Profs and Pints San Francisco Bay Area

Profs and Pints Napa presents: “Creativity, Moods, and Mania,” an exploration of how depression, mania, and everyday ups and downs influence different types of creativity, with Sheri L. Johnson, distinguished professor of psychology and director of a bipolar disorder research program at the University of California at Berkeley.

[Tickets available only online, at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/napa-creativity-moods-mania .]

Ancient quotes on creativity, moods and mood disorders abound. Aristotle wrote, “No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.” Lord Byron, describing poets, later observed, “We of the craft are all crazy. Some are affected by gaiety, others by melancholy, but all are more or less touched.”

But is there really a link between moods, mood disorders, and creativity? What does modern science have to say about the subject?

Explore such questions with Dr. Sheri L. Johnson, director of the CALM (Cal Mania) Program at UC-Berkeley. Her research there studies how mood—especially the highs and lows of bipolar disorder—shapes people’s lives, including their creativity, goals, and well-being, as well as what mechanisms contribute to mood episodes and recovery.

She'll begin with a discussion of how scientists measure creativity in life and in the laboratory, describing what we have learned from hundreds of experimental studies on creativity and mood. Some findings indicate that happiness, at modest levels, can help foster creativity, while negative moods can interfere with it. We’ll consider how we can draw from these scientific findings to protect our own creativity.

Turning to mood disorders, Professor Johnson will describe how mania was a well-documented part of the lives of major creative figures such as Lord Byron, Vincent Van Gogh, Virginia Woolf, Edgar Allen Poe, Ernest Hemingway, and Alfred Tennyson.

Beyond biographical summaries, she’ll highlight findings of a country-wide study of the Swedish population which connected higher creativity to a personal and family history of bipolar disorder. She’ll also outline findings of studies designed to test why mood disorders might relate to creativity, and we’ll consider the evidence so far on whether medications for bipolar disorder help or hinder creativity among those with a history of mania. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Doors open at 5:30 and the talk begins at 6:30.)

Image: From a self-portrait painted by Vincent van Gogh in 1889 after slicing off his own ear (Courtald Institute of Art / Wikimedia).

Profs and Pints Alameda presents: “A History of Mythical Cures,” on America’s longstanding tradition of selling false remedies in pursuit of fortune, with Vivian Delchamps Wolf, assistant professor of English at Dominican University of California and scholar of the portrayal of disability in literature.

[Tickets available only online, at https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/alameda-mythical-cures .]

What drives the desire for a cure-all? Who benefits from that desire?

Explore tough questions related to our quests for cures with Vivian Delchamps Wolf, a scholar of disability studies, feminist studies, and race studies whose upcoming book Resisting Diagnosis examines how women’s disability literature of the nineteenth century altered notions of health and drove social change.

She’ll trace the advocacy of mythical cures in the United States from the 19th century to today, unpacking how such cures were promoted in ways that reinforced eugenic beliefs and biases related to gender, ability, and race.

She’ll describe how nineteenth-century medical authorities promised cures to capitalize off those seeking their care. You’ll learn about health spa owners who paid doctors to send them patients, sustaining the myth of the “water cure” that boosted California’s health tourism. We’ll look at how the “rest cure” was prescribed to women diagnosed with “hysteria” to force them into isolation. Women’s writings gave accounts of their desperation being exploited by male doctors who exerted control by prescribing “cures” that actually worsened symptoms, necessitating further care.

We’ll consider the traveling medicine shows popularized in the West after the Civil War, examining how these performances involved music and aggressive rhetoric promoting “exotic” cure-alls such as snake oil. You’ll learn how white salesmen, in purporting to source ingredients from Native American and Chinese medicine, promoted harmful racial stereotypes for their own financial gain.

Dr. Wolf will explore how curative and eugenic rhetoric persists in today’s wellness trends such as the promotion of “detoxifying” teas.

In discussing the racialized and financial politics of medicine, she’ll offer a disability-centered perspective that challenges the assumption that bodies and minds need to be “fixed.” She’ll familiarize her audience with disability advocates who challenge the rhetoric surrounding “cures” and urge us to envision a future in which we seek to care for people rather than fix them. (Advance tickets: $13.50 plus processing fees. Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. The talk starts 30 minutes later.)

Image: Old bottles for bogus medicines on display at a Tulsa Fair. (Photo by Wesley Fryer / Creative Commons.)