The Midnight Disease

[Michael Chocholak]

Anybody read The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer's Block, and the Creative Brain?

Description:
What underlies the human ability, desire, and even compulsion to write? Alice Flaherty first explores the brain state called hypergraphia - the overwhelming desire to write - and the science behind its antithesis, writer's block. As a leading neurologist at a major research hospital, Flaherty writes from the front lines of brain research. Her voice, driven and surprisingly original, has its roots in her own experiences of hypergraphia, triggered by a postpartum mood disorder. Both qualifications lend power to Flaherty's riveting connection between the biology of human longing and the drive to communicate. The Midnight Disease charts exciting new territory concerning the roles of mind and body in the creative process. Flaherty - whose engagement with her patients and lifelong passion for literature enrich each page - argues for the importance of emotion in writing, illuminates the role that mood disorders play in the lives of many writers, and explores with profound insight the experience of being "visited by the muse." Her understanding of the role of the brain's temporal lobes and limbic system in the drive to write challenges the popular idea that creativity emerges solely from the right side of the brain. Finally, The Midnight Disease casts lights on the methods and madness of writers past and present, from Dostoevsky to Conrad, from Sylvia Plath to Stephen King. The Midnight Disease brings the very latest brain science to bear on the most compelling questions surrounding human creativity.

That's a pub blurb from http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/catalog/titledetail.cfm?titleNumber=688190

NPR also did a piece on it; http://www.npr.org/display_pages/features/feature_1623749.html

The term used here is hypergraphia, but it might as well be hypercomposia.

I'm definitely one of those people that walks into the studio at a fairly reasonable hour and then staggers out exhausted but still wired at some wee hour of the next day. That's where most of my creative work has come from. My family has learned to live with this and I was never too concerned about it considering the results. Now I find it's considered by some an aberrant mental condition! Akin to 'Dostoevsky's disease', a form of temporal lobe epilepsy that generally has no physical symptoms but is characterized by emotional and intellectual euphoria.

This reminds me of previous concerns regarding artists being bipolar or manic-depressive to the extent that some have suggested that if Picasso or Van Gogh where alive today, they should be put on meds and the world could simply do without the Blue Period or Starry Night.

As a social worker, as well as an artist, I'm well aware of the dangers of highs and lows, and I know what it can do to some folks. Still, I'm addicted to the creative act and have never felt comfortable with the movement of well intentioned professionals to view the wrestling match with the muse as an illness or their willingness to provide a 'cure'.

[elektro80]

Nope, haven´t read that book. She provides a cure too? Lock up writers in big mansion and provide them with an ample supply of electroshocks?

I guess creative sessions can as well be described as induced states. You sit down and want to do something.. and get into it.. and suddenly the euphoria is switched on. IN this context one might ask if similar mechanisms are triggered for music listeners and book readers.

[elektro80]

[Michael Chocholak]

Yeah, we do seem to have a blind spot when it comes to the political leaders that cause so much death, destruction and tragedy. I like the concept of medicating them to make the world a better place. Of course we could also simply stop electing assholes in those countries where we have a 'choice.' And then again we have guys like Geogre who have been 'medicating' themselves most of their lives - and probably still are. (btw - that's a typo, but I kinda like it - George the ogre)

Maybe the concentration on the creative act (right, not just artists) is displacement behavior because people refuse to confront the derangement of our leaders.

I've tried to actually turn it around and pursue art as therapy a number of times. It worked but it was much too radical an idea for the state. I don't know about the rest of the world, but here it seems like handing out a pill is the easy fix for practically everything. Sometimes that's what it takes. But too often its because people and the professionals they seek help from don't want to take the time, effort and responsibility to achieve a more fundamental solution. And, of course, because the pharmaceuticals are in everyone's bed & pocket.

Electroshock has made a comeback a number of times. Sometimes it appears to work. But it's pretty chilling and medieval. Might as well use the old egyptian trepanation cure; http://www.salon.com/health/feature/1999/04/29/trepanation/print.html & http://www.trepan.com/index.html. Hey, maybe lobotomies will make a comeback too!

Anyway, when the creative act an its often attendant emotional states becomes a potential reason for professional intervention, I find it spooky. But of course, perhaps I am just being... paranoid.

[Michael Chocholak]

Just remembered a movie that takes this to it's logical Hollywood extreme; Equilibrium where under a one world gov't, everyone is medicated and ALL artists are underground criminals pursued by SWAT cleansing teams. Because you see, it turns out that war and violence are the offspring of emotion, and art is the ultimate culprit since it since it cultivates and amplifies our ability to feel. Flatline that & we're all home free!