applying action, bipolarity and connection principles to scientific analysis. Example: human cardiac activity 1. Consider sequence in time: how is the sequence of heartbeats? (instead of asking what is the heart rate)2. Identify Opposites: calculate the sine and the cosine of the value of each heartbeat 3. Make Connections: -study changes in heart rhythm to study emotions -use mathematics to study heart rhythms

24. Measuring Cardiac Rhythms to study scientifically the dynamics of emotions and illness • The interval between heart beats is measured for one entire day, as the person works, interacts with others, rests, and sleeps. • These intervals show small but essential variation. A thoroughly regular heart announces death. • These variations are due to the behavior and emotions experienced by the person. • These variations continually CREATE a new, diverse and complex pattern: BIOS

25. Electrocardiogram: measure heartbeat intervals (R to R interval = RRI) Sequence of Human heartbeat intervals

26. Magdalena Fernandez Common places Human heartbeat intervals decomposed into their opposite components Mandala: the wheel of opposites is a cosmic order in nature and in art

28. The Biotic pattern of heartbeats is generated by the interaction of opposites

29. To reproduce the pattern of heartbeats (bios) mathematically with a computer one needs: 1. ACTION 2. BIPOLARITY 3. CONNECTION = CONSERVATION

30. Bios patterns, similar to the heart, appear in many processes: • The expansion of the universe • The wave function of electrons • Temperature variations of atmosphere and of ocean water • The form of rivers and shorelines • Changes in respiration rate • Economic stocks, prices, production volume • Music

31. Biotic patterns are generated by the interaction of opposites. • Mathematical models of bios require opposites • Heart: brain speeds up and slows down the heart • Attraction and repulsion among electrical charges • Weather: warm and cold fronts, warm and cold currents • Supply and demand create bios, not equilibrium, in economics

32. A wave is a fold created by opposite forces. The simplest creation is the interaction of opposites that generates a fold connecting parts that were apart.

33. As Bios patterns appears in many processes • The expansion of the universe • The wave function of electrons • Temperature variations of atmosphere and of ocean water • The form of rivers and shorelines • Changes in respiration rate • Economic stocks, prices, production volume • Music NATURAL AND HUMAN PROCESSES ARE CREATIVE, NOT DETERMINED OR RANDOM. THERE ARE ALTERNATIVES AND WE CAN CREATE THEM.

34. Creation; from simple to complex Cosmos: from Big Bang to galaxies Life: from unicellular organisms to humans History: from stone age to modern society Person: from egg to baby to adult Creation is not a single event, but continues at each moment of time We are part and parcel of creation

35. CREATION: A TREE WITH THREE ROOTSACTION: arrowsBIPOLARITY: positive/negative, left/right, woman/man, manic/depressive creating cycles (wheels, engines)CONNECTION (folds, knots, bodies )

36. DEPRESSION by Veronica Riedel A gray existence A black mood Thinking in black and white fosters depression and aggression

37. Beyond two opposites • Action (like the sequence of numbers) • Bipolarity, opposition (like the length and width of a plane) • Triads (like length, width and height) Mood Triads: Passion, self and order Love (sex), joy and peace Anger, fear (anxiety) and depression

38. The Creativeness of Three • Quantum mechanics: there are three classes of quarks (the particles that make matter) • Mathematical theorems show the creativity of three (Poincare, Sarkovskii) • Family: mother, father and child • Color: three primary colors • Three in mental categories, branches of government, Trinitarian concepts of Divinity, etc, etc

39. Quantum Physics • Action: the quantum has the dimensions of both energy and time • Opposition: atoms are formed by the electrical interaction of oppositely charged particles. • Triad: atomic nuclei are formed by the union of three quarks of three different “colors”. (Not by chance matter has three dimensions)

40. Three roots, continuing creation • Physical light has no color • Simple eyes distinguish light from dark • Evolved eyes distinguish 3 colors 4. The lower centers of the brain encode these three colors in 4: two sets of opposites 5…the cerebral cortex constructs many colors from these 4 basic colors, and as one learns painting, one learns to distinguish more and more colors

41. Three roots, continuing creation • Action • Bipolarity, opposition • Triads: quarks, colors, moods, concepts Passion, self and order 4. green: affection and growthversusenvy (greed) 5…many colors….infinity: creation never ends and strives towards something greater

42. Personal choices, National choices: Love or war? Joy or fear? Affection or greed? Peace or depression?

43. A creative manner of thinking • Action: do not remain still, do not change passively. Initiate action; be the protagonist of your own life. • Opposition: Nothing is entirely true, nothing is entirely false. Black and white thinking generates conflict and depression. • Triad: Think in color, not just in black and white, or grey. Both opposites share much that is wrong, so seek the third.

44. Think in color, not in black and white: regarding life and world as a cosmic battle between good and evil has tragic consequences Think 1, 2, 3, NOT simpler Seek to understand the oneness behind diversity, the two sides of every opposition, the creation of many Analyze behind sequence of events, who and what are opposites, what is the ever present third Act. Oppose and accept opposition. Connect and conserve.

45. Hector Sabelli B I O S a Study of Creation Hector_Sabelli@rush.edu http://creativebios.com World Scientific