genius The notion of ‘genius’ has been used, primarily since the Renaissance, as a way of describing and explaining individuals of surpassing intellectual or artistic brilliance — it may thus be seen as a secular analogue to the religious idea of holiness. Like that sacred attribute, genius is mainly marked by qualities that are moral, mental, and spiritual; but in certain traditions genius has also been supposed to be indicated by certain physical traits, and even perhaps caused by essentially somatic factors.

For 2000 years a body image bequeathed by Greek philosophy held sway amongst doctors and the educated, known as the ‘humoral model’. The body's state was broadly grasped in terms of natural rhythms of development and change, determined by the major fluids constrained within the skin envelope, their balance producing health, their upset causing illness. Classically, these crucial juices sustaining vitality were blood, choler (or yellow bile), phlegm, and melancholy (or black bile). Excess of black bile would produce pathological conditions that would lead to depression. Aretaeus (c. ad 150–200), in his De Causis et Signis Morborum, thus described the condition:
The patients are dull or stern: dejected or unreasonably torpid, without any manifest cause: such is the commencement of melancholy, and they also become peevish, dispirited, sleepless, and start up from a disturbed sleep. Unreasonable fears also seize them …They are prone to change their mind readily, to become base, mean-spirited, liberal.But in a parallel tradition attributed to Aristotle, that self-same black fluid (melancholy) was also said to be the humour of genius. A combination of fundamental physical attributes (dark hair, a swarthy complexion, black eyes) and personality traits (sudden and erratic movements, rapid mood swings from lethargy to excitability, indifference to hunger and other bodily needs and wants) were supposed to distinguish gifted and creative individuals. Melancholy malcontents like Prince Hamlet, dressed all in black, were difficult, disdainful, dangerous. Yet, for Hamlet' or for Jaques in As You Like It, there was also something bittersweet to be savoured in a contemplative sorrow; Jacques spoke of sucking ‘melancholy out of a stone’. Melancholy thus was seen as the midwife of poetry and philosophy, as was exhaustively discussed in Robert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621).

A newly eligible mode of melancholy emerged in the age of sensibility and in the Romantic era. Amongst social and artistic élites, it became rather fashionable to parade as a hypersensitive soul, one whose personality was too delicate, whose nerves were too highly strung, to cope with a high-pressure urban milieu. For a fashionable man-about-town like James Boswell (1740–95), who wrote a magazine column under the penname ‘The Hypochondriack’, it became the done thing to be depressed, or to put on a show of depression, because torment and suffering were hallmarks of a beautiful soul, proofs of superior sensibility.

Fashionable melancholy had an exquisite future ahead of it. On both sides of the Atlantic, eminent Victorians revelled in hypochondria (mainly a male condition), hysteria (strictly for the ladies), and the ‘blue devils’ (a form of dyspepsia, validating invalidism).

In particular, élite depression underwent a gender switch, becomely closely associated with women — and with ‘effeminate’ males. Traditional images of creative depression had been man centred. The traditional genius, poet, or artist was male. From the eighteenth century, however, and especially with the foregrounding of the image of the hysteric, melancholy genius became feminized. The novels of Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–97) popularized the image of a heroine becoming victimized and crazed through being too sensitive to survive in a heartless world. Depressive, hysterical, suicidal, and self-destructive behaviour among unstable artists have become deeply associated, since early-Victorian times, with images of womanhood; in the psychiatric profession, in the public mind, and amongst women themselves. The old links between writing, genius, and melancholy were traditionally fixed upon male intellectuals like John Milton, author of Il Penseroso (1632), or Matthew Green, author of The Spleen (1737). During the last 150 years, they have undergone a sex-change, clustering around female writers like Emily Dickinson, Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, and Janet Frame. The explanation was said to lie in female physiology — above all in creative gynaecological disturbance or more sensitive nervous physiology.

In modern times, the linking of melancholy with genius has assumed two further twists. The Romantic movement renewed the interest in the mad genius that had been cultivated by Renaissance Platonism but dampened by the age of reason. From Blake, through Hölderlin, to Schumann, poets and composers either gloried in their transcendental visions or believed that madness was the inevitable price of creativity.

Then, in the last third of the nineteenth century, degenerationist psychiatry turned the tables. Leading clinical spokesmen for the ‘degenerationist’ position, notably the Italian Cesare Lombroso, or, in Britain, Theo Hyslop, began to contend that the ‘madness’ of artists and writers (including their Bohemian disregard for conventional respectabilities) revealed them as sociopaths, moral cripples, and, generally, undesirables. Lombroso summed up and added to a long tradition that held that geniuses (and their cousins, degenerates) were visibly distinctive through physical and physiognomical marks as well as by personality traits. Amongst the main physical signs, he believed, were large ears, irregular teeth, asymmetry of the face and head, left handedness, stammering, a tubercular disposition, and a tendency towards sterility. Lombroso was also convinced that geniuses were commonly short of stature — he cited by way of evidence Aristotle, Linnaeus, Gibbon, Beethoven, Heine, and both the Brownings. Such traditions lingered into the twentieth century; Havelock Ellis believed that a statistically significant proportion of geniuses suffered from gout.

The close of the nineteenth century brought a further extraordinarily fruitful development. A new possibility opened up for the hordes of neuropaths, neurasthenics, hysterics, and hypochondriacs who had emerged in Biedermeier and Victorian bourgeois society and filled the clinics and health spas of affluent Europe and America: Freudian psychoanalysis. Since the eighteenth century, the depressed person had been depicted as attention-seeking. From the time of Freud (1856–1939), neurosis offered the possibility of being infinitely fascinating — but its stress on the unconscious threatened to severe the ties long linking genius to the body.

Roy Porter

Bibliography

Murray, P. (ed.) (1989). Genius: the history of an idea. Blackwell, Oxford.

Genius

A state of intellectual or creative giftedness.

There are differences in intellectual attainment among people. Some people make strides in learning and creativity that are well beyond what would normally be expected and are called geniuses. Although definitions of genius, or giftedness , are inevitably culture-bound and subjective, psychologists are trying to determine what factors might contribute to its emergence.

In a 1981 study, William Fowler surveyed decades of scientific inquiry into the making of genius. He found that in one important study, 87% of the gifted children studied had been given substantial, intensive training by their parents at home, focusing on speech, reading, and mathematics—all highly structured avenues. The parents of these gifted children had ambitious and sometimes very specific plans for their children. The parents were nearly all from the professional class, allowing them the time and the money to devote such resources to the intellectual development of their children.

Psychologists have examined various home-tutoring techniques and have found that there appears to be no single kind of stimulation that might turn a normal child into a gifted child. All methods seem to work, provided they center on language or math. It has even been suggested that the method matters little because the child is responding to the quantity of attention rather than to the content of what is being taught.

When a person reaches school age, it becomes possible to measure his or her intelligence more reliably. Intelligence tests are the subject of intense debate among psychologists, educators, and the general public. Most standardized tests measure logical-mathematical, linguistic, and spatial intelligence. However, the idea of multiple intelligences was formulated by psychologist Howard Gardner , who defined six components of intelligence: linguistic, logical-mathematical, spatial, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, and personal. Today, many people regard intelligence as comprising different types of skills and talents. Most school systems, however, continue to measure intelligence, and giftedness, according to test results measuring logical-mathematical, linguistic, and spatial intelligence. Gifted people are often identified by their unusually high scores on traditional intelligence tests.

Further Reading

Allman, Arthur. "The Anatomy of a Genius." U.S. News and World Report, (October 25, 1993).

Begley, Sharon. "The Puzzle of Genius." Newsweek, (June 28, 1993).

Gottfried, Allen W., et al. Gifted IQ: Early Developmental Aspects. New York: Plenum Press, 1994.

Howe, Michael J.A. The Origins of Exceptional Abilities. Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1990.

gen·ius / ˈjēnyəs/ • n. (pl. gen·ius·es ) 1. exceptional intellectual or creative power or other natural ability: she was a teacher of genius | Gardner had a real genius for tapping wealth. 2. a person who is exceptionally intelligent or creative, either generally or in some particular respect: one of the great musical geniuses of the 20th century. 3. (pl. gen·i·i / ˈjēnēˌī/ ) (in some mythologies) a guardian spirit associated with a person, place, or institution. ∎  a person regarded as exerting a powerful influence over another for good or evil: he sees Adams as the man's evil genius. 4. (pl. gen·i·i ) the prevalent character or spirit of something such as a nation or age: Boucher's paintings did not suit the austere genius of neoclassicism.

295. Genius (See also Wisdom.)

1. Aquinas, St. Thomas (1225–1274) preeminent mind of medieval church. [Eur. Hist.: Bishop, 273–274]
2. Aristotle (384–322 B. C.) famous Greek philosopher of a priori reasoning. [Gk. Hist.: NCE, 147]
3. Aronnax, Prof. scholarly mental giant; Capt. Nemo’s captive guest. [Fr. Lit.: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ]
4. Jean-Christophe musical prodigy who, in an adventurous life, becomes a world-famous musician. [Fr. Lit.: Romain Rolland Jean-Christophe ; Magill I, 439]
5. Leverkühn, Adrian a composer who imagines he has made a pact with the devil, and achieves greatness. [Ger. Lit.: Thomas Mann Doctor Faustus ]
6. Nemo, Captain epitome of the genius in science fiction; inventor and creator of fabulous submarine, Nautilus. [Fr. Lit.: Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea ]

genius in Roman religion, guardian spirit of a man, a family, or a state. In some instances, a place, a city, or an institution had its genius. As the guardian spirit of an individual, the genius (corresponding to the Greek demon) was largely the force of one's natural desires. The genius of the paterfamilias was honored in familial worship as a household god and was thought to perpetuate a family through many generations. Notable achievements or high intellectual powers of an individual were attributed to his genius, and ultimately a man of achievements was said to have genius or to be a genius.

genius tutelary deity or spirit; demon; characteristic or prevalent disposition or spirit XVI; innate capacity, person as possessing this XVII; extraordinary native intellectual power XVIII. — L. genius attendant spirit, inclination, appetite, (rarely) intellectual capacity, prob. :- *gṇjos, corr. to Gmc. *kunjam KIN. (In XVII–XVIII forms repr. F. génie and It. genio were used in various senses of genius).

genius •Bierce, fierce, Pearce, Peirce, pierce, tierce •Fabius, scabious •Eusebius •amphibious, Polybius •dubious • Thaddeus • compendious •radius • tedious •fastidious, hideous, insidious, invidious, perfidious •Claudius •commodious, melodious, odious •studious • Cepheus •Morpheus, Orpheus •Pelagius • callipygous • Vitellius •alias, Sibelius, Vesalius •Aurelius, Berzelius, contumelious, Cornelius, Delius •bilious, punctilious, supercilious •coleus • Julius • nucleus • Equuleus •abstemious •Ennius, Nennius •contemporaneous, cutaneous, extemporaneous, extraneous, instantaneous, miscellaneous, Pausanias, porcellaneous, simultaneous, spontaneous, subcutaneous •genius, heterogeneous, homogeneous, ingenious •consanguineous, ignominious, Phineas, sanguineous •igneous, ligneous •Vilnius •acrimonious, antimonious, ceremonious, erroneous, euphonious, felonious, harmonious, parsimonious, Petronius, sanctimonious, Suetonius •Apollonius • impecunious •calumnious • Asclepius • impious •Scorpius •copious, Gropius, Procopius •Marius • pancreas • retiarius •Aquarius, calcareous, Darius, denarius, gregarious, hilarious, multifarious, nefarious, omnifarious, precarious, Sagittarius, senarius, Stradivarius, temerarious, various, vicarious •Atreus •delirious, Sirius •vitreous •censorious, glorious, laborious, meritorious, notorious, uproarious, uxorious, vainglorious, victorious •opprobrious •lugubrious, salubrious •illustrious, industrious •cinereous, deleterious, imperious, mysterious, Nereus, serious, Tiberius •curious, furious, injurious, luxurious, penurious, perjurious, spurious, sulphureous (US sulfureous), usurious •Cassius, gaseous •Alcaeus • Celsius •Theseus, Tiresias •osseous, Roscius •nauseous •caduceus, Lucius •Perseus • Statius • Propertius •Deo gratias • plenteous • piteous •bounteous •Grotius, Photius, Proteus •beauteous, duteous •courteous, sestertius •Boethius, Prometheus •envious • Octavius •devious, previous •lascivious, niveous, oblivious •obvious •Vesuvius, Vitruvius •impervious, pervious •aqueous • subaqueous • obsequious •Dionysius