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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology
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Strong Imagination - Madness, Creativity, and Human Nature (Paperback, New Ed)
Loot Price: R658
Discovery Miles 6 580
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Strong Imagination - Madness, Creativity, and Human Nature (Paperback, New Ed)
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Madness is the central mystery of the human psyche. Our minds
evolved to give us a faithful understanding of reality, to allow us
to integrate into our communities, and to help us to adapt our
behaviour to our environment. Yet in serious mental illness, the
mind does exactly the opposite of these things. The sufferer builds
castles of imaginative delusion, fails to adapt, and becomes a
stranger among their own people. Mental illness is no marginal
phenomenon: it is found in all societies and all historical epochs,
and the genes that underlie it are quite common. Furthermore, the
traits that identify the madman are found in attenuated form in
normal thinking and feeling. The persistence of madness, then, is a
terrible puzzle from both an evolutionary and a human point of
view. In A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare suggested a link
between madness and artistic creativity: 'The lunatic, the lover,
and the poet', he wrote, 'Are of imagination all compact'. Recent
studies have shown that there is indeed a connection. Rates of
mental illness are hugely elevated in the families of poets,
writers, and artists, suggesting that the same genes, the same
temperaments, and the same imaginative capacities are at work in
insanity and in creative ability. Thus the reason madness continues
to exist is that the traits behind it have psychological benefits
as well as psychological costs. In Strong Imagination, Daniel
Nettle explores the nature of mental illness, the biological
mechanisms that underlie it, and its link to creative genius. He
goes on to consider the place of both madness and creative
imagination in the evolution of our species.
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