CHEMISTRY, GENIUS, MADNESS AND LEADERSHIP

CHEMISTRY, GENIUS, MADNESS AND LEADERSHIP

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© September 13, 2011

On the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Nobel Laureate in Economics Paul Krugman wrote a strange column in the New York Times.  He stated that President George W. Bush and Mayor Rudy Giuliani were fake heroes on September 11, 2001 when the Twin Towers in New York City were destroyed by the terrorist attack of flying two commercial airliners into the buildings, killing nearly 3,000 people.

My immediate reaction to the column was, “I wonder what drug he is on?” 

I know nothing of the man, but religiously read his syndicated column, and have been intrigued with his staunch defense of his liberal point of view, which as it happens is far left of mine. 

I read his columns with interest, and look forward to his appearances on Charlie Rose Show on PBSTV.  He has anxious eyes, a quick mind and an engaging almost impish grin, which at times appears as if he has said something that will send him back to his room without dinner.  

I have taken pleasure in his success but somehow through the medium of television I have also sensed his vulnerability.  That being said I did not anticipate him saying something so bizarre.  It reminded me of a child who pines for attention.

What triggered the question, “What drug is he on?” came from reading Nassir Ghaemi’s captivating book, “A First-Rate Madness” (2011). 

It was so entrancing I didn’t want the book to end.  I’m sure you know that feeling.  Ghaemi is a psychiatrist who takes the reader on a journey to uncover the links between leadership and mental illness.  With a reverse law of sanity, he claims Presidents Richard Milhous Nixon and George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair were weak leaders because they were too sane. 

Abraham Lincoln, General William Tecumseh Sherman, Sir Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and President John F. Kennedy, to name a few, were shown to be to a greater or lesser degree mentally ill. 

Mental illness among these leaders was often a case of genetics and psychochemical dependence.  In the case of Adolf Hitler, whom I thought for sure was quite mentally ill, Ghaemi finds mentally healthy until he ran amok due to chemical dependency.

The psychiatrist is not taking cheap shots here but builds his case on historical and scientific research data.  I plan to write a book review of “A First-Rate Madness” after I return from my trip to Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota.  In the interim, I would encourage those interested to read the book.  It creates a counterintuitive picture of what human force compels us forward.

There are two other books that provide a further insight into our collective character.  They give a clue as to why a man of genius, such as Dr. Paul Krugman would make such a stupid statement as he did.

Gerald Imber’s “Genius on the Edge” (2009) is about the great American surgeon Dr. William Steward Halsted (1852 – 1922), and the other is by Howard Markel, “An Anatomy of Addiction” (2011).  Markel’s book is about Halstead and Sigmund Freud (1856 –1939) and how cocaine addiction affected their lives and work.  Halstead was also addicted to morphine. 

Intriguing is how Halstead and Freud became addicted.  The addiction was a byproduct of their innocent inquiry into the anesthetic possibilities of cocaine.  Halstead even had his medical students take cocaine, as he was unaware of the drug’s lethal effects. 

In time, when they were hooked on the drugs affecting their mental health and dispositions, it was a long walk back to stability.  As devastatingly negative as cocaine and morphine were, both men did insightful work while under the influence. 

Dr. Halstead developed some of his most acclaimed surgical techniques while only allowed to work on dogs.  Freud’s conscious changing paradigm of psychoanalysis may also have been a product of psychochemical mental illness. 

Halstead never escaped his dependence, but Freud eventually was able to overcome his addiction to cocaine, but never the nicotine alkaloid provided in cigars.  He smoked twenty cigars a day most of his life.  He eventually lost most of his jaw and palate after some thirty-three surgeries.

This is a piece of the “rest of the story” most of us are never privy to about those with their names constantly in the news, in history books, or standing on some stage across the world being declared the best of us, when they may not be that at all.

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