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3 - “The more I write, the better I write, and the better I feel about myself”: Mood Variability and Mood Regulation in Student Journalists and Creative Writers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 January 2010

By
Adèle Kohanyi
Edited by
Scott Barry Kaufman  and
James C. Kaufman
Scott Barry Kaufman
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
James C. Kaufman
Affiliation:
California State University, San Bernardino
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Summary

In the movie The Hours, the writer Virginia Woolf is depicted as odd and volatile. In one scene she is prostrate, incapable of leaving her bed, and in the next she explodes in a flow of fiery and meaningless utterances. When Woolf announces to her husband that she has at last found the opening sentence to her novel Mrs. Dalloway, he hopes that writing will be what it has always been for her, a respite from her suffering. Unfortunately, this moment of peace is not to last, because manic-depression will eventually drive Woolf to suicide. This movie is one of many that crystallizes the view that there is a relationship between bipolar mood disorder and creative writing. This relationship does not only exist in the popular imagination but has also been demonstrated by numerous systematic studies. The purpose of this chapter is to explore this association by studying mood variability, rather than bipolar mood disorder, and by studying student writers rather than eminent ones. A second goal is to determine whether the act of writing improves mood in writers.

In this chapter, I first briefly outline the relationship between mood disorders and creative writing. I then review evidence for a relationship between subclinical mood variability and bipolar disorder, thus making it reasonable to explore a link between mood variability and creative writing. Finally, I review the effects of mood on creativity before focusing on the effects of writing on mood.

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Chapter
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The Psychology of Creative Writing , pp. 41 - 56
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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