I was recently conducting a research on the mental health of a writer. According to me to be a writer, one needs enormous amount of creativity, an ability to imagine beyond normal human capabilities, an art to express with utmost ease the minutest details and most importantly an ability to love solitude.

My description may sound like I am portraying a picture of a superhero in a writer. Well why not? Writers have the ability to take readers to the peaks and depths of the imaginary world and the human psyche.

Coming to the point of the mental health of a writer, he/she needs to have high verbal intelligence in order to express thoughts into words in an orderly manner. Come to think of it, a psychopath is extremely intelligent but what they typically lack is the emotional intelligence. They are incapable to feel empathy, love, remorse or shame.

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So how could a writer who has to express emotions so vividly be a psychopath?

Here’s the catch. I said psychopaths are unable to feel emotions. But their verbal intelligence allows them to be extremely manipulative and fake emotions during exigencies. Sociopaths are generally more impulsive than the psychopaths and thus often tend to get themselves into difficult situations.

Their above average intelligence and manipulative nature that lacks empathy towards peers makes them very good at running companies and becoming CEOs. The world has witnessed the power of Hitler, who had a strong personality and flair at manipulating millions of people to support a single vision of eliminating Jews. Writers too possess such talent to convince readers to believe in their opinions.

Writers who are authors of psychotic books and give life to such characters can be doubted bordering psychopathy themselves. How else can someone create such perfect criminals and devise gruesome tortures and innocent killings?

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The fact: We writers take extreme pleasure in our sadistic side and express them through words. Hatching a perfect rape, torture, murder and delivering it to an agonizing perfection is a high that few writers get.

Sometimes the sanity of writers is in question, both by themselves as well as the readers. However, writers just tend to release their inner frustration through the only means they know- Writing. Most of us are just confused about our insanity level and this condition may be called bordering psyciopathy (Not a spelling mistake, mind you! I just merged psychopathy and sociopathy)

So the conclusion: While not all writers are psychopaths or sociopaths, but most psychopath/sociopaths tend to express their suppressed emotions through words.

 

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Copyright © Priya Ravinder. All rights reserved.

1 comment
  1. Interesting post.

    A bit about crime writers I know of, many of them have worked in forensics, policing and other such fields. Patricia Cornwall comes to mind, as does Kathy Reichs.

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