Depression, Women and Creativity

                               By Douglas Eby

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   Although there may not be any inherent connection, mood disorders
   often have an impact on creative expression. About 1 percent of the
   general population suffers from manic-depression (bipolar disorder)
   and 5 percent from major depression during their lifetime. But the
   incidence for women is twice as high or more; as many as one in five
   American women has a history of depression.

   Kay Redfield Jamison notes in her book "Touched with Fire:
   Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament" that "To assume
   that such diseases usually promote artistic talent wrongly reinforces
   simplistic notions of the 'mad genius.' ... All the same, recent
   studies indicate that a high number of established artists meet the
   diagnostic criteria for depression... In fact, it seems that these
   diseases can sometimes enhance or otherwise contribute to creativity."

   Mood disorders may start early in life, perhaps especially for women.
   Author and consultant C. Diane Ealy, Ph.D., in her book "The Woman's
   Book of Creativity" writes, "Many studies have shown us that a young
   girl's ideas are frequently discounted by her peers and teachers. In
   response, she stifles her creativity... perhaps the most insidious and
   common manifestation of repressed creativity in women is depression."
   Consultant, writer and educator Annemarie Roeper (Advanced Development
   Journal, 1991) affirms that "giftedness can be both a positive and a
   negative force. It is a burden when it has no channel for expression
   and it is not understood... Unsupportive environments can lead to
   depression, to the suppression of one's abilities, even to feelings of
   desperation that could become self-destructive."

   Mary Rocamora, who counsels gifted people, and heads The Rocamora
   School in Los Angeles school, which provides awareness training
   classes for gifted and talented adults, says those "who are
   passionately engaged with their talent but are constantly separated
   from the creative experience by relentless self-criticism, self-doubt,
   and feelings of inferiority often suffer from depression and the
   periodic shutting down of their spontaneous creative impulses. The
   drive to express their inner creativity is heightened in many gifted
   individuals, and when the drive to create meets the wall of shame, it
   implodes into numbness, rage, depression, and hopelessness." She also
   notes that it is well known among researchers of the gifted, talented
   and creative that these individuals "exhibit greater intensity and
   increased levels of emotional, imaginational, intellectual, sensual
   and psychomotor excitability, and that this is a normal pattern of
   development." Dr. Linda Silverman, Director of the Institute for the
   Study of Advanced Development in Denver, has also cautioned that this
   higher level of excitability and intensity may be perceived and
   misdiagnosed as manic depression.

   Prominent women in the arts who have reportedly experienced some form
   of depressive illness include Isak Dinesen, Mary Shelley, Mary
   Wollstonecraft, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, Edna St. Vincent
   Millay, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Georgia O'Keeffe. According to
   Pendulum, a support group for people with manic depression, their
   friends and families (contact: Joy Ikelman at: parrot@frii.com;
   website at http://www.frii.com/~parrot/living.html), a list of
   contemporary women who have declared publicly that they have
   experienced depression includes Rosemary Clooney, Patty Duke, Connie
   Francis, Kaye Gibbons, Kristy McNichol, Kate Millett, Jeannie C.
   Riley, Sheryl Crow, Mariette Hartley, Dolly Parton, Bonnie Raitt,
   Roseanne, and Jessica Lange.

   Margot Kidder, renowned for her role as Lois Lane in four "Superman"
   movies, has been candid about her "mood swings that could knock over a
   building." She has said she's had to battle "the demons" of mental
   illness throughout her adult life. Just before her disappearance last
   spring, and an episode of living as a homeless person in downtown Los
   Angeles, she had been working on her memoirs, titled "Calamities," for
   10 to 12 hours a day. She said, "It's very hard to convince a manic
   person that there is anything wrong with them." She has since been
   getting treatment, including medication, and receiving a great deal of
   support from her family and the public, and has returned to work, both
   as a writer and actress.

   Dealing with depression and its causes may take tremendous strength
   and courage. In her new book "Remarkable Women - Perspectives on
   Female Talent Development," psychologist Kathleen Noble writes about
   the need for resilience "to overcome the constraints that have
   thwarted the expression of female giftedness. For gifted women who
   seek to overturn the psychosocial, religious, and historical forces
   that limit all women's potential as persons and citizens, resilience
   is essential, however arduous its achievement might be. Resilience is
   a trifold process of recognizing and resisting the intrinsic and
   extrinsic obstacles that inhibit the development of one's potential
   and taking responsibility for the evolution of ourselves, our
   cultures, and our world."

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   Douglas Eby writes about creative growth and talent development,
   especially related to gifted women. He has written for New
   Perspectives - A Journal of Conscious Living; Mensa Bulletin, and
   other magazines. He has an MA in Psychology, leads support groups for
   gifted women in Los Angeles, and hosts the Gifted Women Forum on
   America Online (keyword: online psych).


     Copyright (c) 1994-1997 by Pioneer Development Resources, Inc.
                          All rights reserved