CHAPTER II.
Art in the Insane.
Geographical distribution—Profession—Influence of the special form of alienation—Originality—Eccentricity—Symbolism—Obscenity—Criminality and moral insanity—Uselessness—Insanity as a subject—Absurdity—Uniformity—Summary—Music among the insane.
THOUGH the artistic tendency is very pronounced, and might almost be called a general characteristic, in some varieties of insanity, few authors have paid sufficient attention to it.
The only exceptions are Tardieu, who, in his Études Médico-Légales sur la folie, remarks that the drawings of the insane are of great importance from the point of view of forensic medicine; Simon,[311] who, in speaking of drawing among megalomaniacs, observes that the imagination appears in them in inverse proportion to the intellect; and Frigerio, who some time later gave a survey of the subject in an excellent essay, published in the Diario del Manicomio di Pesaro.[312] Since then I have been able to make a completer examination of this subject, thanks to the curious documents supplied to me by MM. Riva, Toselli, Lolli, Frigerio, Tamburini, Maragliano, and Maxime du Camp.
By comparing their observations with my own, I find a total of 108 mental patients with artistic tendencies, of which:—46 were towards painting, 10 sculpture, 11 engraving, 8 music, 5 architecture, 28 poetry.
The prevailing psychopathic forms in these 108 cases were:—In 25, sensorial monomania and that of persecution; 21 dementia, 16 megalomania, 14 acute or intermittent mania, 8 melancholia, 8 general paralysis, 5 moral insanity, 2 epilepsy.
It is evident that those which predominate are the congenital and least readily curable forms (monomania and moral insanity), together with dementia, and those forms which it accompanies, or in which it is latent (megalomania and paralysis).
Let us now consider the special characteristics of these insane artists.
Geographical distribution.—In the districts where the artistic tendency is more marked among the sane, the number of insane artists is also higher. In fact, I have found very few of the latter at Turin, Pavia, or Reggio, while at Perugia, Lucca, and Siena they abound.
Profession.—Only in a few cases could the tendency be explained by profession or habits acquired before the appearance of the disease. We find among the insane artists mentioned above—8 ex-painters or sculptors, 10 ex-architects, carpenters, or cabinet makers; 10 former schoolmasters or priests, 1 telegraphist, 2 students, 6 sailors, soldiers, or officers of engineers.