Chaos and controversy have always been Kanye West’s trademarks

A provocative White Lives Matter T-shirt, anti-Semitic threats against Jews, social media fights with friends and foes. Rapper Ye, better known as Kanye West, has always been erratic, but this month he led his behavior the suspension of Twitter and Instagram, the disapproval of the president of Israel e broken multimillion-dollar contracts with brands like Adidas and Balenciaga.

To complicate matters, West has in the past claimed to be manic-depressive. This psychological disorder makes people feel alternately invincible and deeply bilious. Psychiatrist Ralph Kupka, professor of bipolar disorder at the UMC in Amsterdam, recognizes symptoms in media reports that may actually fit the diagnosis of bipolar disorder, the current term for manic-depressive illness.

“The brakes are closed for people who are in a manic state. They do all kinds of things that others might want to do but they don’t: tell your boss what’s going on, spend a lot of money, go to bed with the neighbor. reckless or extravagant things. “

West has a history of bizarre behavior. She once stormed the stage during a Taylor Swift acceptance speech to protest that Beyoncé should have won. He also ran for the White House without really making an effort to get to the ballots. And he said 400 years of slavery was a choice.

It never led to the downfall of the world star. Indeed, chaos seems to have become part of his image. West will also not be permanently canceled, according to Utrecht University professor of interdisciplinary social sciences Gaëlle Ouvrein. He conducted research on celebrity behavior on social media.

“He will come back anyway. This is a phase,” he says. “The first step is often that collaborations disappear, which we see now. Then people often decide to keep their accounts offline until the storm is over. But that’s not final. I think the long-term damage is rather limited. they usually come back. “

For a public person like West, such a difficult period ends up under a magnifying glass, especially if he manages to spread his ideas unfiltered through social media channels. “Sometimes it’s tragic that famous people don’t get the care they need,” says Kupka. “Because they are famous, there are all kinds of exceptions for them and they don’t get normal treatment. It’s very sad.”

At the same time, West uses his ailment for his brand. In his lyrics he called him a superpower and in his he album You in the foreground the text “I hate being bipolar – it’s great“.

Ouvrein thinks West’s tirades don’t just cost anything. “Negative attention is still attention. It can simply have positive long-term consequences.” The image of a loose cannon can therefore also contribute to West’s image of the idiosyncratic genius.

If the stereotype of the tormented artist suffering psychologically from his art is part of that for West, Kupka would like to put an end to it. “There are creative people who have bipolar disorder, but there are also many not so creative people who suffer from it. And of course, most creative people don’t have bipolar disorder.”

“Creativity in mania is very exaggerated. People who are manic have the feeling that they are creative, but later on this is often disappointing. Mania often starts with a very positive energy state, but then huge chaos ensues so that people don’t do it can be more productive. For example, people write a lot but later find it useless. “

West himself, meanwhile, seems to question his diagnosis. Again in the anti-Semitic comments in an interview last week he spoke of a conspiracy, because the doctor who examined him was allegedly Jewish. “He concluded that it is bipolar disorder and filled me with drugs. And he threw it in the media.”

The ongoing hype doesn’t bother him, he added on Instagram. “I lost two billion dollars in one day, but I’m still alive. It’s not about money for me, it’s about people.”