Dostoevsky schizophrenia. Famous people who suffered from schizophrenia (10 photos). John Nash Jr. PhD

Schizophrenia - translated from ancient Greek, it actually means a split of the heart and mind. It is a pathology that puts people under a siege of illusory ideas and images and turns their life into a nightmare. According to the degree of disability, schizophrenia is one of the most severe diseases. In a recent study of schizophrenia in 15 states, it is recognized as the third most severe disease after paralysis of the arms and legs and senile dementia. However, even in our time, we know almost nothing about this pathology. Out of every 100 people on earth, one schizophrenic. At the same time, this figure - 1% of patients from the total population of the Earth - is stable for all parts of our planet and does not change under the influence of any social factors. Perhaps for this reason, society has big number myths, prejudices and stereotypes that concern people with similar disorders.
Causes of schizophrenia.
For the first time, the term schizophrenia was used in 1908 by the Austrian psychiatrist Eugene Bleiler. By schizophrenia, he meant the splitting of holistic thinking, will and emotions. Before him, such a deviation was called dementia.
The cause of schizophrenia until the end is not known. The starting point can be both stress and every disease. Important role the environment also plays, especially intrauterine development. Thus, many schizophrenic children were born to mothers who conceived children during the 1944 famine in the Netherlands. Finnish mothers who lost their husbands in World War II had more schizophrenic children than those who learned about the loss of their husband after the end of the pregnancy. There is a lot of evidence showing that stress and cramped life circumstances also increase the risk of developing schizophrenia.

Symptoms of schizophrenia.
Signs of schizophrenia can be both positive and negative. Positive include delusions, hallucinations, and atactic thinking. The latter is characterized by the presence in the patient's speech of uncoordinated, normally incompatible concepts. Negative symptoms include emotional dullness, alogia (poverty or complete cessation of speech), hypobulia (weakening of volitional activity, desires), abulia (complete lack of motivation) and parabulia (perverted forms of work - mannered actions, gait, postures, gestures).

Diagnosis and expected
Schizophrenia is not fatal or contagious, although schizophrenics live an average of 10 years less mentally. normal people. The first reason is that schizophrenics often commit suicide. Another reason is that schizophrenics smoke more seriously than the mentally normal. There is also evidence that immunological changes in schizophrenia may be responsible for diseases of other organs of the body. The prognosis depends on how early treatment is started. At the same time, it then began schizophrenia the easier the disease progresses.

Peak age for schizophrenia falls on men at 16-26 years, women - at 27-35 years.
Treatment
Not now effective ways treatment of schizophrenia. All R. of our century, the treatment of this pathology was reduced to large doses of sleeping pills and narcotic drugs, which “stunned” the patient during an attack, but did not affect the pathology in any way. To stop the exacerbation, electric shock and large doses of insulin were used, causing a hypoglycemic coma. In both cases, the patient lost consciousness for a short time. A sharp change in the metabolism in the brain, for reasons not yet understood, sometimes brought patients back to reality and had a therapeutic effect. In the 50s. schizophrenia was treated with antipsychotics. About every 5th patient the pathology stopped and never returned. However, at the same time, long-term use of antipsychotics caused a number of undesirable effects.
In general, over the 200 years of its existence, psychiatry has made tangible steps towards the understanding and treatment of schizophrenia. The hopelessness of the previous one is replaced by a very reasonable hope.

famous schizophrenics.
Many of the geniuses suffered from schizophrenia. According to contemporaries, Pushkin, Einstein, Freud, Lermontov are schizoid psychos. The bad psyche of Diesel, Goethe, Saint-Simon, Kant, Dickens, Hemingway, Gogol, Maupassant manifested itself acutely. Nietzsche and Vrubel spent the last few years of their lives in a lunatic asylum. Napoleon, Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky suffered from epilepsy. When Leo Tolstoy was overcome by apathy and despondency, his creative declines lasted for several years. And the writer Gogol from 21 to 33 years old spent summer and spring in severe depression.

Contemporaries claim that the famous Spanish artist Salvador Dali (1904-1989 gygy.) suffered from schizophrenia. What he painted and how he behaved in society does not fit in the mind of ordinary person. His paintings were included in the golden fund of surrealism. Dali created images similar to nightmarish visions, which he himself called "painted pictures of dreams." He claimed: "I saw what others did not see; and what others saw, I did not see."
Schizophrenia is the most "expensive" mental illness. In some developed countries it takes about 2% of all health care costs. For example, in the US this amount in 1990 amounted to $19 billion.

There is an opinion among the people that all geniuses are schizophrenics. I personally absolutely disagree with this: a true genius must necessarily be a mentally healthy person. As for famous people, who after their deaths were called schizophrenics ... They probably had some kind of mental features. However, in general, such statements are not substantiated by anything and, most likely, have their own purpose to shock the people.

Among schizophrenics, there are often very talented people who deserve universal recognition. Next, we invite you to get to know famous writers, artists, actors and mathematicians who suffered from this disease.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Gogol

Researchers of Gogol's work and life believe that he suffered from schizophrenia, which was supplemented by periodic bouts of psychosis and claustrophobia. Nikolai Vasilyevich was often visited by sound and visual hallucinations. It was on their basis that the writer created some of the heroes of his works. Apathy and depression were abruptly replaced by periods of excessive activity and inspiration. The writer said about himself that the organs in his body were displaced or even located upside down.

Bettie Page

American fashion model Bettie Page is a sex symbol of the 50s of the last century. Filmed in the genres of erotica, fetish and pin-up.
In 1958, Page became interested in religion, in 1959 she became a Christian. In the future, she actively worked in Christian organizations.
In 1979, doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia.

Philip K. Dick

It is believed that a mild form of schizophrenia was in the writer Philip K. Dick, who became famous for the sky-fi novels "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep", which was made into the film "Blade Runner", and "Memories Wholesale and Retail", which formed based on the film Total Recall. Some believe that it was the disease that helped the author create such plots of books.

Vincent Van Gogh

It is believed that most paintings by the Dutch post-impressionist artist created at the moment when his schizophrenic seizures became more frequent. At this time, he created several paintings a day and could not sleep for days on end.

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Researchers agree that this famous stateless philosopher was the owner of a frightening diagnosis - "nuclear mosaic schizophrenia." At present, this ailment is called obsession, and its most striking symptom is megalomania. Most likely, it was schizophrenia that served as the impetus for the idea of ​​a superman.

Isaac Newton

Some researchers believe that Isaac Newton suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. He was a brilliant mathematician and physicist, but it was very difficult to talk to him and his mood changed hourly.

Parveen Babi - Indian actress

The famous Indian actress, who at the age of thirty began to be treated for schizophrenia. Considered the most glamorous Bollywood actress. She accused the CIA, the KGB, the Mossad of wanting her dead.

Alexander Nikolaevich Skryabin

Alexander Nikolaevich was a suspicious and extremely religious person. Scared family and friends drastic changes mood, as well as their views on everything that happens. In addition to the unique music, his merits include the first ever use and popularization of color music. According to doctors, Alexander Nikolaevich suffered from schizophrenia.

Maya Myakila

Swedish artist diagnosed with schizophrenia. She resides in small town Norrkoping. Her drawings are also studied by attending physicians. It is considered one of the most provocative artists of our time.

John Forbes Nash Jr. is a famous American mathematician who worked in the field of game theory as well as differential geometry. Is a laureate Nobel Prize in Economics 1994. The public is known for the film "A Beautiful Mind", filmed about his life. It is noteworthy that John Nash was able to come to terms with his illness and learned to ignore its manifestation, which doctors initially considered an improvement. He died in a car accident in May 2015.

Who is a normal person? The answer is simple, indicators of the level of its development correspond to indicators of age. Psychodiagnostics offers a lot of all sorts of methods for determining intelligence, using which, each person wants to know that his own level exceeds the norm. What does "above normal" mean? This expression already speaks of the "abnormality" of a person.

A deeper deviation from the norm is observed in geniuses. The very idea of ​​the abnormality of geniuses occurred to thinkers ancient greece. Plato called genius "nonsense given by the gods."

All the great discoveries of the world originate in crazy ideas and theories. On present stage seems absurd opposition to Giordano Bruno or the thoughts of Leonardo da Vinci. We talk enthusiastically about how far-sighted many geniuses were, and we are surprised at the situation that their environment did not understand this. If great theories were considered insane, then, naturally, their authors had the same characteristic.

genius and

The term "schizophrenia" was first introduced by the Austrian psychiatrist E. Beyler in 1908. Schizophrenia meant a splitting of the will, emotions and holistic thinking.

The reasons are not fully understood and still need to be studied in depth. One of the triggering causes is determined by stress, disease and heredity. The same reasons are also called as the main mechanisms for the appearance of genius. The famous professor Lombroso pointed out that the causes of the origin of schizophrenia and genius are the same.

Plato, defining genius as delirium, pointed to its versatile manifestation. The splitting of thinking and emotions is manifested in the most various forms and in no way associated with dementia, as many mistakenly believe. Brad characterized many poets, artists, musicians, and scientists. Contemporaries of geniuses often observed how they, moving away from others, mumbled incoherent remarks and phrases under their breath, which, subsequently, became brilliant poems, sonnets, studies and scientific works.

There are known facts that the father of rocket technology, Tsiolkovsky, saw the inscription “paradise” in the sky, which he repeatedly told his assistants about. The works of Salvador Dali are the result of delusional visions. The persecutory mania with delusional visions that accompanies genius is demonstrated in the film A Beautiful Mind, based on real facts from the life of Nobel laureate in economics John Forbes Nash.

Geniuses often manifest themselves in one or more areas. For example, Leonardo da Vinci could not master Latin, and most of the great mathematicians confused the names of colors and cardinal points. Such features of geniuses were often perceived as eccentricities, among them the famous Sakharov's shoe tied with a lace, the refusal to cut and shave the father of Western aircraft construction, Howard Hughes.

Not spared the genius and features of sexual desire. History states the facts that Michelangelo, remaining single, claimed that his wife was replaced by art. Leonardo da Vinci was a homosexual and Newton was a virgin. Famous personalities were also bachelors: Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Leibniz, Gogol, Turgenev and others. And the famous thinker Rousseau, on the contrary, was distinguished by depravity.

Schizophrenia and genius are side by side, coexisting with each other, and according to many scientists, may be a consequence of each other, in any order.

Great geniuses suffering from schizophrenia

The vast majority of brilliant people had character traits schizophrenia. Naturally, they did not have clear psychiatric diagnoses during their lifetime. Historical facts their lives, observations of contemporaries and their own diaries allowed psychiatrists, after many years, to establish this diagnosis.

BATYUSHKOV K.N. (1787 - 1855)- Russian poet, known for such works as "Merry Hour", "Bacchae", "My Penates", etc. He survived a deep spiritual crisis and radically changed the direction of poetry, proclaiming a deep tragedy: "The Dying Tass", "The Saying of Melchizedek".

BULGAKOV M.A. (1891 - 1940)- Russian prose writer, who is a closed and "dark" personality for his contemporaries. He is a morphine addict, as a result of which original images of his works were obtained.

VAN GOGH Vincent (1853 — 1890) - Dutch post-impressionist painter. His creative way is divided into 2 parts: the first is the gloomy range of works; the second part is characterized by a manner of painful tension, which is based on color contrasts: "Night cafe", "Landscape at Auvers after the rain", etc. The artist last years taken to a hospital for the mentally ill.

VRUBEL M.A. (1856 - 1910)- Russian painter. Vrubel's work is dominated by philosophical themes of good and evil, accompanied by tension: "Demon", "Lilac". The artist suffered from severe forms of mental illness.

Garshin V.M. (1855 - 1888)- a Russian writer with a heightened sense of perception of social injustice. Works: "Coward", "Red Flower", etc. Committed suicide.

GAUDI Antonio (1852 - 1926) – spanish architect(Barcelona). He was obsessed with the idea of ​​fantastic fashioned forms, which he achieved in his works to the point of fanaticism.

GOGOL N.V. (1809 - 1852)- Russian writer. Visual and auditory are the basis for the plots of his works. He suffered from apathy, depression, hypochondria (fear of death).

Dostoevsky F.M. (1821 - 1881)- Russian writer. His works - "Crime and Punishment", "Double", "Notes of the Dead House", etc. - are permeated with the search for meaning, great psychologism and tragedy, which in extreme borderline forms were inherent in the author himself.

KAFKA Franz (1883 - 1924)- Austrian writer His novels-parables combine nightmarish fantasy and description of the impotence and tragedy of an ordinary person.

Mandelshtam O.E. (1891 - 1938)- Russian poet. His poetry is saturated with a special perception of the world, called concrete-material. He managed to penetrate deep into everyday life and everyday life, endowing familiar situations with special meaning.

Guy de Maupassant (1850 - 1893)- French writer. The author of short stories, where the Master of the short story. In numerous stories, addiction to scenes of sensual addictions. The writer died in a mental hospital.

NIETZSCHE (1844 - 1900)- German philosopher. In the works of the philosopher, one feels an idealistic attitude towards oneself, in comparison with the general world.

RUSSO Jean Jacques (1712-1778)- French writer and thinker suffering from persecution mania. The thinker created the image of a new hero - a romantic savage, subject only to his feelings and desires.

Toulouse-Lautrec Henri de (1864 - 1901)- French painter. Master of the "sharp" perception of the bohemia of France of that time.

KHLEBNIKOV Velimir (1885 - 1922), Russian poet and writer. Founder of the futuristic trend in literature. Distinguished by his utopian views.

EINSTEIN Albert - (1879 -1855)- German theoretical physicist, Nobel Prize winner. He suffered, in the attacks of which he brought his loved ones to the extreme.

Genius and Madness: Top 21 Crazy Geniuses

Estragon - the hero of the play "Waiting for Godot" Samuel Beckett, said that “we are all born crazy. Some of them remain ... "According to World Organization health, there are currently more than 450 million people suffering from mental illness worldwide. Their growth is facilitated by an excessive information flow, political and economic cataclysms ... Stress and depression are harbingers of diseases. But this, as it turned out, is not all.

The debate about the relationship between genius and madness has been going on among medical professionals for a long time. Stir up interest in this story of great people. Suffice it to recall the nervous and mental disorders of the post-impressionist Vincent Van Gogh or writers Virginia Woolf.

And now scientists from the Karolinska Institute (Sweden) published an article in the journal Psychiatric Research, in which they argue that the connection between creative activities and deviations from the mental norm definitely exists. The reason for this conclusion was the statistics of anomalies in the psyche, collected by scientists among more than a million people. The set of deviations was very extensive: schizophrenia, bipolar affective disorder, depression, anxiety state, a variety of addictions, starting with alcohol, anorexia, autism and much more.

The results of the analysis confirmed that indeed people are most susceptible to mental illness. creative professions, and most often - bipolar affective disorder, which was formerly called manic-depressive psychosis. Dancers, photographers, scientists, and writers are at especially high risk for this disorder.

Literature classes serve as a kind of bait for most of the neuropsychiatric deviations. It turned out that writers are twice as likely to commit suicide than other people.

The opposite pattern was also revealed: representatives of creative professions most often came across among relatives of those who suffered from schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anorexia and autism.

However, the data obtained do not say anything about the fact that the passion for literature, painting or photography has a bad effect on the psyche. On the contrary, unusual thoughts or fantastic visions due to mental deviations, as well as the ability to imagine and hear voices clothed in characters, most likely encourage a person to take up a pen, camera or brush.

Today, many psychiatrists are convinced that every creative person has more or less significant deviations in the psyche, and such deviations are necessarily inherent in brilliant creators - they only help to create masterpieces. Most of the geniuses we know clearly had mental problems. Who is this?

All of my life N.V. Gogol suffered from manic-depressive psychosis. "I was taken over by my ordinary periodic illness, during which I remain almost immobile in a room, sometimes for 2-3 weeks." This is how the writer describes his condition. Ultimately, within two weeks, he starved himself to death and died.

Lev Tolstoy suffered from frequent and severe bouts of depression accompanied by various phobias. Moreover, he struggled with longing and depression for many years. In addition, the great writer had an affective-aggressive psyche.

Sergei Yesenin it seemed that everyone was whispering about him, weaving intrigues around him. Some researchers of his biography say that the poet had manic-depressive psychosis, suicidal tendencies, complicated by hereditary alcoholism.

And at Maxim Gorky there was a craving for vagrancy, frequent moving and pyromania. In addition, in his family, his grandfather and father had an unbalanced psyche and a penchant for sadism. Gorky also suffered from suicide mania - he made his first attempt to commit suicide as a child.

There are periods of depression and all kinds of manias in the great Russian poet A.S. Pushkin. From early youth, he began to show various psychopathic traits. In the lyceum period, they expressed themselves in increased irritability. For Pushkin, there were only two elements: "satisfaction with carnal passions and poetry." Biographers associate "unbridled revelry, cynical and perverse sexualism, aggressive behavior poet" with excessive emotional excitability. As a rule, it was followed by a long depressive period, during which creative sterility was noted. And one can clearly trace the dependence of the productivity of creativity on the mental state of the poet.

Some biographers Mikhail Lermontov It is believed that the poet suffered from one of the forms of schizophrenia. Mental disorder, most likely, he inherited maternal line- his grandfather took his own life by taking poison, his mother suffered from neurosis and hysteria. Contemporaries noted that Lermontov was a very vicious and uncommunicative person, even in his appearance read something sinister. According to Pyotr Vyazemsky, Lermontov was extremely nervous, his moods changed sharply and polarly. Cheerful and good-natured, in a moment he could become angry and gloomy. “And at such moments he was not safe.”

English writer Virginia Woolf suffered from deep depression. It is also said that she wrote her works only while standing. The result of her life is tragic: the writer drowned herself in the river, filling her coat pockets with stones.

Edgar Allan Poe It is no coincidence that he was so interested in psychology. It is believed that he could be suffering from bipolar affective disorder. The writer drank a lot of alcohol, and in one of his letters he talked about his thoughts about suicide.

Pulitzer Prize Winner Tennessee Williams was subject to frequent depression. In the 1940s, his schizophrenic sister underwent a lobotomy. In 1961, the writer's lover died. Both events had a profound effect on him. mental condition, exacerbating the depression that led him to take drugs. He could not get rid of depression and addiction until the end of his life.

American writer Ernest Hemingway suffered from alcoholism, bipolar disorder and paranoia and ended up shooting himself with a gun.

Vincent Van Gogh was prone to depression and epileptic seizures. The severed ear is an innocent experiment. In the end, he shot himself in the chest with a pistol.

Artist Michelangelo allegedly suffered from autism, that is, its mild form - Asperger's syndrome. The artist was closed a strange person focused on their own individual world. He practically had no friends.

German composer Ludwig van Beethoven experienced manic and depressive periods of bipolar disorder and was close to suicide. His creative upsurge of energy gave way to apathy. And in order to switch and again force himself to write music again, Beethoven dipped his head into a basin of ice water. The composer also tried to "treat" himself with opium and alcohol.

One of the founders of modern theoretical physics Albert Einstein he was undoubtedly a genius already during his lifetime and definitely an eccentric person. As a child, he suffered from a mild form of autism. And his mother almost considered him mentally retarded. He was reserved and phlegmatic. The actions of an already adult theoretical physicist did not differ in morality. The American psychologist Ion Carlson believes that the presence of the schizophrenia gene is one of the incentives for high creative endowments. In his opinion, Einstein had this gene. Therefore, the doctors stated that the son of a scientist had schizophrenia.

Another genius scientist sir Isaac Newton, according to many researchers, suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. It was very difficult to talk to him, he often had mood swings.

Oddities were also noticed behind the brilliant inventor Nikola Tesla. He had a mania to see things through to the end. So, in college, he decided to read Voltaire, and although after the first volume he realized that he actively did not like the writer, he read all 100 volumes. During lunch, he used exactly 18 napkins, wiped plates, cutlery and hands. He was horrified by women's hair, earrings, pearls, and never in his life did he sit at the same table with a woman.

The prototype of the protagonist of the Oscar-winning film "A Beautiful Mind", a mathematician John Nash I have suffered from paranoia all my life. The genius often had hallucinations, he heard extraneous voices and saw non-existent people. Wife Nobel laureate she supported her husband, helping him to hide the symptoms of the disease, since, according to American laws of that time, he could be forced into treatment. What eventually happened, but the mathematician managed to deceive the doctors. He learned to mask the manifestations of the disease with such skill that psychiatrists believed in his healing. I must say that Nash's wife Lucia was also diagnosed with paranoid disorder in her advanced years.

Hollywood actress Winona Ryder once admitted: “There are good days and bad days, and depression is something that's always with me." The actress abused alcohol. Then she was repeatedly caught stealing from Beverly Hills stores. It was revealed that Ryder suffers from kleptomania.

Husband suffers from bipolar affective disorder Michael Douglas Catherine Zeta-Jones. Actually, it was this disease that served as a discord in this star family.

Another Hollywood genius Woody Allen- autistic. Among the favorite themes of his films: psychoanalysis and psychoanalysts, sex. All this worries him and real life. Woody's first wife, Harleen Rosen, filed a $1,000,000 damages lawsuit in a divorce settlement. According to her, he humiliated her by demanding sterile cleanliness in the house, making a menu according to which Harleen had to feed him, and snidely commenting on everything that she did. The second wife, Louise Lasser, after the divorce, said that she was interested in the director as a housekeeper. One day, after returning from a psychoanalyst, Allen told her: "My doctor said that you are not physically suitable for me." In fact, he met another - Diana Keaton. After 8 years, Diana was replaced by another muse, actress Mia Farrow, who adopted a child almost every year. They rented different apartments nearby, because. Allen did not want to turn his life "in kindergarten". As a result, the couple broke up with a scandal. Mia caught her husband in the arms of her eldest adopted daughter Sun-Yu. Actually, it is she who is now the companion of the life of a film genius.

List of famous creative people, who left a mark on art and suffer from mental illness, can be continued indefinitely: Fedor Dostoevsky, Hans Christian Andersen, Franz Schubert, Alfred Schnittke, Salvador Dali, Leonardo da Vinci, Nicolo Paganini, Johann Sebastian Bach, Isaac Levitan, Sigmund Freud, Rudolf Diesel, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Claude Henri Saint-Simon, Immanuel Kant, Charles Dickens, Albrecht Dürer, Sergei Rachmaninov, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Lope de Vega, Nostradamus, Jean Baptiste Molière, Francisco Goya, Honore de Balzac, Friedrich Nietzsche, Marilyn Monroe and others. Genie, what can you do...