What is the line between insanity and creativity? And how fuzzy broad or fuzzy is it?

Oh, this is a hard one. What's creative to some will be insanity to others. I'm not sure where to draw the line myself. It's not all creativity I can comprehend myself but it doesn't mean it's not creative. Insane? Maybe at times. I've been close to such person. No one will really understand them and their behaviour or masterpieces but it doesn't mean they aren't creative. Maybe their creativity exactly comes from this source within themselves.

People call someone 'crazy' when it would be more correct to say "I don't understand why you are doing that." Often it's really "I don't know what you're doing." So you are talking about semantics, and the only problem is that a lot of people don't know what they are talking about.

I agree with you that much creativity can come from a source within the self - it can be a means of overcoming an unfortunate past, using the understanding of that experience to reflect on the human condition or to solve a problem.

I see creativity as the result of bringing together two previously unrelated things in a way that generates a new meaning, function, or style.

I see insanity as the inability to perceive reality.

The blurry zone is imagination. A creative person can bring an idea into manifestation. There's a phase of experimentation in which some or many ideas may not work but which can evolve towards ones that do. And sometimes this process can push the artist or inventor to the edge of not surviving in practical or functional ways so that it can look a lot like madness to people with mainstream values.

The insane person doesn't recognise the difference between imagination or hallucination and reality in perceptions.

Among bi-polar people, the phase of starting to go manic is often highly creative. Some psychologists believe this gene has survived because the contribution of genius (that frequently correlates with the condition) has been of such disproportional benefit to our species as a whole. I think that's dubious and might be hard to prove. Occasionally some schizophrenics turn out to be good at outsider art - but their success is dependent on our current Western definitions of what art is.

But I do think the idea of creative people being less sane is mistaken.

Rather, they are more likely to be neurotic but still grounded in realistic perceptions of the world. Some do suffer from varying degrees of narcissism and grandiosity - and these typically don't succeed well in relationships.

:)