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Robert Schumann (Classical composer) Psychopathology

Introduction

Robert Schumann (1810-1856), was one of the most dominant and influential composer. Schumann suffered from a mental disorder, it was evident in 1833, when Schumann experienced a miserable depressive episode, this metal disorder occurred several times changing with phases resulting in delusional ideas of being threatened with metallic items. (Schauffler 1945 Pp. 90-100) Schumann attempted suicide, and after the suicide attempt he was admitted to mental asylum located in Endenich, where he was diagnosed with psychotic melancholia.

Bipolar or manic-depressive disorder is one of the most common ailments, which is dealt in the field of psychopathology (Beynon et.al, pp. 574). Bipolar disorder can simply be explained as a state, in which the subject switches between periods, of a very good or bad-tempered mood and depression. These "mood swings" flanked by, mania and depression, are usually observed to be very rapid (Beynon et.al, pp. 578).

The moral and theoretical issues related to the treatment of a patient like Schumann have always be been discussed. Indeed, his mood and his creativity were amazingly correlated, as he used to compose less when he was depressed and opposing to that, he composed much more, when he was hypo-manic. Even after having potential symptoms of syphilitic infection and the grave emotional distress Schumann endured, his determination and creative impel facilitated him to remain in complex business arrangements till the ailment progressed to the fatal stage.

Discussion

Robert Schumann mental disorder was set aside in his family, resulting in the strong notion of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder, instead of progressive paralysis, in order to underlie Schumann's symptomatology. Given that his symptoms cannot conclusively be attributed to either schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and that in his family both psychotic and affective disorders or symptoms can be discerned, a schizophrenia-bipolar spectrum rather than a clear-cut Kraepelinian dichotomy might be proposed for mental disorders segregating in Schumann's family. (Abert 1903 Pp.175-220)

This is in line with clinical and epidemiological observations of a continuum between schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, both considered complex genetic disorders with similarly high heritability of 85-93%. Consistently, linkage studies report risk loci common for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, particularly on chromosomes 8p22, 10p14, 13q32, 18p11, 22q11 and 6p and there is molecular genetic evidence of candidate genes influencing the disease risk of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, Additionally, a linkage study analyzing families of probands meeting criteria for schizoaffective disorder strongly supports the existence of loci that provide specific susceptibility to psychosis with both schizophrenic and bipolar features at chromosome 1q42 and possibly also at 22q11 and 19p13. Thus, given an aggregation of both affective and psychotic disorders in Robert Schumann's family and his own symptoms with both affective and psychotic features, here schizoaffective disorder or a 'schizoaffective spectrum phenotype' with a major genetic susceptibility conferred by overlapping sets of genes is proposed as a differential diagnosis of Schumann's mental disorder.

A common misconception is to think that the classification of mental disorders classifies people, it really does is to classify disorders that ...