JAAH 1 (2) pp.

215–221 Intellect Limited 2010

Journal of Applied Arts and Health

Volume 1 Number 2
© 2010 Intellect Ltd Miscellaneous. English language. doi: 10.1386/jaah.1.2.215_7

PETER AMSEL
Freelance

Creativity and bipolar

disorder: Living with
mental illness

ABSTRACT KEYWORDS
Is it possible to find something positive about living with an illness that can, at bipolar
times, be debilitating: an illness that can lead to death? This difficult and perhaps creativity
even troubling question is addressed from the perspective of an award-winning com- mental illness
poser and writer who has been living with bipolar affective disorder for more than composition
half of his life. Exploring the issues of creativity and how bipolar disorder has influ- stigma
enced such an integral part of the human experience, this article opens the door to
a new level of understanding, both of the creative process and of an illness that is
still accompanied by a mystique and stigma for those afflicted. Through the use of
historical antecedents, the author demonstrates that mental illness does not only
contribute to the creative process of one individual today, it has contributed to our
cultural landscape for centuries.

Please use your imagination for a moment and allow yourself to visualize the
following scenario as though it were your life; then ask whether you could pos-
sibly find anything positive about the situation. What could be positive, you
may wonder, about being stricken with a disorder that can, at times, leave you
nearly paralysed with debilitating depressions, or feeling as though your mind
is being torn asunder as it ascends through episodes of dysphoria, occasionally

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 Peter Amsel

lighting upon an all-too-brief hypomania. The cycling can be so rapid at times it

makes it nearly impossible to focus on a single project, let alone channelling your
creative energies into something that will have any lasting value – if, that is, you
manage to complete any one thing at all as it is hopelessly mixed up amongst a
myriad other projects that have been started, worked on, and abandoned – and
yet, somewhere in this blur of activity that becomes another episode of what can
only be called the ‘roller coaster ride from hell’ you do manage to create some-
thing, you manage to complete one of your many projects.
As bleak as that may have sounded we must not lose hope: what was
created may turn out to be a great piece of music, or a poem that may touch
someone in need of comfort. The creativity that has been the ‘bright side’ of
what is decidedly not an easy thing to live with is something that I could not
live without. Without reservation I can say that bipolar affective disorder has
been both a curse and a blessing in my life as a composer and writer. The
greatest victory that I may have over this illness on some days, however, may
simply be getting out of bed, or being able to drag myself to an early morning
appointment: but that still means that I have not surrendered to the illness, that
I have not succumbed to the darkness, that I have one more day to ‘fight’ the
good fight.
From a clinical perspective there is one thing that can be said that you
will surely not find in the texts written by the scientists and doctors who have
studied these illnesses from the impartial gaze of science: there is no amount
of observation that can make up for the benefit that experience imparts upon
an individual who has lived with and struggled through the adversity provided
by an affective disorder. This is not to say that every psychiatrist needs to have
a drug-induced mania in order to fully understand the illnesses they are treat-
ing, not to mention a psychotic episode and a deep, clinical depression, but
we must never forget that mental illnesses are intensely subjective experiences
varying greatly from individual to individual, these are not the same illnesses
as diabetes or arthritis. Mental illnesses have a direct bearing on the manner
in which an individual will relate to others, influencing their social, economic
and familial situations, but they will also have a tremendous affect on the
internal life of the individual in the way the illness works to torment you on
an existential level.
My ‘why’ for living is to be, to create, either music, words or even things
through images; all that matters is that it is an opportunity for me to express
my feelings in a way that does not completely rely on physical or personal
interactions with other people. The anxiety that accompanies me in my eve-
ryday ‘walk’ is manageable, for the most part, with relaxation exercises, and
yet I have no desire to change the method of communication with which I
am most proficient; composing rather than talking, writing rather than inter-
acting. This does not mean that I cannot speak to people and that I define
myself as an antisocial person; there are numerous times when these inter-
actions take place, and I manage to survive. It is curious, however, that I am
more comfortable in the role of public speaker, or even that of performer,
than being a member of the audience. One of the things that I never allow
myself to contemplate is the idea that I can separate any of the elements
that combine together to make me who I am as an individual. I have often
been asked if it would be possible to separate myself from this illness as an
artist, and whether I thought I could survive in such a situation; whether I
would remain the creative individual that I am if the illness was somehow
removed.

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 Creativity and bipolar disorder

In all honesty, this is a question that I cannot answer for the simple
reason that I am thoroughly convinced that while I am not defined by this
illness, a great deal of what makes me the composer and writer that I am is a
direct result of the illness and how it influences my reactions, my emotional
responses to everyday situations, and even my intellectual activity when I am
not being creative. As an example of this I only need recall my time spent
in college and university: my frequent mood changes and highly mercurial
states were accepted without question as being part of my ‘artistic tempera-
ment’. To those who witnessed my unusual, and at times, erratic behaviour,
I was merely exhibiting the traits of a true composer. I was supposed to be
eccentric … perhaps even crazy, so long as I consistently produced, which I
did. My outward actions seemed to fit into the preconceived ideas that others
possessed regarding what a composer should be like, and that included my
increasingly crazy behaviour.
That worked for me as well, until the time came when I felt something
inside go terribly wrong: as a result, I could not compose for almost four
years. At that point I came to the realization that there was something wrong
with me – seriously wrong – and I needed help. The fact that I was deep
in the throes of an intensely morbid depression, replete with suicidal idea-
tions, seemed to contribute to the evidence. I truly felt that if help were not
found, I would not live to see my next birthday. Living on the sixth floor of
an apartment building added an extra impetus to sort out my desires to end
it all over my inability to compose. Aside from being desperate to compose
again I was becoming afraid of where I was living for the simple fact that
my suicidal ideations often focused around my balcony and several fantastic
scenarios that swirled around my mind about how I might leave the balcony.
It was all too convenient and easy; it was too tempting given the fragile state
of mind I was in at the time. Fortunately, the fantastic scenarios remained
nothing more than fantasy and the ideations have become extremely rare. I
also moved away from the apartment with that balcony; after all, one should
not tempt fate.
More than anything else what I learned while on the path of receiving
treatment for this illness were the similarities that I discovered between my
own situation and that of creative individuals throughout history who were
similarly afflicted. More importantly, with a renewed understanding of the
humanity that exists behind the illness and the people living with it, it has
become possible for me to have a greater appreciation of the contributions
to the society in which we live that have been made, and are being made, by
people with affective disorders. This has also fuelled my desire to work, as
much as I can, to help others understand about mental health issues, and to
work towards destroying the stigma surrounding mental illness.
The list of those whose lives have been directly affected by mental illness
is, in a sense, seemingly endless, and can be made up of individuals from
every corner of society. Writers such as Sylvia Plath and Ernest Hemingway,
who both ended their lives when the darkness did not appear to have an end,
are in the company of artists such as Vincent Van Gogh, Michelangelo, and
Jackson Pollock, who all drew on their ‘inner demons’ to spur them on to
greater expressions of the human need to create. The work that Michelangelo
accomplished in his lifetime could not have been achieved without his
near-fanatic dedication to the creative process. By attaching candles to his hat
he devised ways to allow himself to work for countless hours, through the
darkest nights while others slept.

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 Peter Amsel

A long list of incredible geniuses keep me inspired as a composer by the

way they lived and worked with the deleterious effects of affective disorders:
Hector Berlioz, Ludwig van Beethoven, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and
even George Frederick Handel, the composer of the great oratorio Messiah;
each battled some form of affective disorder that had a direct influence
upon their lives. Mozart, for example, composed the Overture to his opera,
Don Giovanni, the night before the premiere: Having composed the piece,
he then copied out the orchestral parts, in time for the first performance the
next evening. It would take an accomplished copyist several days, at least,
to merely copy, that amount of music, let alone compose it from scratch.
Unfortunately, when Mozart took time to relax, he did what many individu-
als with affective disorders do: he ‘self-medicated’ with copious amounts
of wine. This goes a long way to prove something about those trying to
live with affective disorders: whether it be with medications prescribed by a
physician, or through the use of alcohol and other drugs, affective disorders
will be treated.
The one composer with whom I have felt a particular affinity, for vari-
ous reasons, is Robert Schumann. Schumann was born in 1810 and died in
1856 and in his tragically short life he composed some of the most hauntingly
beautiful masterpieces of the nineteenth century. Throughout his creative life
Schumann experienced extended episodes corresponding to periods where
there was little or no compositional output. This is in contrast to the times
where he produced copious amounts of work in extremely short periods of
time, including his three string quartets, which were written in a period of
only a few weeks during one summer (Schumann composed out of white-
heat inspiration). Unfortunately, his mood swings became worse with age,
as we know this condition will often do if left untreated. He ultimately threw
himself into the Rhine River in a failed attempt to commit suicide. As a result
of this attempt he voluntarily consented to spend the remaining twenty-eight
months of his life in an asylum at Endenich, located near Bonn, in Germany.
Schumann suffered from severe aural delusions and deteriorated to the point
where he was unable to write anything down as all sounds blended into one
another. He claimed that he was hearing a melody sent to him from angels,
but it would not stop, and he was unable to write it down; eventually the
angelic melodies turned into the sounds of devils. This eventually deteriorated
into severe tinnitus and his initial suicide attempt was ultimately realized as
he refused to eat and starved himself to death. One of the greatest composers
of the Romantic period was dead 51 days after his 46th birthday; he died one
day after a visit from his wife, Clara.
While I would find it impossible to consider the state of western classical
music without Schumann and the others I have named, it would be similarly
impossible to consider the history of the twentieth century without someone
like Sir Winston Churchill, a man who may well have saved the world. In his
book, Churchill’s Black Dog and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind, Anthony
Storr puts Churchill’s battle with bipolar disorder into a new perspective: ‘Had
he been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In
1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might
well have concluded that we were finished’ (Storr 1997: 5). History ultimately
tells us that this man, while suffering a war within his mind, still managed
to galvanize a nation to do something that everyone living with an affective
disorder should remember: ‘Never give in, never give in, never, never, never,
never – in nothing great or small, large or petty – never give in except to

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 Creativity and bipolar disorder

convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the
apparently overwhelming might of the enemy’ (Churchill 2003: 306–7).
The mechanics of creativity eluded me until recently, but have nevertheless
remained of great interest. It would seem that many of the people that I have
encountered want to know ‘how I compose’ which had always seemed like a
strange question, but it also demonstrated how much interest there was in the
creative process from those individuals who were not actively involved with
this type of creativity. The interest that people have in the process is what helps
others relate to many of the things that we all do, to all the things we have
in common, only on a different scale, and it all stems from the natural desire
that humans have to create things. From the first paintings found in caves,
depicting hunters and their catches, there has been a drive to express our inner
feelings and ideas through a medium other than the spoken word. Even the
spoken word, for the sake of art, can be taken to an extreme in the various
forms of poetry, singing and other performance art.
When considering the issue of bipolar disorder and its influence on cre-
ativity, I was confronted with the question as to whether there truly was a
relationship between the disorder and my creative process; I can now answer
this question with a categorical yes: there is an intrinsic connection between
my creative process and my personal experiences with this affective disorder.
However, the relationship is not what you might expect … it was certainly not
what I expected when I finally realized the connection.
The peak time for creative endeavours for most of those living with bipo-
lar disorder are those times of elevated mood; both hypomania and, even in
limited cases, full blown mania may function as the fuel for expanded creative
energy. This is an easy relationship to see, and should be easier to understand:
increased energy levels will often coincide with heightened intellectual abili-
ties. This corresponds with the elevated mood, or with the period immediately
before a major manic episode so that, in a limited sense, increased creativity
may be seen in some subjects as a prodrome to the worsening of symptoms
and an indicator that, perhaps, some steps may need to be taken to protect
the individual from the possibility of self-harm. However, this is what creative
people long for and what they may try to achieve through ‘artificial means’,
particularly if they are experiencing a creative ‘lag’ in their output. The use of
caffeine, nicotine and various other means at their disposal will, depending
on the individual, influence their affect to the point that it may trigger an ‘ele-
vated’ episode. This ‘heightened’ state of creativity can truly be a transcend-
ent time in that it allows the individual involved in the creative act to make
temporal relationships between seemingly unrelated things: this is something
that lies at the core of the creative process, something that cannot easily be
conveyed to those who have not experienced the ecstatic feelings that come
from being able to make something out of nothing. This allows creativity to
flow with a far greater ease than at other times. For the most part, and in
a grand display of cosmic humour, I have discovered that my most creative
moments seem to be accompanied by a low-grade depression rather than the
euphoric hypomania that I occasionally experience.
Please, do not be confused; there are many times when the white-phos-
phorus touch of the Muse comes down while I am experiencing the increased
energy that accompanies an ‘elevated’ energy level. These episodes are often
amazingly productive and have helped me produce some wonderful things.
These episodes have happened more times than I can count, but I cycle very
rapidly and unpredictably; things may be going very well at some point and

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 Peter Amsel

then I hit an emotional wall, crash, and burn. It can be both excruciating and
debilitating: from one minute to the next I can be speaking animatedly to
someone and all of a sudden it feels as though there is a black cloud over
my head. Being a rabid-cycler means that there is nothing predictable about
the way my moods will run from one day to the next – from one hour to the
next – even with the medication that I take to modulate my mood swings.
Taking more medication would risk medicating away that which helps fuel the
creativity that I live for: it is not an option that I, or my doctor, are willing to
take at this time. For the most part, my creative fire burns at what could best be
described as a ‘low flame’, but it is a flame that will flare up when I find myself
deeply immersed in a project, and at that time, nothing can stop me.
Nothing can describe the absolute thrill associated with having the ‘crea-
tive juices’ flowing so fast it seems virtually impossible to record thoughts
before they evaporate – and sometimes they do – sometimes things go by
so fast you miss that idea as it emerges from the forge of your creative cen-
tre, but there is little time to mourn that loss for no sooner has that idea
passed from memory that another, fresher idea, is born of the fires. When this
happens, ideas often fly in completely unrelated directions from those that
came only a brief moment before. It is incredibly satisfying to have these
expressions of your innermost creative being come to fruition right before your
eyes; it can be exhilarating as well as immensely frustrating. The process can
also be utterly exhausting and emotionally devastating, leaving me drained
and totally enervated – feeling as though my very soul has been drained of
its essence. But where silence once reigned and there was nothing more than
a blank page devoid of life and character, now a part of my soul has been
transcribed, born out of the torment of my mind: it now awaits the moment
when it will be brought to life by a performance, allowing others to share the
experience, to share what I alone have been able to hear. It is the same with
the writing of a poem, a story, or part of my novel. Words are strung together,
expressing what I could not have hoped to say under other circumstances.
Once written, it is mine forever, becoming part of what will always remain,
long after my time is over.
Being enveloped in the creative process, experiencing the unfolding of so
many, often divergent, ideas, is something that can never truly be communi-
cated to someone else. While I worked on different compositions in univer-
sity I discovered that every time a work was completed I would experience a
period of deep depression, far deeper than the ‘low grade’ depressions that
I cycled out of regularly. These episodes could be extremely debilitating. A
strategy that I adopted to temper the pain associated with those episodes
involved working on several projects at once, always having something on the
go at the end of any particular piece. The only problem with that was, in the
end, it seemed as though I was becoming reluctant to complete any composi-
tion, trying to avoid the depression through procrastination. While that did
not work, it did allow me to see that I was far more enamoured with the proc-
ess of creation than with the final product. Having composed a piece of music
I was not as concerned with it being performed as I was about being able to
compose, or write, something else. Composing something new has always
been a priority rather than worrying about whether or not something I already
composed was going to be performed.
Ultimately I discovered that the paradigm in which I existed is even more
warped than that of an ‘ordinary’ crazy composer: a moniker that I have
adopted to identify myself on the Internet (spelled ‘crazycomposer’) as a

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 Creativity and bipolar disorder

symbol of the fact that I have embraced this illness, that it is part of who I am.
Indeed, I have reconciled myself to this wonderful madness and I am honest
with people when telling them that I have an ‘illness’, never allowing it to
define me as an individual; just as I am cognizant of the fact that it is the sum
of the parts that makes me the man that I am, all the pieces are necessary to
complete this piece of humanity and to completely remove one element – to
eradicate all of the symptoms, even if that were possible – would completely
change me from the unique individual that I am, quirks and all. Four words
from Sir Winston Churchill perfectly embody what everyone living with an
affective disorder should try to remember about their struggle to survive, and
these are the only four words, when spoken at the end of the day, that really
matter: ‘We shall never surrender!’

REFERENCES
Churchill W. S. (ed.) (2003), Never Give In!: The Best of Winston Churchill’s
Speeches, New York: Hyperion.
Frankl, V. ([1959] 1984), Man’s Search for Meaning, New York: Washington
Square Press.
Goodwin, F. and Jamison, K. (1990), Manic-Depressive Illness, Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Jamison, K. R. (1993), Touched with Fire, New York: Simon & Schuster.
Storr, A. (1997), Churchill’s Black Dog and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind,
Canada: Harper Collins.

SUGGESTED CITATION
Amsel, P. (2010), ‘Creativity and bipolar disorder: Living with mental
illness’, Journal of Applied Arts and Health 1: 2, pp. 215–221, doi: 10.1386/
jaah.1.2.215_7

CONTRIBUTOR DETAILS
Peter Amsel lives in Ottawa, composing and writing while continuing on
the road to recovery from bipolar disorder, an illness he has been living with
for more than half of his life. He received a diploma in Performance from
Cambrian College (Classical Guitar) and a Bachelor of Music in Composition
from the University of Ottawa. After completing his studies the symptoms
of the illness gradually became worse until he finally hit rock bottom: he is
feeling much better now, living on a disability pension he takes each day as it
comes, living to be creative, in whatever way that is possible.
Contact: 874 Cahill Drive West, Ottawa, Ontario, K1V 9A2, Canada.
E-mail: acrazycomposer@yahoo.ca

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