Madness and the Muse - We’re captivated by the idea of the troubled genius. But is it a fiction?

By Tom Bartlett. Nancy Andreasen is not a smooth performer-of-ideas in the TED vein, the sort who roams the stage wirelessly mic’d, dispensing wisdom with Broadway-caliber aplomb. She does it old school, podium and PowerPoint, describing her research as she clicks through slides. The 400 or so people gathered for a midafternoon session of this summer's Aspen Ideas Festival were drawn by the promise of learning "The Secrets of the Creative Brain" from Andreasen, a literary scholar turned psychiatrist and neuroscientist, winner of the National Science Medal, and author of a landmark study that found that eight out of 10 writers had experienced some form of mental illness during their lives. Read more...