Гениальность и помешательство

by Cesare Lombroso, Чезаре Ломброзо

Чезаре Ломброзо, знаменитый итальянский ученый, писатель, совершивший настоящую революцию в представлении о личности преступника и психологии преступлений. Проработавший большую часть жизни тюремным врачом, писатель выделил четыре типа преступников (душегуб, вор, насильник, жулик), используемые в криминологии до сегодняшнего дня и утверждал, что у большинства из них имеется врожденная склонность к совершению преступлений. Именно благодаря его исследованиям в центре внимания оказалась личность, а не преступное деяние.

Однако главной работой Ломброзо стала фантастически интересная и необычная книга "Гениальность и помешательство".

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Science, Italy, Sociology, Nonfiction

396 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 1889

About the author

Italian criminologist, physician, and founder of the Italian School of Positivist Criminology. Lombroso rejected the established Classical School, which held that crime was a characteristic trait of human nature.

Instead, using concepts drawn from physiognomy, early eugenics, psychiatry and Social Darwinism, Lombroso's theory of anthropological criminology essentially stated that criminality was inherited, and that someone "born criminal" could be identified by physical defects, which confirmed a criminal as savage, or atavistic.

Reviews

[Tucker · Rating 1 out of 5]

Lombroso believes geniuses are mad. They are no ordinary "fools"; they have a special kind of "neurosis," maybe hereditary, leading to a "degeneration" more severe than in most other madmen. They may tend toward sexual obscenity. Creative genius is usually something you're born with, not something you learn or can teach; when it strikes later in life, it usually provokes an entirely new artistic skill, not a minor improvement in an existing skill. Lombroso isolates revealing quotes and surprising anecdotes on the crazy brains of artists and scientists. (A mountain of confirmation bias. Oh well.) Among the people he cites as holding the same opinion: Moreau (de Tours), Psychologie Morbide (1859); J. A. Schilling, Psychiatrische Briefe (1863); and general cultural assumptions since time immemorial.

The first sentence of Chapter 1 is: "It is a sad mission to cut through and destroy with the scissors of analysis the delicate and iridescent veils with which our proud mediocrity clothes itself. Very terrible is the religion of truth." I am happy with that sentence, but the book quickly unravels. This was published in 1890, give or take a year, and my intuition is that it was regressive even for its time, both stylistically and morally.

Early in the book, he starts up with sexism, racism, and bertillonage-ism. So-and-so "had a cretin-like physiognomy" or allegedly had facial features that are supposed to prove whatever. Are there any women artists mentioned in the book? No. No women, he says, "touch the summits reached by Michelangelo, or Newton, or Balzac. Even J. S. Mill, who was very partial to the cause of women, confessed that they lacked originality." If occasionally several women of genius are found, it is only because they have "something virile about them. As Goncourt said, there are no women of genius; the women of genius, are men." (Please note that this male author is not only arguing by tautology, but he has to quote J. S. Mill and Edmond de Goncourt to argue that women's ideas are derivative.) He goes on to say that women do not lead religious, "political, artistic, or scientific" reforms or revolutions, and "have often stood in the way of progressive movements." Then he starts talking about climate (which could potentially contain facts, insofar weather does influence mood), but that immediately degenerates into a discussion of geography and, from there, into what he sees as the typical presence or lack of genius in various races. (I deliberately echo and repurpose the word "degenerate" here, after the author's frequent use of it in the other context, e.g. "Degenerative symptoms, such as stammering, lefthandedness, precocity, sterility, abound...as well as divergences from ancestral character.") For example: Among the Italians, with their Greek and Etruscan blood, supposedly we can see "the influence of race calling forth genius even where the climate is not happy." European Jews, too, "above those of Africa and the East," display genius, not only because of the climate but because "mediaeval persecutions" culled their numbers (!!!), and sometimes the Jews display greater genius even than "Aryans."

"The influence of race," he asserts, is apparent when we look at "genius" as equally as when we consider "insanity." He shows some diagrams of skulls and we are supposed to be able to see which are properly sized, which are giant or tiny, or which looked like someone has kicked them with a boot. "Race science" was a popular form of pseudoscience at the time, and it was a fount of racist nonsense that caused major damage. If you want to learn about the history of anatomical "arguments" for racism, please see Steven Jay Gould's The Mismeasure of Man (1981), Nell Irvin Painter's A History of White People (2011) , or Angela Saini's Superior (2020). The pseudoscience of racism was interwoven with the objectification, marginalization, and oppression of disabled people, some of whom actually did have unusual skeletons, though the proper meanings of their anatomical differences were often not whatever the (pseudo)science communicator wanted to communicate.

Anyway, from the beginning of Lombroso's book, it's obvious we're not going anywhere productive, and the book becomes repetitive and boring. There is not a substantive discussion of what, if anything, is to be done about insanity/genius.

On the one hand, he begins by stating that scientific investigation should be able to confirm the details of the "special morbid condition" known as genius. If "the man of genius is a monster," we should consider, he says, that "even monsters follow well-defined teratologic laws." But on the other hand, later in the book, he suggests that madness is in the eye of the beholder: Aiming to radically reorganize politics and culture is the mark of a "lunatic," unless such an agenda "is the consequence of a profound and general upheaval, like that proclaimed by the prophets for the end of the world." In other words, if everyone agrees with you, you're not crazy. And that subjective assessment, I believe, would tend to get in the way of a straightforward scientific analysis of mental monstrosity.

Bits and pieces of the narrative are engaging insofar as he describes how various mental illnesses have manifested in specific individuals. Sometimes artists are prone to anxiety. Gioachino Rossini, composer of "The Barber of Seville," fainted at the mere prospect of traveling by train, and he told a friend that if he could change this part of his personality then he wouldn't be a composer either. Arthur Schopenhauer "lived on the first storey, in case of fire; would not trust himself to his hairdresser; hid gold in the ink-pot, and letters of change beneath the bed-clothes." Other artists suffer from more profoundly reality-disrupting hallucinations. "Epileptics" confuse their hallucinatory seizures for religious revelations. Lombroso points out at the end of the book that mental illnesses are not mutually exclusive; you can have a regular type and also a creative type. "Literary madness" presents a special problem because, he warns, a writer's words manage to obscure his crazy impulses, so a crazy writer may be more dangerous than other crazy people.

I read this twice, two years apart, only because I forgot that I had previously counted it as "finished." I thought I was still in the middle of it, and I was determined to finish it, so I read it all over again. I will now remove the copy from my life so that I do not accidentally read it a third time.

Please read any other book. I cannot tell you how many writers and artists have written memoirs of their mental illnesses (pssst — my own) and how many experts have made modern scientific investigations and social studies of creativity and mental health. There is even an emerging field called "madness studies." Any other book, please.

[sepagraf]

Унікально захоплива річ!
По-перше, це смішно 👌 В передмові автор зазначає, що вигадав і розвинув свою теорію, коли був "в екстазі", і навіть не підозрював, що вона може дати ключ до розуміння геніальності - нарцисизм рівня бог 🥺

По-друге, це наївно у доводах і аргументах, а тому читання Ломброзо місцями відбувається як знайомство з енциклопедією паранормальних явищ. Ось вам список (неповний) фізіологічних (!) подібностей геніальних і божевільних: судомні скорочення м'язів, високий вміст сечовини у сечі, сивина та облисіння, худорлявість, погана статева діяльність, сильний жар в голові й охолодження кінцівок, викривлена шия, горб, меланхолія 😎 Зізнавайтесь, впізнали себе?

На противагу цьому, деякі тези мене дійсно вражають, бо таким нехитрим способом у 19 столітті автор доходить висновку, наприклад, що божевільним до лампочки моральне лікування (вау, алілуя). Ну і це дійсно прорив (шкода, що малопомічений).

А особливий інтерес представляють приклади. Тут стільки усіляких фактів (а може й байок) з життя відомих (до 19 століття, пам'ятаємо), що на 27 сторінці я використала свої перші 20 закладинок і взяла інший колір - місцями читається як трошки застарілий Олівер Сакс. Ось кілька з них:

У Монтеск'є на підлозі було заглиблення, бо він нервово смикав ногою.
Шиллер занурював ноги в лід, щоб викликати прилив крові до мозку.
Мільтон, Бекон, Леонардо могли почати роботу, тільки коли чули дзвін.
Ніжне тіло Гумбольдта породжувало у його годувальниці нестримне бажання зарізати його.
Шопенгауер не сплачував рахунки, коли у його прізвищі було дві літери П.
Гейне присмерті, коли йому порадили звернутись до Бога, перервав своє хрипіння словами "Бог пробачить - це його робота".
Ньютон міг набивати люльку пальцем племінниці.
З останнього, що мене вразило : чи то Свіфт чи то Скотт (хоч вбий, не пам'ятаю) на повному серйозі пропонував віддавати немовлят аристократам у якості їжі 🤯 треба нарешті знайти, хто то був, бо аж невдобно 😅

Остання чверть це якраз різноманітні анекси, які в тому числі містять уривки написаних божевільними текстів.

Я не можу приховати слона в кімнаті і не згадати, що в 21 столітті читати Ломброзо це трошечки випробовування.

Він, наприклад, описує божевілля у одного чоловіка, який на старості літ переконував оточуючих, що птахи вимирають, і їм заважають шуми від залізничного полотна. І дійсно, як це птахи вмирають? Он же вони, на вулиці літають! Придумав ото 🤷‍♀

Або оцей тейк, що божевілля від геніальності відрізняється тим, що перше успадковують однаково чоловіки і жінки, а от з другим якась чудасія - тільки по чоловічій лінії. Хм хм хм 🤔 хто б ото здогадався, чому 🤷‍♀

В цілому, якщо підсумувати, то різниця дійсно є. Божевільними ми називаємо людей, які не здобули освіту, і у яких немає житла та статків. Тоді як ті самі прояви у забезпечених і творчих ми цінуємо як прояв їхньої геніальної йобобінки. Сумно? Аякже!

Ще раз повторю, що це дуже і дуже класна робота, яка і розповість якісь неочевидні історії про Руссо, і дасть уявлення про стан психіатрії як сфери в кінці 19 століття у відповідному соціокультурному контексті, і розвінчає якісь міфи. Наприклад, про депресію. В Італії вже тоді меланхолія класифікувалась як щось, що не контролюється особистістю, і так само вимагає treatment'а як фізичні вади. Тож депресії не було хіба в совєтах. Як і сексу.

[Ines · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The idea that genius was a special morbid condition had indeed often occurred to me, but I had always repelled it; and besides, without a sure experimental basis, ideas to-day do not count. Like still-born children, they appear but for a moment, to disappear at once."

This emotional anæsthesia may be found even in philanthropists, who possess the genius of sentiment, and have made goodness and pity for the poor the pivot of their actions. It is difficult to explain otherwise some pages in the Gospel. “You think, perhaps,” said Jesus, “that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I have come to throw down a sword there.... In a household of five persons, three will be against two, and two against three. I have come to bring division between father and son, between mother and daughter, between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law. From this time a man’s enemies will be of his own household.”[141] “I have come to bring fire on to the earth: if it burns already, so much the better!”[142] “I declare to you,” he added, “whoever leaves house, wife, brothers, and parents, will receive a hundredfold in this world, and in the world to come everlasting life.”[143] “If any one comes to me and does not hate his{64} father, mother, wife, children, brothers, sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”[144] “He who loves his father and his mother more than me is not worthy of me; he who loves his son or his daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.”[145] Jesus said to a man, “Follow me.” “Lord;” this man replied, “let me first go and bury my father.” Jesus answered: “The dead may bury their dead: go, you, and preach the kingdom of God.”

Those who, without frequenting a lunatic asylum, wish to form a fairly complete idea of the mental tortures of a monomaniac, have only to look through Rousseau’s works, especially his later writings, such as the Confessions, the Dialogues, and the Rêveries. “I have very ardent passions,” he writes in his Confessions, “and while under their influence, my impetuosity knows no bounds; I think only of the object which occupies me; the entire universe besides is nothing to me; but this only lasts a moment, and the moment which follows throws me into a state of prostration. A single sheet of fine paper tempts me more than the money to buy a ream of it. I see the thing and am tempted; if I only see the means of acquiring it I am not tempted. Even now, if I see anything that tempts me, I prefer taking it to asking for it.”

It was not only his passions that were morbid and violent; his intelligence also was affected from his earliest days, as he shows in his Confessions: “My imagination has never been so cheerful as when I have been suffering. My mind cannot beautify the really{82} pleasant things that happen to me, only the imaginary ones. If I wish to describe spring well, it must be in winter.” Real evils had little hold on Rousseau, he tells us; imaginary evils touched him more nearly. “I can adapt myself to what I experience, but not to what I fear.” It is thus that people kill themselves through fear of death.

The abuse of intellectual work, especially dangerous in a thinker whose ideas were developed slowly and with difficulty, joined to the ever-increasing stimulus of ambition, gradually transformed the hypochondriac into a melancholiac, and finally into a maniac. “My agitations and anger,” he wrote, “affected me so much that I passed ten years in delirium, and am only calm to-day.” Calm! When disease, now become chronic, no longer permitted him to distinguish what was real, what was imaginary in his troubles. In fact, he bade farewell to the world of society, in which he had never felt at home, and retired into solitude; but even in the country, people from the town zealously pursued him, and the tumult of the world and notions of amour-propre veiled the freshness of nature.

The difference between degenerate genius and degenerate madman become the extensive knowledge held by the genius in a few areas paired with a belief in one's own superiority as a result.

All mathematicians admire the great geometer Bolyai, whose eccentricities were of an insane character; thus he provoked thirteen officials to duels and fought with them, and between each duel he played the violin, the only piece of furniture in his house; when pensioned he printed his own funeral card with a blank date, and constructed his own coffin—a vagary which I have found in two other mathematicians who died in recent years. Six years later he had a similar funeral card printed, to substitute for the other which he had not been able to use. He imposed on his heir the obligation to plant on his grave an apple-tree, in remembrance of Eve, of Paris, and of Newton.[164] Such was the great reformer of Euclid.

Mainländer educated himself and wrote his celebrated book, Die Philosophie der Erlösung, but to realize his theories entirely, he adopted a rule of absolute chastity, and on the day on which his book was published hanged himself, the better to confirm a passage which said: “In order that man may be redeemed it is{73} necessary that he should recognize the value of not-being, and desire intensely not to be.”

No one has, for the rest, maintained more openly than Schopenhauer, the relationship of genius to insanity. “People of genius,” he wrote, “are not only unpleasant in practical life, but weak in moral sense and wicked.” And elsewhere: “Such men can have but few friends; solitude reigns on the summits.... Genius is closer to madness than to ordinary intelligence.... The lives of men of genius show how often, like lunatics, they are in a state of continual agitation.”

“I am going to try,” says Gérard de Nerval, in his book entitled Le Rêve et la Vie, “to transcribe the impressions of a long illness which ran its course entirely in the mysteries of my mind. I do not know why I make use of the term illness, for never—as far as I am concerned—did I feel better. Sometimes I thought my strength and activity were doubled; it seemed that I knew and understood everything, imagination gave me infinite delight. In recovering what men called reason, shall I have to regret the loss of this?”

Van Swieten (Comment., 1121) relates that he had seen a woman who, during her attacks of mania, only spoke in verse, which she composed with admirable facility, although in health she had never shown the least poetic talent.

“September 7, 1852, 7 a.m. Lancinating pain in the eyes, acute suffering in the eyelids. Pressure on the temples, principally on the left, eyes constantly watering, larynx contracted; a horrible, never-ceasing devouring hunger, which seems to make me start. I am seized by an anger which makes me seem mad in the eyes of others. If I could still cry out, that would relieve me; I am boiling over with anger, and I look wild. It is as though I had a little saw inside my head. Always this motion of{167} sawing—of a wheel which keeps turning and carries me with it. My bones feel to me like dead wood which burns like logwood.

“September 8, 1852. The whole day without having been able to do anything. My forehead seemed encircled with a tight iron band. I went to bed with a feeling of deep depression. Fear overpowers me—sometimes a feeling of hatred—a very little excusable jealousy of those who can act freely and work. I have in my back something like little strings pulling in all directions, making music like an accordion. It is torturing. The strongest man would fall dead with terror, if he could see the reality of a person in my state of health.... And they laugh at me.... The doctors refuse to believe in my sufferings. There are moments when all that I have ever seen in my life is before my eyes at once. I feel myself lifted into the air or up to the roofs; I feel a horror of myself. It is like an old painting by Rembrandt etched in aqua fortis.
“Dreams.—Dead horses, headless, dismembered—horrors of all kinds.... Then there are members of my family who appear to me; but everything I see is distorted and reduced in size; there is, as it were, a camera obscura in me, and the reflector shows me everything in miniature. I admit that I may be insane—but you, too, must admit at least that I am very ill,” &c.


For the demonomaniacs of a hundred years ago—belated representatives of mediæval mysticism, who typify the ancient form of paranoia—are now substituted the modern paranoiacs; new alchemists who, with their pseudo-scientific delusions, and their vainglorious phrases, revive in our day the style and thoughts of Trithemius, Agrippa, Paracelsus, and other men of the sixteenth century who were strange, but learned and venerated students of occult science and magic.

[BVC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gli voglio troppo bene a 'sto coglione.

[ouliana · Rating 4 out of 5]

when melanie martinez wrote «all the best people are crazy», she was right

[Qasim · Rating 3 out of 5]

Starts off well. Interesting observations. Then it gets increasingly irrational. With all the data available now and research in the modern world, the old knowledge especially of classical times and the pre-modern world has become redundant if it's not fiction. Though the book does give you an idea of the hard work put in by the writer, no matter how biased it gets, it can't make sense today. But it's hunky-dory nonetheless.

[Ramanqu · Rating 5 out of 5]

The epitome of intellectual labour. An extensive research and gathering of evidence was done to reach a rational and scientific conclusion on this difficult and uncharted subject. Regardless of whether subsequent research supported any of the auther's contentions, the book is thorough and enlightening and gives substance to a suspicion which many, Including myself, have entertained once.

[Orysia Khomiak · Rating 3 out of 5]

Незнав Чезаро Ламброзо, що у 21 столітті зачати дітей можна і без чоловіка.

[Egia Chaparyan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Так и не понял, зачем вообще я ее дочитал. Не оспариваю ни в коем случае высокий уровень экспертности Чезаре Ломброзо в данной теме, но затрудняюсь сказать, кому книга может быть интересна... Самое главное, мне ее рекомендовал друг, вкусу которого я точно доверяю. Или уже доверял... Пожалуй, поговорю с ним на эту тему. Может быть, он считает себя гениальным либо помешанным?

Учитесь не дочитывать книги!

[Cinematic Frankenstein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Today I suppose that the genius people are crazy very often!