The Insanity Hoax
Second Edition
Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius
by Judith Schlesinger, PhD
The Insanity Hoax
Creative ≠ Crazy
There’s a long-running and cherished expectation that the more creative a person is, the more likely s/he is to suffer from a serious psychological problem, like bipolar disorder.
This notion began with a mistranslation of Plato’s “divine madness” and ultimately led to viewing artistic inspiration as a symptom of psychopathology.
In recent decades, many books and articles have claimed to “prove,” once and for all, that creativity and madness are automatically linked. In fact, all they prove is how eager people are to believe it, since the research is seriously flawed.
But the negative stereotypes persist.
The Insanity Hoax is still the only book dedicated to exposing the mad genius myth and the wobbly pseudoscientific foundation it sits on.
The myth is far from being the universal “truth” many assume it is.
From the new Preface:
The 2020 edition of The Insanity Hoax updates, strengthens and validates the first one. It describes the global progress that’s been made since Hoax first appeared in 2012, while reminding us of the stubborn challenges that remain.
The goal is the same: to lift the unnecessary stigma from great
creativity and from those who are privileged to have it.
From the new Foreward by
creativity guru Eric Maisel, PhD:
Dr. Schlesinger’s service in writing this book is not only to the abstract value of truth, but also to actual human beings who are trying to live a creative life.
By helping them see through the “mad genius” mythology and the “insanity hoax,” they may be able to deal with any despair or anxiety in more humane and helpful ways than those promoted by mainstream psychiatry. This is a huge service.
Based on her forty years of research as well as creative and therapeutic experience, psychologist Judith Schlesinger tracks the stereotype through centuries of changing history and culture, explaining why it remains powerful despite its lack of empirical support. The Insanity Hoax also reveals creatives’ own perspectives about how the artistic life can make a person crazy, all by itself.
A scholarly yet entertaining read, The Insanity Hoax is a groundbreaking book that should be read by students, teachers, practitioners, admirers and critics of creativity and the arts; mental health professionals; and especially those who believe that exceptional minds should be celebrated, rather than diagnosed.
Praise for the Book
“At last, there is someone to tackle the Mad Genius legend. Judith Schlesinger’s The Insanity Hoax picks up the mantle for unfairly stereotyped artists – and does so with passion, wit, and incisive critique. Highly recommended.”
“Fascinating, insightful, and surprisingly funny.”
About the Author
Dr. Judith Schlesinger is a psychologist, author, educator, jazz critic, painter, musician and radio host. Trained in cognitive-behavioral and family therapy, her hats have included college professor and administrator, school psychologist and psychotherapist, book and CD reviewer, award-winning gardener, music producer, and chick singer/leader of the JS Fourtet. She has also been a supermarket cashier, but not recently.
Judith’s writing has appeared in both the popular and professional press, but you won’t find her on Facebook or Twitter. Her Shrinktunes column, about the intersection of psychology and music, has been published on allaboutjazz.com since 2002. Shrinktunes Media is the publishing company Judith formed in 2002, to reflect her overlapping interests in psychology and music. It is the label for her various literary and musical productions.
Because of her expertise and growing influence in the field, Judith was invited to participate in the definitive “Creativity and Mental Illness” textbook (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Her contribution, Building on Sand: The Cautionary Chapter, is the only one out of 18 dedicated to disproving the creativity/madness link. The book’s summary chapter states, “We’re thus sympathetic to Schlesinger (this volume) who denounces the mad genius stereotype” (p. 399).
In 2016, although publishing The Insanity Hoax herself, and with no social media presence at all, Judith was invited to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to help decide whether Vincent was mentally ill—or not. Details below.
What else is Dr. J up to?
As a natural outgrowth of her interest in highly creative people – especially musicians – Judith created and hosted 43 live, hour-long jazz shows with top musicians and composers. Dr. J’s Jazz Emporium was broadcast on public station WPWL five times a week for two years until 2018, when the radio station went belly up. The purpose of the show was to celebrate jazz – and the people who make it – while entertaining and enlightening the public along the way.
Drawing on two decades of writing reviews, interviews, and columns, as well as innumerable live performances and private conversations, Judith has been blessed with a long list of great musicians who are actually her friends, and thus easy to chat with on the air.
Each show focused on one guest: a sampling of their music was played, together with a relaxed, often humorous conversation about their lives, careers, and dreams—and whatever else happened to come up. Guests were either in the studio or calling in by phone.
Emporia guests have included Gene Bertoncini, Chris Brubeck, David Finck, Bill Mays, Sean Smith, Paulinho Garcia, Kim Nazarian, Heleen van den Hombergh (calling from Amsterdam and premiering her new CD), John Clayton, Peter Eldridge, Taylor Eigsti, Jay Leonhart, Lorraine Feather, Marlena Shaw, Jackie Ryan, Richard Shulman, Kate McGarry, Eliane Elias, Ted Rosenthal, Wycliffe Gordon, Lukas Rande (calling from Copenhagen), Terell Stafford, Martin Wind, Darmon Meader, Leslie Pintchik, Todd Strait, Paul Meyers, Lynn Seaton, The Humanity, and Sam Reider.
Somehow, there isn’t a “mad genius” among them.
Besides interviewing musicians, Dr. J’s Jazz Emporium explored how the (jazz) sausage is made by featuring a club owner (David Budway); long-running series producer (Ken Needleman); author (Jeff Sultanof); publicist (Ann Braithwaite) and critic (Neil Tesser).
Finally, Dr. J curated and hosted five solo shows: comedy in jazz, late night and rain, Chrismix, and tributes to Antonio Carlos Jobim and the incomparable lyricist team of Marilyn and Alan Bergman.
The Emporium clocked 43 lively hours before changes in the station’s viability made it impossible to continue the show. Fortunately, Dr. J. owns a CD of each one; since they are not dependent on the grid, they are preserved for all time in this quaint and antique form.
Dr. Judith in Amsterdam
In the fall of 2017, 30 creativity experts were invited to the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to discuss whether Vincent Van Gogh had a lifelong mental illness—as most people seem to think. There was also the possibility that his ear-cutting and suicide were impulsive acts triggered by great provocation and despair, or that they were done by others, as recent evidence suggests.
The group included psychiatrists, psychologists, neurologists, medical doctors and art historians, most flown in from our home countries to participate. In preparation, we were asked to read Van Gogh: The Life, the definitive 976-page biography by Naifeh and Smith (2012).
For two days we considered such things as his rejecting family and cold upbringing; his multiple failures in careers, society, and love; his social clumsiness, awful diet, constant poverty, frequent drinking, and even the possibility of some seizure disorder. The final verdict was no: he wasn’t bipolar, or anything like it.
Six of the 30 were asked to address the public on the last day of the conference. This YouTube video is the speech given by psychologist Dr. Judith Schlesinger, author of The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the myth of the mad genius. (Kindly note: she was 30 pounds heavier in this video than she is now. Yaaay!)
About Shrinktunes
Shrinktunes Media is the publishing company Judith formed in 2002 and named for her overlapping interests in psychology and music. Its first publication was Thought Food: Readings in the Psychology of Music, a collection that nicely supplemented the new Psychology of Music course she designed and taught. Unlike most textbooks on the subject, it showed how music is actually experienced in the real world.
In 2012, Shrinktunes Media published The Insanity Hoax: Exposing the Myth of the Mad Genius. The second, updated edition of The Insanity Hoax came out in 2020. This was a year after its first musical project appeared: the co-executive production of the acclaimed Trust, by the wonderful Sean Smith Quartet (Smithereen Records, 2011). This CD was then followed by Beautiful Love, the stunning solo CD of Paulinho Garcia, the marvelous Brazilian guitarist/singer. This delicious assortment of fifteen love songs was released to great enthusiasm on Valentine’s Day, 2014, as a co-production of Shrinktunes Media and Jazzmin Records.
In 2017, Judith co-produced Paulinho’s equally romantic follow-up CD, How Do You Keep The Music Playing.
Judith was also an executive producer of Send the Moon, by the powerful singer/songwriter Mary Ann Redmond (Spellbound Music, 2005), and helped finance two CDs by the incomparable Clayton Brothers band: The New Song and Dance (2010) and The Gathering (2012).
Personal Appearances
After the second edition of The Insanity Hoax came out in early 2020, the goal was to share it with college students studying music, art, and the psychology of creativity who are most likely to be affected by the “mad genius” folktale. A national lecture tour was being planned — and then Covid happened.
In 2021, Judith did teach Zoomishly for master trombonist Wycliffe Gordon and his students at Augusta University in Georgia. As Wycliffe writes,
“Judith spent two sessions with the students of my Jazz Improvisation class, opening their minds and answering their questions… Her presentation is quite informative as well as entertaining, and after many years of teaching it is clear she has a great rapport with students… We plan to have her back to further enlighten more of our students whose lives and careers have possibly been negatively affected by the ‘mad genius’ nonsense.”
Among student feedback: “I thoroughly enjoyed our time talking to Dr. J. She was hilarious and full of life and had a lot of wisdom to share with us and I’m looking forward to the next time we can talk to her.”
If you are interested in arranging a lecture, please contact me through the site’s email.
PODCASTS:
- Listen to Judith’s interview on The Jordan Rich Show (WBZ Boston/CBS affiliate), the long-running talk fest about books, music, and culture.
- Hear Judith’s invited podcast for Rationally Speaking, the science and philosophy series which “explores the borderlines between reason and nonsense.”
RADIO:
- Listen to Judith’s NPR interview on Judy Carmichael’s weekly syndicated show, Jazz Inspired.
- Hear Judith discuss the mad genius on The New Jazz Archive, Jeff Haas’s weekly, syndicated show from Interlochen Public Radio. “An hour with some of the world’s big thinkers who occupy the fascinating intersection of jazz and psychology.” Time of interview 6:15 – 18:51.
LECTURES:
- Vincent Van Gogh: Creative or Crazy?
Dr. Judith Schlesinger answers the question
Patterson Library
Patterson, New York
News & Reviews
In late 2021, Judith was interviewed for an independent filmmaker’s documentary on creativity, the movie is expected in the Summer of 2022. To date, she is still the only psychologist actively disproving the “mad genius” folktale.
In April 2016, Judith was interviewed for Psychology Today about the mad genius myth, the self-serving distortions that pass for “fact” in this area, and the current sorry state of diagnosis and medication.
Oxford University Press purchased the rights to 20 pages of The Insanity Hoax for their 2016 text, Creativity: A Reader for Writers. This is the section called “Blind Men and Elephant Parts” (pages 17-37), where Judith explains why creativity is so difficult (if not impossible) to define.
Eminent social psychologist Carol Tavris devotes her March 2015 column in Skeptic Magazine to The Insanity Hoax, which she quotes generously and calls “a short, clear, witty, and empirically-grounded takedown of the mad-genius assumption.”
“Building on Sand: The Cautionary Chapter” is Judith’s invited contribution to the definitive textbook, Creativity and Mental Illness (Cambridge University Press, 2014). Only one out of 18 dedicated to disproving the creativity/madness link. The book’s summary chapter states, “We’re thus sympathetic to Schlesinger (this volume) who denounces the mad genius stereotype” (p. 399).
CreativityPost.com asked Judith to be a regular contributor. Her column, The Mad Genius and Other Follies, addresses the infinite ways that creativity enriches, delights, and complicates our lives.
After the tragic death of Robin Williams, Judith was interviewed by USA Today. This terrible loss unleashed the usual flurry of uninformed speculation about genius and mental illness. Alas, ten paragraphs of our discussion never appeared, since this reporter was not the lead writer on the story. “You had such great things to say,” she wrote, “I wish they could have used more.” Maybe next time.
Canadian Postmedia News interview: ” The link between creativity, insanity not backed by science, the author says.” Published in the Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, and Toronto Post.
“Stardust, Smoke and Mirrors,” an invited article about The Insanity Hoax, is the cover story for the Sept/Oct 2013 Skeptical Inquirer: The magazine for science and reason.
_____________________________
LINKS TO ONLINE REVIEWS:
- The National Psychologist
- JazzDrummer World (Germany)
- Michael Steinman in Jazz Lives
- Doug Ramsey in Rifftides
_____________________________
DOWNLOAD PDF REVIEWS:
Classroom Tools
The Insanity Hoax is gaining increasing acceptance as
a college and graduate school text in both psychology and music.
The Insanity Hoax stimulates such lively and thoughtful discussion about the mad genius that it became required reading for “Creativity and Psychopathology” classes at Temple University in Philadelphia. It has also been part of the Master’s degree in Performance Science at The Royal College of Music in London.
_____________________________
FREE TEACHING TOOLS ABOUT THE “MAD” GENIUS:
Printable pdf of Judith’s groundbreaking, often-cited 2009 journal article, Creative Mythconceptions: A closer look at the evidence for the mad genius, which was the springboard for The Insanity Hoax.
Contact the Author
Email at shrinktunes@gmail.com
More Resources
- Judith was invited into the definitive textbook Creativity and Mental Illness from Cambridge University Press (2014). Her contribution, Building on Sand: The Cautionary Chapter, is the only one out of 18 dedicated to disproving the creativity/madness link. The book’s summary chapter states, “We’re thus sympathetic to Schlesinger (this volume) who denounces the mad genius stereotype” (p. 399).
- Judith’s invited column at CreativityPost.com, The Mad Genius and Other Follies, addresses the various ways that creativity enriches, delights, and complicates our lives.
- Printable pdf of Judith’s groundbreaking, often-cited 2009 journal article, Creative Mythconceptions: A closer look at the evidence for the mad genius.
_____________________________
ADDITIONAL LINKS
Judith helped produce these albums:
- Paulinho Garcia
- Sean Smith
- Mary Ann Redmond
- Clayton Brothers (via Artist Share)
Judith’s 175 CD reviews and 60 articles on AllAboutJazz.com, the world’s largest jazz website.
Dr. Keith Sawyer’s creativity blog – practical and innovative guide to real-life (not crazy!) creativity.
_____________________________
PHOTO GALLERY
Publicity photos of Judith: smiling and serious
Cover of The Insanity Hoax: High resolution