An interview with prominent Russian psychiatrist Yuri Savenko – Part 1 By Grigory Pasko, journalist [Right: Photo of Larisa Arap, a dissident held against her will in psychiatric confinement by Russian authorities] Plato regarded creativity as “madness given us as a gift by the Gods”. Lunacharsky wrote: “In deep antiquity, the artist or poet was without fail a platonic type”. Francis Galton said that genius is a deviation from the norm… How many different mental disorders there are today! Reading disorder, disruptive behavior disorder, disorder of written expression, mathematics disorder, caffeine intoxication, nicotine withdrawal disorder, sexual disorders… These are but a few of the 374 mental disorders enumerated in the «Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders» («DSM-IV») of the American Psychiatric Association (APA). I recall a caricature from the distant past. Two beefy orderlies are taking away a man in a straitjacket. The man is yelling: “You can’t understand Russia with the mind”! It’s not enough for our dear Russian power that on Russian soil – with its eternal social cataclysms and perestroikas (an unkind Chinese wish: “May you live in an epoch of changes”) there are plenty of people with mental disorders already. No, they’re also inventing their own kinds of “deviancies”. For example: whoever criticizes the power must be mad.