As the UK marks the 200
th anniversary of Charles
Darwin’s birth, a psychiatrist sheds new light on Darwin’s life and
extraordinary creativity.
Professor Michael Fitzgerald, of Dublin’s
Trinity College, will speak today at the annual meeting of the
Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Academic Psychiatry
about the link between creativity and psychiatric disorders.
Professor Fitzgerald believes Darwin had
Asperger’s syndrome, a form of autism where people have
difficulties with social communication and interaction. He says:
“It is suggested that the same genes that produce autism and
Asperger’s syndrome are also responsible for great creativity and
originality.
“Asperger’s syndrome gave Darwin the capacity
to hyperfocus, the extra capacity for persistence, the enormous
ability to see detail that other people missed, the endless energy
for a lifetime dedication to a narrow task, and the independence of
mind so critical to original research.”
According to Professor Fitzgerald, Darwin was
a solitary child – as many people with Asperger’s syndrome are. His
emotional immaturity and fear of intimacy extended to adulthood. He
avoided socialising and took long solitary walks, walking the same
route daily. He was a compulsive letter writer, but these were
almost devoid of social chat.
Darwin was a great collector. As a child he
hoarded insects and shells, and while at university he became
obsessed with chemistry and gadgets. Professor Fitzgerald says:
“Darwin had a massive capacity to observe, to introspect and to
analyse. From adolescence he was a massive systematiser, initially
of insects and other specimens which he catalogued. He had a
tremendously visual brain. He spent eight years studying barnacles,
and wrote books on his observations of earthworms and even his own
children. He was a rather obsessive-compulsive and ritualistic
man.”
Professor Fitzgerald concludes: “Creativity is
extremely complex, and so far no theory or model of brain function
has been able to explain it fully. But I hope that future progress
in understanding the basis of autism may lead to a better
understanding of autistic creativity and creativity in
general.”
For further information, please
contact:
Liz Leicester
or Deborah Hart in the Communications
Department.
Telephone: 020 7235 2351 Extensions. 6298 or 6127
References:
Annual meeting of the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Faculty of Academic Psychiatry, Cardiff, 18-19 February 2009
Note to editors:
Lyons V and Fitzgerald M (2005) Asperger Syndrome: A Gift or a Curse? Nova Biomedical: New York