Genius and Madness

From Elvis to Picasso and the thorny intersection of "madness" and creativity.

by William Todd Schultz

The Psychobabble Reduction

If you do any sort of psychological writing at all, it's an allegation impossible to sidestep. It comes from predictable quarters, but unexpectedly too. I'll call it the psychobabble reduction. What it means is this: a strict tendency to dismiss any and all forms of psychological analysis with the reflexive charge, "Psychobabble!" A little history. Read More

Truman Capote: A Psychological Portrait

I just finished my book on Truman Capote, the final edits. It is out in April, 2011, Oxford University Press, the second volume in the Inner Lives series I edit. It focuses on Answered Prayers, Capote's last, unfinished novel in which he sautees the social elites in whose orbit he so blithely drifted. What I try to do is explore the deeper, hidden motives fueling the work. Read More

George W. Bush: A Psychobiography

Why George W. Bush Invaded Iraq Read More

Is Happiness Overrated?

Is happiness overrated?

I don't know if it is. On one hand, what could anyone want more than happiness? Isn't happiness what we're after? Don't we do all those things we do hoping for happiness as an end result, a mainlined dose of congratulations? Read More

Today's Antidepressants: Some Sad Facts

There is a long list of sad facts about today's antidepressants. I'm going to put down what I reckon are the saddest of the sad facts; others are welcome to add their own. In this post I report the findings of scientific research. Read More

There is no "real" psychology

A recent post on "real" psychology--as opposed to all the fake or unreal psychology out there--got me thinking. The day we all decide on what real psychology is, is the day psychology dies. Real psychology equals dead-ended, myopic, oversimplification--of subject matter and of methodology. Real psychology is a means-centered approach. That is to say: only psychologists making use of prescribed, narrowly-defined "scientistic" methods are allowed into the fold. All others are touchy-feely, hopelessly subjective trespassers. Such a stance is 1) naïve, 2) unhistorical, and 3) regressive. Read More

Why Freud and Jung Broke Up: Part II

Fellow blogger Dr. Stephen A. Diamond objects to my recent post titled "Why Freud and Jung Broke Up," calling it "an overly simplistic and fundamentally flawed Freudian interpretation" revolving around "repressed" homosexuality. That's a pretty thorough indictment, to say the least! Read More

Why Freud and Jung Broke Up

Just finished a class called Freud and Jung. Learned a lot, not so much about theory, which is already firmly cemented in my head, but the personal factors at work in the relationship. On that subject: WOW. So much going on. From the very beginning--the first meeting and fevered discussion for something like 13 hours straight--a sense of high promise combined with undeniable doom. Read More

The "Pornification" of Human Consciousness

Porn is the new metaphor. But it doesn't stop there. It is also the new universally shared experience. The nation has been "pornified." It's everywhere. It's open 24/7. And chances are good, judging from research into internet habits, that before or after reading this post, a high percentage of you will visit a porn site. Maybe you just did. The point is, if you did, you are hardly alone. Read More

The Psychological Consequences of Fame

I'm teaching a class on Psychobiography now, my area of specialization. This time around we're studying the lives of John Lennon, Elvis, and Kurt Cobain, and like psychobiographers do, trying to superimpose the life and personality on the art to see how the subjective origins of the art can be illuminated. Quite a lot always comes up, but one theme that interpenetrates when it comes to Lennon, Elvis, and Cobain concerns the psychological consequences of fame itself. Read More

The Nemesis: Everyone's Own Personal Satan

Recently I've been thinking about a concept that really has no precise name, but which I started calling the "Nemesis." I was teaching a class called Autobiography, Fiction, and Self-Invention, and I was struck by the number of people, my students included, whose life story prominently featured an "adversary" figure. This nemesis tends to haunt the person's early childhood. Read More

Superego Tripping

You know the (by now) ancient rite. It's embarrassingly formulaic, and like all such formulas, pathological in its compulsiveness and utter lack of imagination. Some major or even minor celebrity/notable says or does something he or she "shouldn't" have. The press and mainstream media pounce (24 hour news cycle! Got to have something to say something about). Read More

Why Palin Can't Perform

Of course, there are in fact several reasons why Palin can’t perform, prominent ones being her lack of knowledge and her apparently unreflective, incurious nature. But there may be something else at work too, something a bit more psychological. Last year two of my undergraduate students did their Senior Thesis on the subject of “choking.” As they investigated the phenomenon, they ca Read More