Genius and Madness

The psychiatrist and criminologist Cesare Lombroso entered history as the author of the theory of the biological predisposition of individuals to certain action matrices, including the commission of crimes – a theory that, to some extent, laid the foundations of modern criminal anthropology, criminal psychology, and forensic psychiatry.
Most often, acquaintance with Lombroso begins with "Genius and Madness", a work in which the author’s conceptual foundations are outlined using examples of social extremes: exceptional individuals who demonstrate extraordinary abilities and have significantly influenced societal development, and mentally deficient people. Lombroso himself considered this book to be the key to understanding "the mysterious essence of genius". The rich factual material, meticulousness and scrupulousness in data systematization, and the scale of the research – all of these contribute to the continued relevance of Cesare Lombroso's work today. Experimental data from the late 20th century largely confirmed that biosociological factors are indeed the cause of various types of behavior.
The author analyzes genius as a psychological phenomenon, the influence of talent on the human psyche, the deep connection between genius and mental disorders, and even diseases. What is genius: torment or happiness, a blessed gift or a heavy illness, a necessary condition for societal development and, at the same time, a fateful fate for the genius themselves?