I think genius and madness are two sides of the same coin. A genius is someone who looks at the world differently. A madman also looks at the world differently. I think the only difference lies in what they see.
In Salmon Rushdie's, East, West, he tells a story called “The Harmony of the Spheres”. It is about the relationship between two people (spheres, perhaps?) and how they interact. Eliot is a “genius” who occupies his time with study of the occult. The first instance of harmony we experience, is the delicate balance of madness and genius. I think one has to have both to produce truly revolutionary ideas. I think that Rushdie is warning us like Nietzsche did: “Whoever battles with monsters had better see that it does not turn him into a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.” Eliot was so obsessed with the darker side of human imagination that he let it consume him.
Perhaps Rushdie is writing this story about himself? Many of his other works are works of satire, and isn't satire an examination of human follies? I would think that if you deal too much in the mistakes we make you lose all hope for our continuation as a race. In addition to an exploration of the harmony that exists between friends, I think that this story is an exploration of the madness that Rushdie may be experiencing.
In the story, the doctors claim that there is an imbalance of chemicals in Eliot's brain. It is a rather unromantic way to look at human behavior; a series of chemical and electric triggers that make us feel things we can't even describe. Is this truly the cause of Eliot's madness? It is interesting that the measure of madness depends on one's perspective. Khan (Eliot's friend) becomes a victim of Eliot's madness when Eliot becomes convinced that Khan is an alien. He is also convinced that his wife is spying on him as part of the same alien invasion force as Khan. It is revealed in the book that Eliot's wife cheats on Eliot with Kahn. It seems that Eliot's visions of betrayal are, for the most part, true. So is he really insane? Perhaps he just sees things differently.
I don't think we lose our sense of balance, we just stop caring about keeping it balanced.
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I agree with your view that Eliot's madness was not necessarily because of a "biochemical imbalance". I talk about close to the same thing in my blog this week. Swimming around in the dark side can be dangerous when you don't have any swimfins...the monsters can take over your mind!