Crazy Artist Types

Artists are better at coping with challenges-because we’re crazy. Last spring, Artnet News published an interesting piece about researchers from the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence-yes, apparently there is such a place-that found that creativity correlates with psychological weakness … (wait for it) … and mental strength (phew!).

“In 1963, the pioneering creativity scholar Frank Barron wrote that the ‘creative genius … is both more primitive and more cultured, more destructive and more constructive, occasionally crazier and yet adamantly saner than the average person,’” writes Rachel Corbett in a piece that boasts the longest headline ever published: Artists Are More Anxious and Depressed Than Those in Other Professions-But They Are Also Better at Coping With Challenges, a New Study Says.

File this under “Tell Me Something I Didn’t Know That Also Justifies My Bad Behavior and Fragile Self-Image.” What’s interesting is that Barron’s seemingly contradictory claims were reached via “personality tests and interviews” during the early “Mad Men”-era, prior to the use of more empirical processes. And yet, “they may turn out to be verifiably true,” writes Corbett, Artnews’ deputy editor. She adds, “In other words, the artists were both ‘crazier’ and ‘saner’ than the non-artists, as Barron phrased it.”

Here, here.