History is strewn with great people who were and are supposedly bipolar - from ancient time to the present.
Not only are there many creative and gifted individuals who were or are bipolar, many were major players in forming Western History as we know it.
You can focus your mind on such world conquerors as Alexander the Great and Napoleon who impacted world geography. In the 1920's and 1930's, the evil and bipolar Hitler gained much power and left his stamp on the Jewish Experience, for eternity. He met his match with the great bipolar English Statesman, Winston Churchill.
Our western way of thinking is influenced particularly by three Greek Philosophers - Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, who ere and are rumored to be bipolar. So whether you are an idealist or realist, you are in great debt to bipolar men.
Aristotle was considered by many to be the Father of Science by many. We also owe a great deal in our thinking scientifically to the British thinker, Sir Isaac Newton, who was another genius bipolar.
If you are into drawing, painting, sculpture, and architecture, probably you idealize a master of all 4 -the magnificent Michelangelo. In the 1800's the Dutch impressionist, van Gogh not only created great paintings while bipolar, unfortunately ending his life in suicide, but so was his great French friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin. Pablo Picasso, who help invent Cubism, and Jackson Pollock, who invented
Abstract Expressionism, were two gifted 20th century bipolar artists. There were many others.
If you are into the beauty of word architecture, there are many gifted poets and writers. Whether you enjoy the poems of Keats, Shelly, Lord Byron, or Sylvia Plath, or such novels as Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain; The Sun also Rises. By Ernest Hemingway; or The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald; you are reading the works of bipolar artists. If you prefer the writings of Virginia Woolf, you are again reading the works of a genius with bipolar. Some say that F. Scott Fitzgerald wife from Montgomery, Alabama was also just as gifted, and happened also to be bipolar.
World news is important to many people, and the business maverick, Ted Turner brought news into your home 24 hours a day. Why yes, he is bipolar? Who say bipolar disorder can keep you from becoming a billionaire?
Perhaps Movies are a past time of yours. You can watch the beautiful 20th century icon, Marilyn Monroe
In Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, or Some Like it Hot. Another beautiful bipolar life cut short by suicide.
If you are a Robin Williams or Jim Carrey fan, you have numerous choices in what movies to watch.
These bipolar comic geniuses have portrayed many characters.
Now even the music icon and pop star, Britney Spears is rumored to be bipolar. Of course the list could go on and on, ad inifinitum. For, it's a bipolar world, after all.
August Holcombe is a baby boomer, who came of age in the late 60's and early 70's. I first became interested in mental illness in a sociology course at Auburn University in the late 60's after we visited a State Mental Hospital, a state's women's prison, and a state's men's prison. A girlfriend of mine, who happened to be a brilliant and gifted artist, committed suicide in 1982. I've had depression on and off since my late twenties.
You may visit my website on bipolar at The Bipolar Rollercoaster
