A Glimpse of Tommy McHugh's Brain

One of Tommy’s most poignant descriptions, one that he turns to over and over, is how the medical profession abandoned him when he asked for help with this rebirth. As a doctor, I suppose I can understand his doctors’ pulling back. A brain-damaged guy with a history of violence tells you he thinks he is going crazy because he is painting pictures all over his house, and he asks you to come to a rough part of town to see them. Yikes.

But to hear Tommy tell the same story is heartbreaking. The only people who might have knowledge to help him turned their backs. His wife tried valiantly, but she was as much at a loss as Tommy, as any of us would be. Scientists became interested in his new drives, but in Tommy’s view they saw him only as an experiment of nature to be picked up, examined, and discarded. Growing up in Liverpool, Tommy had learned not to expect much from others; he was self-reliant. But now even the self he relied on was gone.

Nonetheless, the new Tommy, however different from the old, had retained his resilience. He also retained, or perhaps acquired, a great capacity for joy as well as suffering. Tommy’s delight makes him immediately engaging even to people who aren’t interested in painting or in the metaphysical ideas that interest Tommy. Tommy’s curiosity is infectious. He makes other people care, whether it is about Wordsworth or the lives of the disabled or the nature of the universe. From nearly being snuffed out, Tommy has become a beacon.

His friends, at first so disoriented by the new Tommy, now bring him bits of sculpting marble from old buildings. Paintshop owners donate paint. Scientists and journalists and TV producers come to him to understand what his words, and his brain scans, can tell us about the nature of creativity.

During her research fellowship, she wrote The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain an award-winning nonfiction book about the way the brain drives creativity. The Washington Post and The San Francisco Chronicle named it one of the best books of 2004.

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