Genius and Madness

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

By William Todd Schultz

There is no "real" psychology

By William Todd Schultz on May 29, 2009 - 10:53am in Genius and Madness

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

By William Todd Schultz on May 21, 2009 - 9:42am in Genius and Madness

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

By William Todd Schultz on May 19, 2009 - 12:41pm in Genius and Madness

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

By William Todd Schultz on March 26, 2009 - 1:39pm in Genius and Madness

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

By William Todd Schultz on March 26, 2009 - 9:03am in Genius and Madness

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

By William Todd Schultz on March 12, 2009 - 12:28pm in Genius and Madness

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

By William Todd Schultz on March 7, 2009 - 10:03am in Genius and Madness

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. Read More

Why Palin Can't Perform

By William Todd Schultz on September 30, 2008 - 1:31pm in Genius and Madness

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 came across a concept I had never heard of before: reinvestment. Read More

Is Political Conservatism a Mild Form of Insanity?

By William Todd Schultz on September 6, 2008 - 9:53am in Genius and Madness

A few years ago I was standing on the deck of a beach house on the 4th of July and a person who had obviously drunk too much told me, “The secret of my life is that I always need someone to hate.” Read More