He should have played more chess

So Fischer’s mental breakdown was brought about by too much chess? They do not say it in so many words, but that’s the only conclusion you can draw from the intricate measurements of the endless possibilities of chess positions and the calculations involved, not to mention anecdotes about other players who snapped in some way or another. But Fischer’s life seems to me to paint the opposite picture. He was actually better off psychological when playing chess, not the other way round. His career up to the world championship was tainted with many disturbances and controversies; yet, he managed to keep it together most of the time. In fact, the best periods of his life (relatively speaking) were when he played chess regularly: first, in the period up to the chess world championship, and then when he emerged from his long hiatus to play the rematch with Spassky(and that was apparently the only time he had something close to a romantic relationship). Fischer began to implode only when he stopped playing chess after he became world champion. Like every genius, he had an intense constantly inquisitive mind that had to be kept busy with something, and especially the thing that it was meant for. I’m reminded of Sherlock Holmes (a model of obsessive genius if there ever was one), and how he would descend into bouts of melancholy and paranoia whenever he was out of practice for any extended period of time. Fischer’s main problem, I think, was that he (just like Morphy, the other American chess genius, whose life predicted that of Fischer in several ways) never accepted the fact that chess was his only talent. He said in the film that he did not think of himself as a chess genius, but as a genius who happens to play chess. Obviously, he was completely wrong. Every genius is a genius at something (at least in this age), and if he had come to accept his chess talent as the rare and fortunate gift that it really was, his life, I think, would have been a lot easier. When Fischer was a child, his mother, concerned about his obsession with chess, took him to counseling, but a psychologist simply told her that there are things worse than chess to be obsessed with. Little did he know how right he was.