The Genius Myth (Jonathan Cape) by Helen Lewis
In the 1980s, when high-IQ societies like Mensa were surveyed about the term they thought best applied to their members, they didn’t gravitate to the term “geniuses”. More than any other, they liked the word “outsiders”.
This is one of many revealing facts from Helen Lewis’s new book on the concept of “geniuses”, whose subtitle warns us of “the dangerous allure of rebels, monsters and rule-breakers”. For a genius to linger in the public consciousness, says Lewis, it is best if they are perceived as abnormal and therefore special in some way. Disgraced psychologist Hans Eysenck, who specialised in the area, said geniuses have to be mad, psychopathic or at least a bit odd to live up to the stereotype.
The word “genius” conjures up a whole host of connotations, from Einstein through Hawking to Picasso. (Historically, most recognised geniuses are men, although Lewis devotes a chapter to the overlooked women who supported some of them to do their best work.) You could make an argument for the term being more of a hindrance than a help; that we would be better off disposing of it entirely. Lewis doesn’t go that far. “We need the idea of genius – the demigod, the superhero, the shaman,” she writes. “We need stories to make sense of the world.”
What is the story of genius, then? The way Lewis frames it, it is close to the study of fame. Some people are brilliant and may deserve to be recognised as geniuses. But the term, in popular culture at least, isn’t limited to an objective definition, nor can it possibly conform to the rigid measurements of an IQ test. A genius isn’t a technical benchmark; it is a constellation of factors, which together scratch the itch of their particular age. “Societies anoint exceptional people as geniuses to demonstrate what they value,” Lewis writes.
Through various case studies (The Beatles, Tolstoy, Edison, Musk), Lewis applies her microscope to the patchwork of factors that created the tapestry of genius. She tells us that one of the reasons that California became the technology centre of the universe was that the eastern states in the US had employment contracts that let bosses sue their employees for defecting to a rival company. “But California did not, so its companies benefited from a constant exchange of skills as the best engineers moved around more freely.” This is a perfect example of “scenius”, a phrase coined by Brian Eno – that it is impossible to separate an individual’s genius from the environment in which they operated.
There are twin, almost contradictory, impulses in us when it comes to genius: one is that we let geniuses get away with terrible behaviour; the other, which Lewis calls the “deficit model of genius”, is that we expect and may in fact want them to suffer. Lewis may not be able to answer the question of why and how we cling to these convictions – here perhaps the book could have benefited from more insight from psychologists – but the question has profound implications, and is certainly worth asking.
The book is also a fun read, with plenty of meat to chew on. Lewis has a refreshing willingness to call out the pretentious and the pseudo-scientific, and ridicules the embarrassing attempts by people like Francis Galton, a 19th-century polymath and eugenics pioneer, to tie genius to genetics. (Commenting on Galton’s insistence that he could see no reason why a man born with great intellect could ever be “repressed”, she inserts “a small reminder that this was a man who had seen human beings bought and sold at a market.”)
She is also sharp and witty. While exploring why Elon Musk is fervently discussed as a genius but Tim Berners-Lee, whose achievements are even more considerable, being credited with the invention of the world wide web, is not, she points out: “Elon Musk has more than a dozen children, with names like X A E A-Xii and Exa Dark Sideræl. Tim Berners-Lee’s children are called Alice and Ben.”
By the time we finish The Genius Myth, Lewis has made her case compellingly: that calling people geniuses gives them licence to misbehave; that we vastly overestimate talent and underestimate environment when evaluating people’s success; and that the myth of the genius persists because it makes for a far more compelling story than the alternative. One of the most fascinating paragraphs in the book examines why we may want genius to be more about mysterious inspiration than hard work. Perhaps we are so invested in the notion because it lets the rest of us off the hook for not achieving more. “After all, if Cézanne’s genius was to devote decades of his life to a single idea, what’s stopping us from doing the same?”
This article is from New Humanist's Winter 2025 edition. Subscribe now.
