The Gazza affair provokes a question: what is the relationship between exceptional achievement and emotional disturbance? That there is a relationship is not much in doubt. Studies of artists show higher than expected rates of manic depression, while higher than average rates of adversity are found in the childhoods of exceptional achievers. For example, one third of all prime ministers and presidents lost a parent before the age of 14 and similar rates have been found among famous entrepreneurs (Anita Roddick, Nigel Broackes) and the great novelists, poets and scientists in history.
As it happens, when Gazza was nine his dad was struck by a brain haemorrhage. As a child, Gazza suffered from symptoms of attention deficit disorder. He recalls that, "Since I was a baby I've been hyperactive. I can't keep still." His father's affliction, the fact that his (domineering) mother was hard-pressed and "not a clingy person," combined with a genetic propensity towards impulsiveness, may help to explain some of his behaviour: the deranged tackle he launched in the first minutes of the 1991 FA cup final, his occasional rucks in pubs and clubs, his attacks on his wife and his boorish public comments.
He also suffers from mild depression and loneliness. He describes himself as "moody" and has to sleep with the lights and television on. He uses junk food and alcohol to comfort himself, creating a weight problem. He has used bulimia (a sign of depression) to control it.
But if Gazza had not had these emotional problems or if they had been cured, would he have been as good a footballer? Can you have the innovative, unpredictable ball player on the field without the flaky character off it? During "Gazza week" many of his supporters were arguing that the two are inseparable.
The biographies of Diego Maradona, Eric Cantona and George Best lend some support to the view that talent and delinquency grow together, and that soccer can be a creative channel for violent emotions. (I have no doubt that my own love of playing soccer as an impulsive and aggressive teenager kept me out of borstal.) But there are many counter examples. Johan Cruyff, Pele and John Barnes are just a few of many supremely talented players who also have stable, balanced personalities. If emotional derangement is more common among the gifted, it is certainly not a sine qua non.
What is more, although Clive James states in his autobiography that he would never undergo psychoanalysis for fear that it extinguish his creative spark, there are plenty of counter examples of high achievers who were just as productive after therapy. Woody Allen's decades of analysis have not damaged his output-they probably contributed to his growth as an artist (if not as a man). Likewise, anyone who has read Hugh Laurie's novel The Gun Seller will agree that years of therapy have done nothing to dull his wits.
Nor do pills necessarily turn the gold of high achievement into the lead of mediocrity. Ted Turner, founder of CNN, suffered from manic depression, inherited from a father who committed suicide. Years of treatment with lithium combined with therapy have not hindered his business success.
I found something similar in the artistic realm when I produced a documentary following various artists taking the antidepressant Prozac to see how it affected their work: two who had been blocked by nagging doubts for over a year became productive again; another became paralysed by anxiety when he stopped taking the pills which had enabled him to write a novel (inevitably about a man on Prozac).
Much high achievement in sport, politics and business is an attempt to avoid introspection and painful feelings through hyperactivity. It is often also an attempt to achieve external power, status and wealth to compensate for internal feelings of powerlessness and worthlessness. It can be an attempt to create identity through public recognition where privately there is little. In the arts it is usually an attempt to communicate pain, either by inflicting it on the consumer of the art work or in the hope of being understood. In all these cases, you might say that this theory would predict that if you take away the angst, you extinguish the spark-Clive James's fear.
He is probably wrong. What matters is how the angst is channelled. All of us have lifelong emotional conflicts which impel us towards this wife or husband or this or that career path. The idea that Gazza or Van Gogh or Anita Roddick are so very different, psychopathologically speaking, is mistaken. The key is how we ride the horse of our instincts and childhoods (to paraphrase Freud) and in so far as therapy and pills work, they are aids rather than impediments to finding the right ways to channel energy.
If Gazza had been given the right antidepressants or decent therapy, I do not doubt that he would have been in the starting line-up against Tunisia on 15th June, playing to the full of his creative capacity.
