Parabole paranoiche. Follia e ‘creatività’ verbale

Can we think of an instinctive vein, of a distintive rush, in which the folly channels the artistic tension often considered innate? To what extent can creative talent, artistic insight and poetic inspiration take their own vital nourishment from the phantasmagorical visions and unusual representation typical of mental disorders? Somehow the commone sense tries to establish an apparent link between genius, art and madness, especially through the stereotype of eccentric characters’ wacky ideas. However, extraordinary abilities, aesthetic feelings, expressive manifestations can be associated with psychological illness. In other words, you can be brilliant and crazy at the same time but it doesn’t mean that there is a necessary determinism or a correspondence between the two phenomena. In this article we will try to examine some aspects of linguistic creativity in madness, focusing on the poetic production of a paranoiac patient interned in a psychiatric hospital for a long time. We will also try to understand up to that point the loss of contact with reality, caused by delirious feelings, can give rise to the ingenuity that characterizes the artistic productions.