A friend passed along to me a brief article in a writing magazine that posed an interesting question - What if the great authors of the past had taken antidepressants? It's a thought-provoking question, I think. As an English major in college, I studied a lot of writers, and many were riddled with psychological and emotional problems. If they had access to some of the antidepressants available today, how would that have changed their writing? Would they have been writers at all?
The article focuses on four authors: J.D. Salinger, Edgar Allan Poe, Franz Kafka, and Sylvia Plath. I was most fascinated with Plath. I read The Bell Jar last year and fell in love with it. Plath struggled with bipolar disorder all of her life, and her life ultimately ended with suicide. The article suggests that if she'd had effective medication, she may never have been a writer at all, instead opting for a glitzy magazine career.
Basically, the article's writer wonders if we would have such classics as "The Raven" or The Catcher in the Rye if the great writers had taken medication for their depressive tendencies.
It makes me wonder- In our drug-laden society, are we stifling the great writers of our generation by medicating them?
2 comments:
I thought that was a very interesting question. We are a very heavily medicated society these days, as if we're trying to run away from what makes us human. But then again, I've heard of writers and painters who do their best work when they're drunk or high. What does this mean?!
interesting you bring this up. we are studying schizos in class right now. wow, the poems and stories these people compose. when they are not on meds it is amazing the poems and stories that are created by their psychological distress. schizos are some of the more pyschologically wounded individuals with grandeur hallucinations and delusions that make for quite interesting stories. what was that guy's name who wrote the jabberwocky poem about that evil creature in alice in wonderland? i'm pretty sure he was schizo.
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