Famed dancer Nijinsky's diary offers rare window into psychosis
· Medical Xpressedited by Sadie Harley, reviewed by Andrew Zinin
Sadie Harley
Scientific Editor
Meet our editorial team
Behind our editorial process
Andrew Zinin
Chief Editor
Meet our editorial team
Behind our editorial process Editors' notes
This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies. Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:
fact-checked
trusted source
proofread
The GIST Add as preferred source
More than a century after legendary ballet dancer Vaslav Nijinsky wrote a diary while experiencing psychosis, McGill University researchers have analyzed its pages to learn more about how mental illness can affect language.
Nijinsky was once considered among the world's greatest dancers, but his career ended abruptly after the onset of psychosis in 1918. His wife saved the diary, which was filled with intensely personal reflections and initially published in an edited form. Only recently did a version much closer to the original become available.
For Alban Voppel, assistant professor of AI and psychiatry at McGill, the diary presented a rare opportunity.
"Language provides a window into someone's mind," said Voppel, the study's last author and a researcher at the Douglas Research Center. "Complete book-length texts written during an active psychotic episode are quite rare, giving us a unique opportunity to study language as the illness was unfolding."
Key findings
Researchers applied computational language-analysis tools to measure patterns in word use and structure in the diary. They then applied those tools to a text written by Nijinsky's wife to provide a point of comparison from the same historical and social context.
The findings, published in Medical Humanities, challenge a common assumption about psychosis.
"Nijinsky's writing was not simply 'chaotic,' as one might expect from psychosis or thought disorder," said Voppel.
Instead, the writing displayed a form of repetitive thinking that seemed coherent on the surface but relied on an unusually narrow and repetitive vocabulary.
"It's sort of a fake coherence, a mechanical coherence," Voppel said. "He came back to the same topics and used a lot of the same words, especially 'I,' 'God' and 'love.'"
The findings suggest psychosis can affect language at different levels. A person may retain a broad narrative structure while becoming increasingly restricted in the words and ideas they use.
The next step is to test the findings against modern writing samples to determine whether they reflect a broader linguistic signature of psychosis. Ultimately, the work could contribute to AI-powered tools that help psychiatrists detect subtle clues to mental illness in language and track how symptoms evolve over time.
More information
Lena Palaniyappan et al, Writing when writhing with psychosis: a computational linguistic autopsy of Vaslav Nijinsky's diary, Medical Humanities (2026). DOI: 10.1136/medhum-2026-014121
Key medical concepts
Clinical categories
PsychiatryPsychology & Mental health Provided by McGill University Who's behind this story?
Sadie Harley
BSc Life Sciences & Ecology. Microbiology lab background with pharmaceutical news experience in oil, gas, and renewable industries. Full profile →
Andrew Zinin
Master's in physics with research experience. Long-time science news enthusiast. Plays key role in Science X's editorial success. Full profile →
Citation: Famed dancer Nijinsky's diary offers rare window into psychosis (2026, September 28) retrieved 28 September 2026 from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-09-famed-dancer-nijinsky-diary-rare.html This document is subject to copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study or research, no part may be reproduced without the written permission. The content is provided for information purposes only.