PTypes - Personality Types
PTypes A Correspondence of Psychiatric, Keirsey, and Enneagram Typologies Conscientious



Artistic personality type (continued)

T.S. Eliot



The Artistic Temperament

"The hyperthymic temperament, endowed with high levels of energy, extraversion, and humor, will assume leadership positions in society or excel in the performing arts or entertainment. In talented persons the cycloid temperament, which alternates between sadness and elation, could provide the inspiration and the intensity needed for composing music, painting, or writing poetry" (Aksikal, pg.1125).

Persons with hyperthymic temperament, and soft bipolar conditions in general, possess assets that permit them to assume leadership roles in business, the professions, civic life, and politics. Increased energy, sharp thinking, and self-confidence represent the virtues of an otherwise stormy life.

Creative achievement is relatively uncommon among those with the manic forms of this disorder, which is too severe and disorganizing to permit the necessary concentration and dedication. It is among those with the soft bipolar disorders, especially cyclothymic disorders, that notable artistic achievements are found. Psychosis, including severe bipolar swings, is generally incompatible with creativity. That conclusion, based on recent systematic studies, tends to refute the romantic tendency to idolize insanity as being central to the creative process. As talent is the necessary ingredient of creativity, how might soft bipolarity contribute? The simplest hypothesis is that depression could provide insights into the human condition, which, however, requires the activation associated with hypomania to produce the artistic work. A more profound interpretation would suggest that the repeated self-doubt that comes with recurrent depression might be an important ingredient of creativity, because original artistic or scientific expression is often initially rejected, and the self-confidence that accompanies repeated bouts of hypomania can help in rehearsing such ideas or expressions until they are perfected. Finally, the tempestuous object relations associated with bipolarity often create the unique life situations that might be immortalized in an artistic medium (pg. 1145).



Source: Akiskal, Hagop S. (1995). Mood Disorders: Clinical Features. Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry/VI, Vol. 1. Eds. Harold I. Kaplan and Benjamin J. Sadock. Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins.



Malcolm Lowry

  • The Malcolm Lowry Homepage

    From Malcolm Lowry: A Biography, Douglas Day, 1973. pg. 29.

    Mentally, the picture was not so clear. Insofar as it was possible to label Lowry's illness, one might have called him a cyclothymic, or small-scale, manic-depressive. By this is meant that his highs were not so high, nor his lows so low, as with classic, psychotic manic-depressives. The depressions that impelled this cycle were endogenous, that is, originating from within, rather than being a result of external causes. Precisely what there was in Lowry's psyche that prompted these depressions was never clear. Dr. Raymond, the Chief Assistant, told Margerie that Lowry possessed a "free-floating anxiety neurosis," which means, one supposes, that Lowry was able to be afraid of almost anything. Fear of life, fear of sex, fear of failure, fear of authority - fear of literally dozens of things; guilt, self-loathing; possible latent homosexuality; love of death, desire for oblivion: all of these things undoubtedly played a part in destroying Malcolm Lowry.
  • Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano

    The novel can be read simply as a story which you can skip if you want. It can be read as a story you will get more out of if you don't skip. It can be regarded as a kind of symphony, or in another way as a kind of opera--or even a horse opera. It is hot music, a poem, a song, a comedy, a farce, and so forth. It is superficial, profound, entertaining, and boring, according to taste. It is a prophecy, a political warning, a cryptogram, a preposterous movie.
    - Malcolm Lowry to his publisher Jonathan Cape, January 2, 1946

Passions



Composer: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  • Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus: the last travels - Encyclop�dia Britannica article.

    He was deeply depressed during the summer, writing of "black thoughts"; it has been suggested that he may have had a cyclothymic personality, linked with manic-depressive tendencies, which could explain not only his depression but also other aspects of his behaviour, including his spells of hectic creativity.

  • Encyclop�dia Britannica: mental disorders: affective disorders

    A less severe manifestation of the manic-depressive syndrome, in which the mood swings are present but not as extreme, is termed cyclothymic disorder. This illness is better considered a personality disorder of affective type; the prevailing mood swings are established in adolescence and continue throughout adult life.

Comedian: Jonathan Winters

  • Jonathan Winters Home Page -- Welcome!
  • He's funny, not crazy

    MONTECITO, Calif.--The one thing Jonathan Winters wants you to know right away, even before you've moved beyond the tiled entrance foyer of his house: He's not crazy.

    Moments after the handshake, he launches into a many-voiced shtick alternately describing, making fun of and setting the record straight on his long-discussed mental state. It used to be called manic-depression, what he has. Now it's bipolar disorder. It keeps being upgraded to sound more respectable, he jokes. Sure, he had two breakdowns, but those happened 40 years ago. Nothing since. It's not just the lithium, either; it's finding out what's important in life--rearing your kids, enjoying your homelife, reconciling with the ghosts of your parents....

    --Chicago Sun-Times/Frank Ahrens, January 11, 2000.

  • Jonathan Winters Sees 'Freaks' Replacing 'Clowns' - Excite News. [via Jaffo]


Book list: fiction



Creativity



Emotional responsiveness

  • "Are You Reactive or Responsive ?"

    Emotionally reactive people have some of the following symptoms:

    • quick to lose their temper
    • significant mood swings
    • prone to anxiety attacks
    • often overcome with sudden tearfulness
    • become flooded with unwanted feelings
    • say or do things they are embarrassed about later

Professor of Management

  • Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi author of Flow.

    My interests include the study of creativity, especially in art; socialization; the evolution of social and cultural systems; and the study of intrinsically rewarding behavior in work and play settings. All of these topics are connected by a conceptual approach based on systems theory.
    • Art as Flow

      Student essay on how Professor Csikszentmihalyi's theory of FLOW applies to Stevie Ray Vaughan.

      In his book, Flow, Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi discusses how human beings gain a certain energy, which he calls flow, from their activities. In his book he discusses the ways people can gain flow, what activities to partake in, how to behave, and so on. Flow is an energy gained by organizing one's consciousness in an ordered way.

The artistic temperament

  • Pen, pencil and poison: a study in green (1889) by Oscar Wilde

    IT has constantly been made a subject of reproach against artists and men of letters that they are lacking in wholeness and completeness of nature. As a rule this must necessarily be so. That very concentration of vision and intensity of purpose which is the characteristic of the artistic temperament is in itself a mode of limitation. To those who are preoccupied with the beauty of form nothing else seems of much importance.





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