touch of madness: manto as a psychiatric case study

ABSTRACT

Saadat Hasan 'Manto' is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest short story writers in the world. He died at the age of forty three from complications of alcoholism. All of his life, he suffered from symptoms of anxiety and depression and his alcohol abuse was intimately linked both to his mental distress as well as his creative genius. This paper examines the life of Manto from a psychiatric perspective and the link between creativity and mental illness. We show how Manto's particular family circumstances led to the development of restlessness and later anxiety in his life; how his substance abuse, especially alcohol abuse exacerbated this mental distress and how it eventually led to his death and how all of these factors were intimately linked to his creative genius and were the source of so many of his literary masterpieces