Creativity and Disease

There were several aspects of this chapter that I found to be revealing or in the least thought provoking. The first of which was the association made between writers and alcoholism. I have always felt that making the connection between artists and drug abuse/use can lead inadvertently to a cycle of misguided adoration. People begin to associate artists and their works almost exclusively with drugs, alcohol, and depression while at the same time forgoing any actual analysis or appreciation of the works themselves. I have also met a lot of people that, either consciously or sub-consciously, begin to mimic those 'darkly romantic' aspects of artist lives.

Another aspect of this section which I found interesting was Hughes focus on disease and mental illness as a purely psycho-medical phenomena. By focusing almost exclusively on depression as a psychological illness I felt he neglected those artist that come to their depressive states by other means. The varied experiences of human life are more than enough to bring about horrible depressive states without needing to be caused by some faulty genetic neurosis.