If you follow the various links other folks have made, to the comments in other posts, like some of the comments here, there's an ongoing discussion over this pernicious thread of conflating "mental imbalance" with "creativity". I find that destructive to those of us trying to find balance, and equally destructive to people who do not have any kind of disability, in terms of what it's saying about their creativity. And, to me, it feels like some kind of fucked-up consolation prize: oh, so what if you're in so many pieces you'll never put yourself together? at least you're creative!
What I deal with is hard for me, but I also know it's nowhere near as debilitating as friends who have OCD, severe bipolar, and other major swinging imbalances -- who wants to pay that kind of price for the sake of some nebulous creativity, that in itself is invariably (from what I've seen) most often subverted into self-destructive or counter-productive tendencies because the primary focus isn't creativity but getting the hell out of that darkness?
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Date: 11 Jun 2010 07:57 pm (UTC)What I deal with is hard for me, but I also know it's nowhere near as debilitating as friends who have OCD, severe bipolar, and other major swinging imbalances -- who wants to pay that kind of price for the sake of some nebulous creativity, that in itself is invariably (from what I've seen) most often subverted into self-destructive or counter-productive tendencies because the primary focus isn't creativity but getting the hell out of that darkness?