Can abuse break a genius?
Because of the way our systems work, at the top end of the distribution in fame, you will find people who are not only very good, but who also strongly desire to be famous and are very skilled self-promoters.  The market is simply too large for people to rise to the very top without that being the case.  And that means they are more likely to be abusers as well.

Sufficient abuse, academic or otherwise, can destroy any person.

Abuse can also help the abuser, by allowing them to effectively exploit other people... and that in turn might help those who survive (or who also learn to profit from the strategies of abuse), because they have a famous supervisor.

So: abuse can be profitable to the abusers and their chosen disciples, but it's a bad deal for the rest of the human beings they interact with and should be resisted at every turn.