Ernest Hemingway once said that intelligent people are rarely happy.

Having always been more of a Faulkner than a Hemingway fan, I’m going to disagree with Ernest. I know many intelligent, happy people. Of course, often they are Buddhist meditators, or in AA, or involved in some other framework that helps them address the challenges of life. It takes work to be happy, and intelligent people may need to work harder because they can see more problems than those with simpler outlooks. But intelligence is not a major obstacle to happiness, in my opinion.

It is well-recognized that many creative people have mood issues. Poets suffer notoriously high suicide rates, and Hemingway obviously falls into this category of moody artist. In many cases, the artist uses his or her medium to give voice to emotional turmoil. The biographies of mentally distressed artists and authors often reveal upbringings light on love, or heavy on cruelty and loss, or both. I suspect that artistry and moodiness spring from the same sources, and doubt that creativity by itself causes depression and other affective difficulties. (Some authorities, including Kay Redfield Jamison, might disagree.) The movie Amadeus comes to mind; it depicts Mozart’s genius and instability in counterpoint to his father’s domineering and critical attitude.

Childhood hardship, especially if severe, radically diminishes the chances for spontaneous adult happiness. Modern research suggests that emotionally or physically threatening experiences alter the brain’s fine structure, and these changes linger. Because my stepmother often crept into my childhood bedroom to wake me up and vent her anger, sometimes by strangulation, I occasionally jump up screaming in the dead of night. This happens less and less often as I work through my emotional wounds, but whatever she did to my nervous system has persisted into my fifties. The brain remembers, even if consciousness doesn’t (in my case I believe my recollections of childhood trauma are pretty complete, but many people have blank spaces in memory that keep traumatic histories more or less beneath awareness.)

We hear a lot of talk about the biological underpinnings of mental illness. In my family there are stark examples where people of roughly the same genetic stock have very different levels of mental well being. Without exception, the ones who have the biggest personality and emotional problems are those who suffered trauma in childhood. My relatives who were fortunate to have been raised in loving, stable environments have escaped mood and personality disorders. This dovetails with what I’ve observed in my professional and volunteer work among the mentally ill, and with much (thought not all) of what I’ve read in technical literature.

Biology establishes a predisposition, but major mental illness is most likely to occur when people with genetic tendencies also suffer childhood mistreatment. This is definitely true in mood and personality disorders; schizophrenia might be different, though even here some people believe trauma plays a decisive role. Without mistreatment, there may be moodiness or quirkiness, but it does not as frequently become crippling.

Childhood trauma makes joy in life difficult, but not impossible. Sensitive, intelligent people feel and see more of the pain in the world. This makes it more challenging to remain upbeat, but unhappiness is not fated. Painful upbringings, intelligence, creativity, and genetic predisposition all play roles in mood disorders. I’m arguing that the first is by far the largest contributor to unhappiness, but no combination of circumstances is absolutely insurmountable.

Still, happiness takes work. It demands attention to thought and behavior, and is promoted by searching for meaning in life. Meditation, exercise, study, and social activities all contribute. Many people make progress with therapy and/or medication.

Always remember that neither the past, nor one’s abilities, nor one’s genes, completely determine the future. As someone who long despaired of ever feeling good about life, I can now attest that even dreadful childhood trauma and loss (plus whatever measure of intelligence and creativity I possess) do not necessarily prevent happiness. There is hope. Always, there is hope.

>> Share on Facebook
>>