Neurotic Chestnut

Last week a hardy old chestnut, still to be cracked, was picked over for the umpteenth time. Picker was Dr. Nolan Don Carpentier Lewis, head of the New York State Psychiatric Institute in Manhattan. "I'm not interested in normal people," said bluff Dr. Lewis to a group of normal laymen. All great works in the world, said he, are the doings of neurotics, and if a psychiatrist wants to do his bit for civi lization, he should remember that men of talent must stay neurotic.

"A very famous woman novelist," con tinued Dr. Lewis, "came to consult me not long ago about her neurosis. I recognized her trouble and told her I could cure her but she would no longer write novels if I did. She, of course, desired treatment, but I decided that it would be a pity to destroy a fine novelist and so I refused to cure her and so she is continuing to write fine novels.

"A famous pianist came to me and asked to be treated for his trouble. I warned him that I could cure him but that he might never play the piano again. He begged me to go ahead. . . . Well, I have cured him but he is no longer a great artist of the piano. He is now a fine mathematician." Similarly, he said, a "cured painter" became a well-known photographer.

"It is true," concluded Dr. Lewis, "that we know that neuroses produce works of genius, but we do not know yet how to produce these neuroses artificially, nor how to direct them and so create geniuses or works of genius."

On the opposite side of the chestnut stand is Dr. Abraham Arden Brill, great friend of Dr. Lewis and dean of the orthodox Freudian psychoanalysts. "I have analyzed many novelists and artists," said he last week, "and they have produced their greatest works after treatment."

Still puzzled by this eternal dispute are historically minded laymen, who for every mad genius can cite a sweet-tempered family man like Einstein or Darwin, a sunny soul like Spinoza, an Olympian spirit like Goethe. They can complain, and do, that psychiatrists have never made clear the difference, if any, between scientific and artistic talent. Nor have the doctors explained whether a neurotic is: 1) a long-fingered person of "artistic temperament"; 2) a crank who looks under the bed every night or constantly washes his hands; or 3) a robust grappler with convention.

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