Intrigued by history's list of troubled geniuses, Albert Rothenberg investigates how two such opposite conditions--outstanding creativity and psychosis--could coexist in the same individual. Rothenberg concludes that high-level creativity transcends the usual modes of logical thought--and may even superficially resemble psychosis. But he also discovers that all types of creative thinking generally occur in a rational and conscious frame of mind, not in a mystically altered or transformed state.
Far from being the source--or the price--of creativity, Rothenberg discovers, psychosis and other forms of mental illness are actually hindrances to creative work. Disturbed writers and absent-minded professors make great characters in fiction, but Rothenberg has uncovered an even better story--the virtually infinite creative potential of healthy human beings.