Graphomania (from , , ; and , , ), also known as scribomania, is an
obsessive impulse to
write
Writing is the act of creating a persistent representation of language. A writing system includes a particular set of symbols called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which they encode a particular spoken language. Every written language ...
. 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
Graphorrhea is a communication disorder involving excessive wordiness, incoherent rambling, or frequent digressions in writing. Graphorrhea is most commonly associated with schizophrenia. However, it can also result from other psychiatric disorder ...
(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 syndro ...
). 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 eugenicist most notable for his influence on modern concepts of mental illness. He coined several psychiatric terms including "schizophrenia", " schizoid", "a ...
, 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 Hungarian Zionism, Zionist leader, physician, author, and Social criticism, social critic. He was a co-founder of the Zionist Organization together with Theo ...
, in his attack of what he saw as
degenerate art, 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, essayist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most o ...
[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[).
In '' The Book of Laughter and Forgetting'' (1979), ]Milan Kundera
Milan Kundera ( ; ; 1 April 1929 – 11 July 2023) was a Czech and French novelist. Kundera went into exile in France in 1975, acquiring citizenship in 1981. His Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, but he was granted Czech citizenship ...
explains proliferation of non-professional writing as follows:
Czesław Miłosz
Czesław Miłosz ( , , ; 30 June 1911 – 14 August 2004) was a Polish Americans, Polish-American poet, prose writer, translator, and diplomat. He primarily wrote his poetry in Polish language, Polish. Regarded as one of the great poets of the ...
—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'' (1951), Miłosz wrote that the typical writer in the Eastern Bloc
The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc (Combloc), the Socialist Bloc, the Workers Bloc, and the Soviet Bloc, was an unofficial coalition of communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that were a ...
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'', the character Zampanò suffers from graphomania.
Entopic graphomania
Entopic graphomania is a surrealist drawing exercise designed to highlight patterns and meaning in pieces of paper, including newspapers, blank pieces of copy paper, and pages of a book.
See also
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References
{{reflist
Writing
Mania