I have noticed this from the opening post in this topic.
"What I told the court was that Mr Fritzl has never been mentally ill," she told the BBC outside the courtroom, "and that he has always been sane in the legal sense of the word - that he was always able to discern between right and wrong, and that he always knew what he did was wrong."
Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy, they also were NOT mentally ill. Yes, they did know the difference between right and wrong, but they were not mentally ill or insane or anything like that. They were just evil! They deliberately chose to do what they knew was evil, because they liked doing evil. For them it was a power trip.
Therefore, Josef Fritzl also was not mentally ill. Just plane evil.
However, being unable to discern between right and wrong, that is not always true of people who are mentally ill. Most mentally ill people may actually have and even more highly developed sense of what moral or immoral.
I should know, because in my life, I have suffered from mental illness, and I am not ashamed to admit to this.
Why? Because some of the best and the brightest people have suffered from mental illness. Here is a list of some of the most famous people who were mentally ill.
Famous People with Mental Illness
Mental Illness is not confined to any particular ethnic, racial, religious, or financial group. Anyone can get it, at any time.
Even though most mental illnesses have devastating effects on the lives of those affected, many have found that these illnesses can produce extraordinary clarity, insight, and creativity as well.
Below you will find the names of many famous people who felt not only the devastation, but also the extraordinary creative potential, as well as the courage to use it. It's quite a list. Please take the time to browse it thoroughly.
Abraham Lincoln
The admired sixteenth President of the United States suffered from severe and incapacitating clinical depression which sometimes led to thoughts of suicide as well.
Virginia Woolf
The British novelist who wrote To the Lighthouse and Orlando experienced the severe mood swings of bipolar disorder which included feverish periods of writing and weeks spent in the gloom of depression. Anthony Storr wrote about her story in The Dynamics of Creation .
Lionel Aldridge
As a defensive end for the legendary Green Bay Packers of the 1960's, he played in two Super Bowls. During the 1970's, he suffered from schizophrenia and spent two and a half years homeless. Before he died in 1998, he gave many inspirational talks concerning his battle against paranoid schizophrenia.
Eugene O'Neill
The famous playwright, author of Long Day's Journey Into Night and Ah, Wilderness!, is documented as having suffered from clinical depression.
Ludwig van Beethoven
The brilliant composer is documented as having suffered from bipolar disorder, in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb.
Gaetano Donizetti
The famous opera singer suffered from bipolar disorder.
Robert Schumann
The "inspired poet of human suffering" lived with bipolar disorder, as one of many creative people discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr.
Leo Tolstoy
Author of War and Peace, Tolstoy revealed the depth of his own mental illness in the memoir Confession. He suffered from clinical depression, hypochondriasis, alcoholism, and substance abuse. His experiences are discussed in both The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Inner World of Mental Illness: A Series of First Person Accounts of What It Was Like by Bert Kaplan.
Vaslov Nijinsky
His autobiography, The Diary of Vaslov Nijinksy, documents the dancer's battle with schizophrenia.
John Keats
This renowned poet's mental illness is documented along with the illnesses of many others in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Broken Brain: The biological Revolution in Psychiatry by Nancy Andreasen, M.D.
Tennessee Williams
The playwright wrote about his personal struggle with clinical depression in his own Memoirs, and his experience is also documented in Five O'Clock Angel: Letters of Tennessee Williams to Maria St. Just, 1948-1982; The Kindness of Strangers: The Life of Tennessee Williams by Donald Spoto; and Tennessee: Cry of the Heart by Dotson.
Vincent Van Gogh
The bipolar disorder that this celebrated artist suffered from is discussed in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb and Dear Theo, The Autobiography of Van Gogh.
Isaac Newton
The English mathematician and scientist who formulated the theory of gravitation is suspected of suffering from bipolar disorder, as discussed in The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr and The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb.
Nikola Tesla
Tesla was a genius and perhaps the greatest inventor the world has ever known. He invented a device to harness alternating electrical current, radio, fluorescent lighting, the blade-less turbine, developed the fundamentals of robotics, computers and missile science. Many of the â??modern conveniences of lifeâ? are a result of Tesla's inventions.
Ernest Hemingway
The Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist's bouts with suicidal depression are examined in the True Gen: An Intimate Portrait of Ernest Hemingway by Those Who Knew Him by Denis Brian.
Sylvia Plath
The suicide of this poet and novelist was caused by her lifelong struggle with clinical depression, as discussed in A Closer Look at Ariel: A Memory of Sylvia Plath by Nancy Hunter-Steiner.
Michelangelo
The Dynamics of Creation by Anthony Storr discusses the mental illness of one of the world's greatest artistic geniuses.
Winston Churchill
The quote "Had he been a stable and equable man, he could never have inspired the nation. In 1940, when all the odds were against Britain, a leader of sober judgment might well have concluded that we were finished," was written by Anthony Storr about Churchill's bipolar disorder in Churchill's Black Dog, Kafka's Mice, and Other Phenomena of the Human Mind.
Vivien Leigh
The British actress of the 1950's & 60's, star of Gone with the Wind and A Streetcar Named Desire suffered from the mental illness bipolar disorder, as documented in Vivien Leigh: A Biography by Ann Edwards.
Jimmy Piersall
The Truth Hurts, written by the baseball player for the Boston Red Sox, detailed his experience with bipolar disorder.
Patty Duke
The Academy Award-winning actress revealed her bipolar disorder in her autobiography and made-for-TV move Call Me Anna, and in A Brilliant Madness: Living with Manic-Depressive Illness, co-authored by Gloria Hochman.
Charles Dickens
The clinical depression of one of the greatest authors in the English language is documented in The Key to Genius: Manic Depression and the Creative Life by D. Jablow Hershman and Julian Lieb, and Charles Dickens: His Tragedy and Triumph by Edgar Johnson.
John Forbes Nash
Mathematician, author of the game theory of economics, winner of the 1994 Nobel Prize in Economics, he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. He was also the subject of the book and movie "A Beautiful Mind"
And there are many more, so that is why I'm not ashamed to admit to having suffered from mental illness during my life, because I know I'm in good company.
And to say that the mentally ill are unable to discern between right and wrong, is not entirely accurate, because there are many people who are perfectly sane who do not know the difference between wright and wrong, or else they don't give a fuck!
Also, the vast majority of mentally ill people are not dangerous. Very few of them are. The majority are more likely to be the victims of violence rather then the perpetrators. Most mentally ill people, despite their intelligence, are actually helpless when confronted by violence and are unable to defend themselves against violence.
But those of us who are mentally ill, we actually have and over-developed sense of what is right or wrong, what is moral or immoral.
When we are witnesses to injustice, seeing innocent people getting punished while the guilty go free, as in my case, being bullied around by the jocks in my school, getting punished because I was physically unable to do what was expected of me in the gymnasium, while the jocks who would beat up on me, and bully me around, they went unpunished. They could get away with anything, even selling drugs in my school.
Because of my highly developed sense of the difference between right and wrong, when I saw too many innocent people getting punished, myself included, and people guilty as Hell getting off Scott-free because of their athletic abilities, while those of us who were more interested in studying the arts and sciences in school were being treated like dirt, well, I was so overwhelmed by the injustice of it all, that I suffered a complete emotional and mental breakdown, and wound up spending three weeks in a mental hospital at the age of 17, where I was beaten by the ward attendants and one night raped by an older man.
When I was 13, I scored 150 points on a standard IQ test, so it should have been easy for me to understand almost anything that was going on around me.
But because I also had an over-developed sense of right and wrong, when I saw the injustice, it was still way beyond my comprehension, and despite having an IQ of 150, in the face of the injustice, I felt as helpless as a retarded child trying to learn calculus.
And that was when I cracked up like a dingy in a storm!
That was when my little red choo choo went chugging around the bend!
That was when I went nutzo and spent three weeks at the Ha Ha Hilton!
And then, after being raped, I never completely got over that.
So, I'm still nuts!
But I will never lose my sense of what is right or wrong. I may completely lose my sanity, but never my sense of what is wright or wrong, what is moral or immoral, what is just or unjust. That will always be with me.
I may one day get to the point where I won't know what planet I'm on anymore, but I will still know the difference between right and wrong!
And someday it may just drive me completely nuts!
I'm fat and sassy! I love to sing & dance & stomp my feet & really rock your world!
