The Insanity Hoax
Second Edition

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.

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.

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!)