Frédéric Chopin
By Pat Kelly.
Many aspects of Frédéric Chopin’s short but influential life are well known, including his tendency towards regular hallucinations, but new research has shed light on the potential reason for these episodes. Most people attributed the visions to his other-worldly talents and dreamy, romantic disposition but recent research published in Medical Humanities (http://press.psprings.co.uk/jmh/january/jmh5405.pdf) suggests that he most likely suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy.
The author points out that hallucinations typically accompany seizure disorders and because Chopin also reportedly suffered with clinical depression, bipolar disorder and cystic fibrosis, this may have led doctors to attribute his bouts of melancholy to his miscellany of ailments. However these recent revelations seem to shed more light on his sometimes terrifying visions.
The type of hallucinations Chopin suffered seem to bear the typical hallmarks of temporal lobe epilepsy — fragmented, brief and stereotyped — as opposed to migraine-induced schizophrenia or dissociative states. Chopin was also free of eye disorders, which rules out Charles Bonnet syndrome.
In her memoirs, George Sand gives an insight into his travails; she often described Chopin as wild-eyed, with his hair standing on end and a wan complexion. On one trip to Spain, she described a stay in a monastery as being “full of terrors and ghosts for him”.
The Manchester Guardian also reported how, at a performance 1848, Chopin suddenly stood up and walked off stage. Chopin himself later revealed to Sand that on that occasion, he had actually seen creatures emerging from his piano.
pat.kelly@imt.ie
About Pat Kelly
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Pat,
Wonderful article, thoroughly enjoyed it.
The association of Epilepsy with genius such as Chopin is not uncommon amongst noteworthy persons who have had a history of hallucinations or seizures.
Interestingly, the another condition similarly associated with similar hallucinations and neurological symptoms is syphilis. Yet when we look at the record of famous people with syphilis, we find it is skewed towards the ‘bad’ guys of history such as Adolf Hitler.
It is equally possible that Chopin might have had syphilis and Hitler might have had epilepsy? We will probably never know for certain… however one cannot help but wonder if there is not a tendency to ascribe epilepsy to the ‘heros’ and syphilis to the ‘hated’?
Marcus