Graphomania (from grc,
γÏá¾°Ìφειν, , ; and , , ), also known as scribomania, is an
obsessive impulse
Impulse or Impulsive may refer to:
Science
* Impulse (physics), in mechanics, the change of momentum of an object; the integral of a force with respect to time
* Impulse noise (disambiguation)
* Specific impulse, the change in momentum per uni ...
to
write
Writing is a medium of human communication which involves the representation of a language through a system of physically inscribed, mechanically transferred, or digitally represented symbols.
Writing systems do not themselves constitute h ...
. When used in a specific psychiatric context, it labels a morbid mental condition which results in writing rambling and confused statements, often degenerating into a meaningless succession of words or even nonsense then called
graphorrhea
In psychology, graphorrhea, or graphorrhoea, is a communication disorder expressed by excessive wordiness with minor or sometimes incoherent rambling, specifically in written work. Graphorrhea is most commonly associated with schizophrenia but can ...
(see
hypergraphia
Hypergraphia is a behavioral condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw. Forms of hypergraphia can vary in writing style and content. It is a symptom associated with temporal lobe changes in epilepsy and in Geschwind syndrome ...
). The term "graphomania" was used in the early 19th century by
Esquirol and later by
Eugen Bleuler
Paul Eugen Bleuler (; ; 30 April 1857 – 15 July 1939) was a Swiss psychiatrist and humanist most notable for his contributions to the understanding of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", "schizoid", " ...
, becoming more or less common. Graphomania is related to typomania, which is obsessiveness with seeing one's name in publication or with writing for being published, excessive symbolism or typology.
Outside the psychiatric definitions of graphomania and related conditions, the word is used more broadly to label the urge and need to write excessively, professionally or not.
Max Nordau
Max Simon Nordau (born ''Simon Maximilian Südfeld''; 29 July 1849 – 23 January 1923) was a Zionist leader, physician, author, and social critic.
He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theodor Herzl, and president or vice ...
, in his attack of what he saw as
degenerate art
Degenerate art (german: Entartete Kunst was a term adopted in the 1920s by the Nazi Party in Germany to describe modern art. During the dictatorship of Adolf Hitler, German modernist art, including many works of internationally renowned artists, ...
, frequently used the term "graphomania" to label the production of the artists he condemned (most notably
Richard Wagner
Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...
[Nordau M., '' Degeneration'': "We will take a closer view of the graphomaniac Wagner... He displays in the general constitution of his mind ... all the signs of graphomania, namely, incoherence, fugitive ideation, and a tendency to idiotic punning.]
p. 171–172
London: Heinemann. 1895. or the French
symbolist poets
Symbolism was a late 19th-century art movement of French and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts seeking to represent absolute truths symbolically through language and metaphorical images, mainly as a reaction against naturalism and realis ...
[).
]Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera (, ; born 1 April 1929) is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalised French citizen in 1981. Kundera's Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, then conferred again in 2019. He "sees himself ...
, in ''The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
''The Book of Laughter and Forgetting'' ( cs, Kniha smÃchu a zapomnÄ›nÃ, Kniha smÃchu a zapomnÄ›nÃ) is a novel by Milan Kundera, published in France in 1979. It is composed of seven separate narratives united by some common themes. The book c ...
'' (1979), explains proliferation of non-professional writing as follows:
Czesław Miłosz
Czesław Miłosz (, also , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. Regarded as one of the great poets of the 20th century, he won the 1980 Nobel Prize in Literature. In its citation ...
—winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1980—used the term "graphomania" in a context much different than Kundera's. In ''The Captive Mind
''The Captive Mind'' (Polish: ''Zniewolony umysł'') is a 1953 work of nonfiction by Polish writer, poet, academic and Nobel laureate Czesław Miłosz. It was first published in English in a translation by Jane Zielonko in 1953.
Overview
''The ...
'' (1951), Miłosz wrote that the typical writer in the Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
who accepted socialist realism "believes that the by-ways of 'philosophizing' lead to a greater or lesser degree of graphomania. Anyone gripped in the claws of dialectics he philosophy of dialectical materialismis forced to admit that the thinking of private philosophers, unsupported by citations ailing to regurgigate Stalinist propaganda is sheer nonsense."
In popular culture
* In American author Mark Z. Danielewski's 2000 novel ''House of Leaves
''House of Leaves'' is the debut novel by American author Mark Z. Danielewski, published in March 2000 by Pantheon Books. A bestseller, it has been translated into a number of languages, and is followed by a companion piece, '' The Whalestoe Let ...
'', the character Zampanò suffers from graphomania.
See also
*
*
*
References
{{reflist
Writing
Mania