Wednesday, August 13, 2014

Comedic genius and mental illness

The Scientific American web site carries an article/blog post under the following title: “Robin Williams’s Comedic Genius Was Not a Result of Mental Illness, but His Suicide Was.” The author, Scott Barry Kaufman, is a recognized authority on creativity. I am wondering why he didn’t think/write of Shelley Carson’s “shared vulnerability” theory to which he has referred in the past.  In a nutshell, Carson’s theory (which she recently outlined for the lay public in Scientific American) states that extremely creative individuals and those suffering from schizophrenia and a few other mental maladies have similar neurosomatic predispositions. I guess after each suicide or semi-suicide by a particularly gifted celebrity Shelley is tempted to sigh: “I told you so!”