…An eccentric, it has been said, is a logical person in an illogical world. Consider Sir George Fordyce, the nineteenth century British anatomist. Every afternoon at four he would eat his single meal of the day, a huge ingestion of meat. Though odd, this regimen was quite logical. Sir George was imitating the lion, whose physique he had studied and admired. Consider too, the great English classicist Professor Richard Porson, who terrified Cambridge hostesses by acting on his belief that when he was enjoying himself at a neighbor’s house, there was no reason at all to go home.
—It also depends on the type of genius you are. On average mental health is best amongst creative geniuses who are natural scientists (like physicists and chemists), is worse amongst social scientists (including psychologists), worse still in the humanities and is at its lowest in the arts (Simonton, 2009).
Simonton argues that creative geniuses aren’t necessarily crazy, a better word to describe them is eccentric.
Dark side
So creativity isn’t all upside. Creative individuals are more likely to be arrogant, good liars, distrustful, dishonest and maybe just a little crazy—OK, let’s call it unusual or eccentric.
But what would the world be like without its creative eccentrics? I’ll tell you: a very boring place.—click image for source…
Many people admire lions, and many people see no reason to bid adieu to their hosts just because it is three in the morning. A great many people also have decided opinions and ruling passions. The eccentric, however, is sure his are right, and he puts them into practice. Perhaps that is why eccentricity delights us, for inside most people dwell little eccentrics who have failed to emerge. It is surely the reason that eccentricity is so marked a trait of the English, for it depends, in Edith Sitwell’s words, on “that peculair and satisfactory knowledge of infallibility that is the hallmark and birthright of the British nation.”
—Apparently the famous and eccentric artist was fond of rich and extravagant things in life. It’s well known that he would exaggerate and even lie in order to make his work seem more valuable than it was. For example, he once told someone that he had used the poison of a thousand wasps to dilute paint he used in a painting that he was asking $1 million for.
Read more at http://www.omg-facts.com/Celebs/Salvador-Dali-Would-Scribble-On-His-Own/54597#MtModHFTBKiHzeVp.99 —
ADDENDUM:
(see link at end)…It is characteristic of our times that we tolerate eccentrics, grudgingly admire them, perhaps even envy them. According to Weeks, eccentrics are happier than the rest of us, and (on the basis of standard diagnostic tests) have a higher general level of mental health. They are creative, nonconforming, strongly motivated by curiosity, idealistic, intelligent, non-competitive, mischievously witty, convinced that they are right and the rest of the world is out of step–in other words, they possess traits that most of us would gladly acknowledge in our own personalities. On the down-side, eccentrics tend to be bad spellers and uninterested in sex, but even these things might be qualities we secretly admire, caught up as we are in the race to conform and perform.
It was not always so. In earlier times, eccentrics were frequently deemed dangerous to society. Many “witches” were burned for no other reason than that they didn’t conform to conventional rules of behavior. Women eccentrics, especially, were victims. Certifiably crazy male aristocrats and wealthy landowners might be charitably labeled as “indisposed” or “eccentric,” while truly eccentric (and embarrassing) wives and daughters were often packed off to an asylum.
According to Weeks, this bias against women persists today in psychiatry. Although men outnumber women in state-run mental institutions, admissions of women to private hospitals is disproportionately higher, suggesting that women are often committed for minor indications of abnormal behavior that would be overlooked in a man. Read More:http://articles.latimes.com/1995-11-26/books/bk-7126_1_david-weeks
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