2. Ah! Fame
• Fame is a bee.
• It has a song –
• It has a sting –
• Ah, too, it has a wing.
Emily Dickinson
3. Fame & factors
• Keeping up to the public image & expectation
• Lack of privacy / media scrutiny
• Conflict between real self & public image
• Keeping up in the “rat race “/ limelight
• Prolonged stay away from support system
4. Types of psychological problems
• Predominantly overwhelmed coping
• Biological illness with exacerbation under
stress
• Other illnesses which compel a person to
overcome the disability
• Sometimes illness can be the fuel for success
5. Does illness help achieve fame?
• Prevalence of mood disorders in creative
• Poets - 50%
• Musicians - 38%
• Painters - 20%
• Sculptors - 18%
• Architects - 17%
6. Creativity & Hypomania
• "Two aspects of thinking in particular are
pronounced in both creative and hypomanic
thought: fluency, rapidity, and flexibility of
thought on the one hand, and the ability to
combine ideas or categories of thought in order
to form new and original connections on the
other. The increase in the speed of thinking may
exert its influence in different ways...the sheer
volume of thought can produce unique ideas and
associations." - Kay Jamison
7. Biologically predisposed??
• Gene mutations that increase a person’s risk of
developing mental illnesses such as
schizophrenia and bipolar syndrome have been
preserved, even preferred, during human
evolution, due to their relationship with
creativity.
8. Biologically predisposed to fame??
• The brains of creative people appear to be
more open to incoming stimuli from the
surrounding environment. Other people's
brains might shut out this same information
through a process called "latent inhibition" -
defined as an animal's unconscious capacity to
ignore stimuli that experience has shown are
irrelevant to its needs.
• Psychosis model
9. • "If a man comes to the door of poetry
untouched by the madness of the
Muses, believing that technique alone will
make him a good poet, he and his sane
compositions never reach perfection, but
are utterly eclipsed by the performances of
the inspired madman" - Socrates
10. Poor Coping & High stress
• Anger outbursts against media
• Frequent break ups in relations
• Alcohol & other drug use
• Pressures to be thin, desirable, in limelight
• Impulsive unpredictable behaviour in public
• Shunning public appearance
11. Medically ill
• Kurt Cobain, lead singer of a group NIRVANA would
say he carried “suicide genes”
• Guru Dutt, Geeta dutt, actress aka silk
• Alcohol dependence+ possible cyclothymia -music
directors, cine artistes, authors
• Princess Diana had Bulimia nervosa & depression
• Sir Winston Churchill had bipolar induced by alcohol
?cocaine
12. Other psychiatric illness in the famous
• Dementia in Ronald reagan, Charles Brosnan
& Charles Heston
• Charles Darwin said to have had somatoform
Disorder/hypochondriasis
• Howard Hughes had OCD with tourettes
• Singer Justin Timberlake has ADHD & OCD
• Michael Jackson probably had Body
Dysmorphic Disorder
• Parveen Babi schizoaffective disorder
13. Others
• Raj Kiran actor?schizophrenia
• David Frith in his book Silence of the Heart:
Cricket Suicides contends that cricket is by far
the greatest sport for suicides
• English opener Marcus Trescothick
• the New Zealand pace bowler Ian O’Brien
• the New Zealand batsman Lou Vincent
• the Australian pace bowler Shaun Tait
• the English all rounder Michael Yardy
14. Other famously unwell…
• Michael Phelps swimming champion is
diagnosed early on with ADHD. Also
basketball player Magic Johnson.
• Abhishek Bachchan, Stephen
Hawking, Sylvester Stallone-dyslexics (word
recognition)
• Footballer Brandon Marshall is first celebrity
to acknowledge Borderline personality disoder
15. Limitations
• Source is limited
• Celebrities openly talk about certain disorders
• East West culture bias
• Lack of research
16. To put meaning in one's life may end in madness,
But life without meaning is the torture
Of restlessness and vague desire--
It is a boat longing for the sea and yet afraid.
Edgar Lee Masters
