Do these results imply that creativity and psychopathology are intimately connected? Are genius and madness tantamount to the same thing? The answer to the first question is affirmative, but the response to the second is negative. The affirmation comes from the fact that various indicators of mental health appear to be negatively associated with creative achievement. This fact is demonstrated by historiometric, psychiatric and psychometric sources. The negation emerges from the equally crucial reality that few creative individuals can be considered truly mentally ill. Indeed, outright psychopathology usually inhibits rather than helps creative expression.
Even more significant is the fact that a very large proportion of creators exhibit no pathological symptoms, at least not to any measurable degree. Hence, psychopathology is by no means a sine qua non of creativity. Instead, it is probably more accurate to say that creativity shares certain cognitive and dispositional traits with specific symptoms, and that the degree of that commonality is contingent on the level and type of creativity that an individual displays. To be more specific, the relationship can be expressed as follows.
In general, creativity requires the cognitive ability and the dispositional willingness to "think outside the box"; to explore novel, unconventional and even odd possibilities; to be open to serendipitous events and fortuitous results; and to imagine the implausible or consider the unlikely. From this requirement arises the need for creators to have such traits as defocused attention, divergent thinking, openness to experience, independence and nonconformity. Let us call this complex configuration of traits the "creativity cluster."
