Winston Churchill, the visionary hero of Britain’s darkest hours, suffered from bouts of severe depression (he called them his “black dog”) that would have crippled a lesser man. Franz Kafka lived in a state of excruciating anxiety that took him to the edge of hallucinatory madness. Yet, as Anthony Storr shows in this provocative study of the creative mind, both Churchill and Kafka were able to overcome and even to use their pathological conditions in achieving their monumental successes. In a dazzling, beautifully written series of essays, Storr contends that although highly gifted individuals are far more likely to suffer from mental illness than ordinary people, the “divine discontent” that motivates both artistic and scientific creativity is ultimately a protection against madness. In probing the psyches of Churchill, Kafka, Isaac Newton, Carl Jung, C.P. Snow, and others, Storr persuasively demonstrates the “sanity of true genius.”

ISBN: 034536547