Verbal Creativity, Depression and Alcoholism
Verbal Creativity, Depression and Alcoholism
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言语创造力、抑郁症和酗酒
DOI：
10.1192/bjp.168.5.545
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发表时间：
1996
影响因子：
10.5
通讯作者：
F. Post
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
F. Post
一项对291名世界著名男性的早期研究表明，与普通人群相比，只有视觉艺术家和创造性作家的病态人格特征和酗酒的患病率要高得多。抑郁症，而不是任何其他精神疾病，折磨作家的频率几乎是其他高创造性成就的男性的两倍。本研究旨在通过一系列更广泛、更全面的作家调查来证实这些发现，并发现作家情感状况和酗酒的高患病率的因果因素。方法数据收集从死后传记，并在适用的情况下，转化为DSM诊断。在诗人、散文小说家和剧作家之间比较了各种异常和偏差的频率。结果证实作家的情感状况和酒精中毒的患病率很高。在诗人中，双相情感性精神病的患病率超过了人群标准，尽管如此，与散文小说和戏剧作家相比，诗人的各种情感障碍、酗酒、人格偏差以及与此相关的性心理和婚姻问题的患病率都要低。结论提出了一个假设，即与诗人相比，剧作家和散文作家的情感疾病和酗酒的频率更高，这与他们的情感想象的性质和强度的差异有关。这一假设可以通过临床心理学家与文学专家合作，对不同类型作家的随机样本进行测试。
Background An earlier study of 291 world famous men had shown that only visual artists and creative writers were characterised, in comparison with the general population, by a much higher prevalence of pathological personality traits and alcoholism. Depressive disorders, but not any other psychiatric conditions, had afflicted writers almost twice as often as men with other high creative achievements. The present investigation was undertaken to confirm these findings in a larger and more comprehensive series of writers, and to discover causal factors for confirmed high prevalences of affective conditions and alcoholism in writers. Method Data were collected from post-mortem biographies and, where applicable, translated into DSM diagnoses. The frequencies of various abnormalities and deviations were compared between poets, prose fiction writers, and playwrights. Results A high prevalence in writers of affective conditions and of alcoholism was confirmed. That of bipolar affective psychoses exceeded population norms in poets, who in spite of this had a lower prevalence of all kinds of affective disorders, of alcoholism, of personality deviations, and related to this, of psychosexual and marital problems, than prose fiction and play writers. Conclusions A hypothesis is developed, which links the greater frequency of affective illnesses and alcoholism in playwrights and prose writers, in comparison with poets, to differences in the nature and intensity of their emotional imagination. This hypothesis could be tested by clinical psychologists collaborating with experts in literature on random samples of different kinds of writers.