Psychopathology and Creativity Among Creative and Non-Creative Professions

The mad genius debate has been a topic that has been discussed in both popular culture and academic discourse. The current study sought to replicate previous findings that linked psychopathology to creativity. A total of 165 biographies of eminent professionals (artists, scientists, athletes) were rated on 19 mental disorders using a three point scale of not present (0), probable (1), and present (2) for potential symptoms. Athletes served as an eminent but not creative comparison group in order to discern whether fame, independent of creativity, was associated with psychopathology. Comparison of proportion analyses were conducted to identify differences of proportion between these three groups for each psychopathology. Tests for one proportion were calculated to compare each group’s rates of psychopathology to the rates found in the U.S. population. These analyses were run twice, where subjects were dichotomized into present and not present categories; first, “present” included “probable” (inclusive) and second where it included only “present” (exclusive). Artists showed greater frequency rates of psychopathology than scientists and athletes in the more inclusive criteria for inclusion, whereas both artists and athletes showed greater frequency rates than scientists in the stricter criteria. Apart from anxiety disorder, athletes did not differ from the U.S. population in rates of psychopathology whereas artists differed from the population in terms of alcoholism, anxiety disorder, drug abuse, and depression. These data generally corroborate previous research on the link between creativity and psychopathology

Contemporary artists and colour: meaning, organisation and understanding

What implications do the ranges of traditional and non-traditional media used by contemporary artists have for understanding the selection and specification of coloured materials? Interviews with prominent artists explore their use of colour and their views on the role of colour in their work. The paper establishes that the interview respondents operate successfully within a professional and permeable frame of reference, with different approaches to determination of colour meaning. The colour propositions of neuroscience, psychophysics and anthropological linguistics appear to have little impact on the respondents’ practice, and the paper concludes by suggesting the need to explore boundaries between disciplines

Contested Boundaries. Psychiatry, Disease, and Diagnosis

Since the 19th century, we have come to think of disease in terms of specific entities—entities defined and legitimated in terms of characteristic somatic mechanisms. Since the last third of that century, we have expanded would-be disease categories to include an ever-broader variety of emotional pain, idiosyncrasy, and culturally unsettling behaviors. Psychiatry has been the residuary legatee of these developments, developments that have always been contested at the ever-shifting boundary between disease and deviance, feeling and symptom, the random and the determined, the stigmatized and the value-free. Even in our era of reductionist hopes, psychopharmaceutical practice, and corporate strategies, the legitimacy of many putative disease categories will remain contested. The use of the specific disease entity model will always be a reductionist means to achieve necessarily holistic ends, both in terms of cultural norms and the needs of suffering individuals. Bureaucratic rigidities and stakeholder conflicts structure and intensify such boundary conflicts, as do the interests and activism of an interested lay public.History of Scienc

Integrating TOPSIS and ELECTRE-Ⅰ methods with cubic m-polar fuzzy sets and its application to the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders

Many real-world decision-making issues frequently involve competing sets of criteria, uncertainty, and inaccurate information. Some of these require the involvement of a group of decision-makers, where it is necessary to reduce the various available individual preferences to a single collective preference. To enhance the effectiveness of multi-criteria decisions, multi-criteria decision-making is a popular decision-making technique that makes the procedure more precise, reasonable, and efficient. The "Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS)" and "Elimination and Choice Transforming Reality (ELECTRE)" are prominent ranking methods and widely used in the multi-criteria decision-making to solve complicated decision-making problems. In this study, two $m$-polar fuzzy set-based ranking methods are proposed by extending the ELECTRE-Ⅰ and TOPSIS approaches equipped with cubic $m$-polar fuzzy (C$m$PF) sets, where the experts provide assessment results on feasible alternatives through a C$m$PF decision matrix. The first proposed method, C$m$PF-TOPSIS, focuses on the alternative that is closest to a C$m$PF positive ideal solution and farthest away from the C$m$PF negative ideal solution. The Euclidean and normalized Euclidean distances are used to determine the proximity of an alternative to ideal solutions. In contrast, the second developed method is C$m$PF-ELECTRE-Ⅰ which uses an outranking directed decision graph to determine the optimal alternative, which entirely depends on the C$m$PF concordance and discordance sets. Furthermore, a practical case study is carried out in the diagnosis of impulse control disorders to illustrate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed methods. Finally, a comparative analysis is performed to demonstrate the veracity, superiority, and effectiveness of the proposed methods

Are we intensifying the stigma? A content analysis of movies portraying mental and psychological illnesses in the Egyptian cinema

This study analyzed the content of selected Egyptian movies that portrayed mental and psychological illness throughout the history of the Egyptian cinema between 1923 and 2015. A list that includes 42 movies depicting characters with mental or psychological illnesses was compiled, out of which 13 movies were selected for analysis. Selection criteria included: representation of the mental or psychological illness/disorder as the main character or issue around which the plot revolves, popularity of the leading actor or actress, and most importantly the significance of the movie in relation to the research questions of the study. Through content analysis of the selected movies, the study explored how they depicted individuals with mental or psychological illness, their characters, personality traits, their interaction with the society, and the nature of their relationship with their therapists (when applicable), exploring the cultural aspects and societal values within that context, in an attempt to explore that portrayal between 1923 and 2015. To further enhance the study, interviews with professionals in the media, film and psychology fields were conducted, to find out more about the representation of mental illness in the Egyptian cinema. Drawing on the media framing theory, the research questions pursued by this study examined the physical characteristics and character attributes as well as mental health indicators of mentally-ill individuals, as portrayed in Egyptian movies produced between 1923 and 2015. The study further attempted to look for the various connotations that the depictions of mental and psychological illnesses in Egyptian movies communicate about mental/psychological illness. Findings of the study revealed a generally negative portrayal of mental illness, labeling the mentally-ill as unacceptably different from other normal individuals in the society. Findings varied based on the movie genre; where comedy movies presented clearly exaggerated portrayals of various elements of mental illness, while drama ones presented more intense aspects, however still objectifying patients and reducing them to their illnesses

Mutation of Dystopian Identity in the Age of Posthumanism: Literary Speculations

Dystopia, while deconstructing utopian ideas, generates a special type of identity as the consequence of a deviation from anthropocentric principles, crises of national and cultural worldviews, and manifestations of social shifting in a posthumanist world. The article focuses on four symptomatic dystopian texts – George Orwell’s “Nineteen Forty-Eight”, Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451”, Ahmed K. Towfik’s “Utopia”, and Salman Rushdie’s “Quichotte” – to explicate the dichotomous nature of the opposition of identity vs society in posthumanist transformations. Those conditions are considered a cause of the mutation of dystopian identity that troubles its anthropological bases and modes of existence. To reconstruct the posthumanist context and its influence on the dystopian identities in the selected novels, this study has exploited a mixture of the following methods: intertextual, cultural, and genre ones; phenomenological approach; hermeneutic interpretation; conceptualisation, etc. The novelty of the study emanates from the very attempt to interpret the writers’ names of the AGEs represented in the books as a background of storytelling and a lens through which the posthumanist space is transformed from a dystopian perspective

Responsabilidade moral depois da neurociência

Moral responsibility is centered on the idea that, given some conditions, people deserve blame or credit, punishment or reward. At least according to traditional readings, moral responsibility presupposes free will, understood as the ability to choose independently of previous events. The achievements of neuroscience in recent decades make a very good case for the hypothesis that the mind is a material entity, a subset of the electrochemical activity of the brain. However, if the mind is a material entity, then it is subject to physical laws. According to some interpretations, this entails the affirmation of determinism and the denial of free will and moral responsibility. This article reviews some of those achievements and their likely impact on the attributions of moral responsibility. The first section presents evidence from lesion studies, imaging techniques and direct electrical stimulation of the brain and argues that the convergence of results from these methods supports the hypothesis that the mind is the activity of the brain. The next section concentrates on studies that are usually taken as directly threatening free will – Libet’s experiments and the apparent mental causation theory. The third section turns to the implications of these findings for moral responsibility, explaining determinism, epiphenomenalism, libertarianism, hard determinism and compatibilism. Finally, the last section defends that the requirement of free will as a precondition for moral responsibility should be replaced by the requirement of more naturalistic properties, such as behavioral flexibility, self-control and natural autonomy.Key words: moral responsibility, ethics, neuroscience, neuroethics, autonomy.A responsabilidade moral é baseada na ideia de que, dadas certas condições, as pessoas merecem culpa ou mérito, punição ou recompensa. Ao menos de acordo com a leitura tradicional, a responsabilidade moral pressupõe o livre arbítrio, entendido como a habilidade para fazer escolhas independentemente de eventos anteriores. As conquistas da neurociência nas últimas décadas são um forte indício de que a mente é uma entidade material, um subconjunto da atividade eletroquímica dos cérebros. Entretanto, se a mente é uma entidade material, então ela está sujeita às leis físicas. Segundo algumas interpretações, isso implica a afirmação do determinismo e a negação do livre-arbítrio e da responsabilidade moral. Este artigo analisa algumas daquelas conquistas e seus prováveis impactos nas atribuições de responsabilidade moral. A primeira seção apresenta evidências a partir de estudos de lesão, técnicas de imageamento e estimulação direta do cérebro, e defende que a convergência dos resultados desses métodos apoia a hipótese de que a mente é a atividade do cérebro. A seção seguinte se concentra em tipos de pesquisa que são frequentemente consideradas como ameaças diretas ao livre-arbítrio – os experimentos de Libet e a teoria da causação mental aparente. A terceira seção foca nas implicações dessas descobertas para a responsabilidade moral, explicando o determinismo, o epifenomenalismo, o libertarianismo, o determinismo forte e o compatibilismo. Por fim, a última seção defende que a exigência do livre arbítrio como precondição para a responsabilidade moral deve ser substituída pela exigência de propriedades mais naturalistas, tais como flexibilidade comportamental, autocontrole e autonomia natural.Palavras-chave: responsabilidade moral, ética, neurociência, neuroética, autonomia