GENIUS AND INSANITY

Evening Star, Issue 20995, 8 January 1932, Page 11

GENIUS AND INSANITY

A NEW FACTOR Since Lombroso first wrote about genius and madness ” there have been heated and sometimes distressing discussions on his theory, but the idea is as old as Aristotle (states the Melbourne ‘Age’). In his book on ‘The Psychology of Men of Genius,’ Professor Ernst Kretschmer, of Marburg, makes a fresh and striking contribution to this department of psychology. He set himself to discover the natural laws at work in the genius himself, and the mechanism of inheritance which' make him what he is. For example, he believes he has proved that cross-breed-ing is productive of genius to an unusual extent. Genius, viewed from a purely biological standpoint, is “an extreme variant of the human species.” Perhaps one of the most startling declarations in the volume is that “ genius arises in the hereditary process, particularly at that point where a highlygifted family, begins to degenerate.” The author gives such instances as the families of Goethe, Byron, Beethoven, Bach, and Michel Angelo. On the subject of genius and mental aberration he gives a list of geniuses who were in the strict sense insane, or who have later become mentally diseased. To mention a few only, he names the philosophers Rousseau and Nietzsche,, the scientists Galton, Newton, and Robert Mayer, .the old Field-marshal Blucher, the poets and writers Tasso, Maupassant, and Dostoievsky, and the composers Schumann and Hugo Wolf. He adds that if he named all those severely psychopathic personalities of the type of Michel Angelo and Byron the list would be a long one. Mental diseases and approximations to them are more frequent among men of genius, at least in certain groups, than they are among the general population. Observant and thoughtful men can see in the countenances of genius a certain revelation of personalities, and this applies also to fixed bodily form. There are special inherited dispositions which may be assisted by effort and environment, but can never be replaced by them. The core of personality consists of certain elementary dispositions, certain tendencies to reaction. These are correlated with physical and mental characters. We get the merry or sad, the nervous and the stolid. To discover the simple primary factors back to original dispositions is the goal of Kretschmer's investigations. The types of physique enumerated arc the pyknic or rounded, thickset type, the leptosomatic or under-developed type, with small proportions and lean features (Kant), and the athletic or muscular type. In , diseased mental conditions the , pyknic persons show periodic oscillations of spirits (Goethe). The , most outstanding illustration is burnished by Goethe himself in his remark, “The man of genius experiences a repetition of adolescence, whereas other people are only youthful once,” 'Hie year 1831 found him more disposed for intellectual work than he had been for the previous thirty years. In that period he completed his biography and put the finishing touches to his Faust. At the age of seventy-four he fell in love with a girl of nineteen, shortly thereafter he swung into profound dcpi'v- !:u. It was not love that called forth his lyrics. The spontaneous uprising from within led him to love whatever women were within reach at the, time. His mental life had a periodicity of its own. There were four regularly outcropping periods of excitement in Goethe’s middle age, 1801-08, 1814-15, 1822-23, 1830-31. He worked when the right mood was in himself —as who doesn’t?

The principle of periodicity is further illustrated in the experience of the scientist Robert Mayer. Here, again, .were regular abnormal fluctuations of emotion. The periods of excitement became milder and more rare with growing age, but ho had an awful experience “ suddenly on a sea voyage, in the incipient stages of an acute manic

psychosis, he feels illuminated by this idea of a law <?f physical energy, as by a flash of lightning. _ He drops everything, leaves his written diary from that day, walks about absent-mindedly for years, is incapable of any ordinary conversation, employs Latin formula) from physics for greetings, behaves like a naughty child, destroys furniture and clothes . . fights for his system in

all tho learned bodies of Europe, and ends up as a raving lunatic in an asylum. And two years later, when he _is better, he becomes a normal citizen and doctor, who for eleven years never takes a pen in his hand again.” Another exceptionally interesting aspect of genius deals with its geographical distribution. There are places at which it seems to have a disproportionate concentration, and a special type occurs frequently in a very limited area. In German-speaking territory three of these regions are Saxony, Swabia, and tho Netherlands. The blood mixture, Nordic and some other, had influence upon the blossoming of genius, but the break-up of social classes was also a factor in the result. A Nordic-Alpine mixture appears in creative musical talent. Poeticphilosophical endowment is found in Saxony and Wurtemberg. Luther in the first and Schiller in the latter are examples. The admixture of alien blood acts as a desirable ferment, bringing out the specific racial talents, whereas relatively pure races acquire a certain petrifaction of talent. A good deal, of space is given to Rousseau in the chapter headed ‘The Prophet.’ As a boy at school he lied, stole, and played truant; afterwards he led tho life of a homeless adventurer, and sent his five illegitimate children to a foundling hospital. Rousseau was one of tho intellectual creations of tho French Revolution. Where he showed himself abnormal was that he took life literally. “His cry of ‘back to Nature ’ was given the convincing ring of a personal experience.” His Parisian treatment created tho delusion of persecution. “He hated the culture of his time, and he hated the leaders of that culture. The first led to his works of genius; the second to bis insanity.” But perhaps the deepest root of his genius was his self-reproach. Ho enjoyed life and depised it. So in an agony of self-reproach ho built a programme for tho future. His philosophy “ was to lead men back again out of the glaring evils of their civilisation to the simple paradise of childhood.”

What precisely does Kretschmer mean by genius? He says the man of genius is the possessor largely by inheritance of a special and peculiar intellectual apparatus, an instrument which, in a higher degree than others, is able to create new values in life and happiness. Ho produces new and original things, or “ personally stamped special values.”

Quo regrets that the scope of inquiry followed in this work is almost exclusively German, and, further, that it ignores woman’s place in the ranks of genius. Germany has been called the last stronghold of masculinism, and Strindberg, who gave the country this name, fled there _to escape the feminist vigour of his wife. One notices, too, that the author of this learned work leaves _ out great business organisers, engineers, and such like. The translator thinks that this is generally dono_ because the business men are sufficiently rewarded in the salaries they command.

The ordinary reader will feel sometimes annoyed at meeting with highly technical terms, for which no -glossary is provided. What will he make of

manic, hypomanic, schizophrenic, masochistic, and suchlike terms? Recourse to an. ordinary dictionary will not help. These things apart, one cannot resist the impression that this latest work is in line with the modern biological tendency to resolve things in general into secretions. Here are certain undesirable results following from heredity. What are wo to say? Kretschmer says the result of cross-breeding is something other than the mere sum of parental qualities. It leads to unusual temperament and character, even if it does not lead to unusual talent. How far will this conclusion carry us? To __intermarriage of black and white? This is one of the books which open up a strange vista. A word of praise should be given for the liberal supply of iportraits.