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BETWEEN CREATIVITY AND MADNESS: SOME PSYCHOLOGICAL REFLECTIONS ON SISSI, LUDWIG II AND RUDOLF OF HABSBURG
Abstract
The aim of this study is to conduct a psychological analysis of three of the most controversial and interesting historical figures of the second half of the Nineteenth century, forerunners of their time, linked not only by their parental point of view, but by the same ideals aimed at the pursuit of dreams, tenderness and the impossible freedom they never managed to find in life: Empress Elisabeth of Austria, King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Crown Prince Rudolf of Habsburg. The work aims to relate these three personalities for their depth of soul and вЂextravagance’. Misunderstood because of their revolutionary ideals, they were completely alienated from the society of their time. The study intends to conduct a psychological analysis of these three characters, who certainly went beyond the ordinary, oscillating in a condition somewhere between creativity and madness. The aim of this work is to show how in some cases the concept of madness can have a negative function, translating into self-aggressive energy in certain subjects, as in the case of Rudolf and in certain aspects of Elisabeth, who were unable to be fully creative, bringing their psychic discomfort into the pathological. In contrast, the concept of madness has a positive aspect in the case of Ludwig, resulting in a creative process translated into the realisation of his castles in Bavaria. Some portraits of the figures described will also be analysed from a pictorial and psychological point of view.
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