A First-Rate Madness

June 15, 2011

Ghaemi (Psychology, Tufts Univ. Medical School; The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model, 2009, etc.) insists that failed leaders are mentally healthy. The best crisis leaders, more or less, are crazy.

The author demonstrates his scary thesis by thumbnail psycho-biographies of successful troubled leaders and a few flops who were, apparently, quite normal. Ghaemi's standard diagnostic indicators include symptoms, genetic history, course of illness and treatment. Available medical history and mostly secondary sources serve as validators of mental illnesses in varying severity. General Sherman and Ted Turner, he finds, were hyper-creators. Churchill and Lincoln were depressive realists. Depressed empathy characterized Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. FDR and JFK, both chronically ill, were resiliently manic. In hard times, good politics are bipartisan and great politicians are bipolar. The depressed see life realistically, and the deranged are creative. Though readers may question whether the truly normal can achieve leadership, George W. Bush, for example, is a normal guy, writes the author in proof of his theory. Among the mentally healthy he places Richard Nixon, who failed in a crisis—one of his own making—because he saw the world clearly. For the most part, Ghaemi writes, Nazis, too, were normal folk. For his hypothesis to be taken seriously, the author was obliged to consider the quintessential psychopathic leader, Adolf Hitler, who was a charismatic leader who became crazy to excess. Ultimately, the author provides an unsatisfying diagnosis of the dictator, and he fails to examine, among others, Stalin, Hussein or bin Laden. A diseased mind, Ghaemi candidly admits, attracts stigma, but he insists that the essence of mental illness promotes crisis leadership.

A diverting, exceedingly provocative argument—sure to attract both skeptical and convinced attention.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 15, 2011

Ghaemi (psychiatry, Tufts Univ.) argues that the best leaders in times of crisis are not the most "normal" but those who've allegedly suffered from some sort of mental illness, such as Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill (depression), Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy (hyperthymia--a sort of slightly manic temperament), and Gen. William T. Sherman (bipolar disorder). While it has previously been noted by many historians that Churchill's depressions and (paradoxically) Roosevelt's upbeat demeanor both were instrumental in rallying their countries, Ghaemi also argues that leaders such as Tony Blair, George W. Bush, and Richard Nixon failed precisely because they were so well adjusted. While this book is an intriguing read, it does not satisfactorily answer the many questions it raises, such as "What is normality?" and "What is and isn't a crisis?" VERDICT Readers who want to explore the relationship between mental illness and achievement would be better off with Kay Redfield Jamison's Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament.--Mary Ann Hughes, Shelton, WA

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2011
In times of crisis, psychiatrist Ghaemi thinks, the best leaders are those with bipolar or manic-depressive symptoms. He derives this counterintuitive conclusion from a sample consisting of 12 famous men, including William Sherman, Abraham Lincoln, Mohandas Gandhi, Winston Churchill, Martin Luther King, FDR, JFK, and Ted Turner, whose biographies he combs for evidence of mental abnormalities and whose personalities he contrasts with those of such leaders he regards as psychologically normal as Neville Chamberlain, Richard Nixon, and George W. Bush. From measuring the first group against a roster of diagnostic indicators of mental instability including sleeplessness, loquaciousness, and sexual recklessness, Ghaemi elides into traits he argues characterize the successful crisis leader: realism, resilience, empathy, creativity. Those arise from life experience of depression, suicidal thoughts, or physical illness (polio in FDR's case, Addison's disease in JFK's). Flouting conventional wisdom that sanity is a sine qua non for leadership, Ghaemi's provocative thesis won't convince politicos to coin new slogans (We're in a rut, vote for the nut!) but should attract popular biography and history fans.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2011

Ghaemi (Psychology, Tufts Univ. Medical School; The Rise and Fall of the Biopsychosocial Model, 2009, etc.) insists that failed leaders are mentally healthy. The best crisis leaders, more or less, are crazy.

The author demonstrates his scary thesis by thumbnail psycho-biographies of successful troubled leaders and a few flops who were, apparently, quite normal. Ghaemi's standard diagnostic indicators include symptoms, genetic history, course of illness and treatment. Available medical history and mostly secondary sources serve as validators of mental illnesses in varying severity. General Sherman and Ted Turner, he finds, were hyper-creators. Churchill and Lincoln were depressive realists. Depressed empathy characterized Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. FDR and JFK, both chronically ill, were resiliently manic. In hard times, good politics are bipartisan and great politicians are bipolar. The depressed see life realistically, and the deranged are creative. Though readers may question whether the truly normal can achieve leadership, George W. Bush, for example, is a normal guy, writes the author in proof of his theory. Among the mentally healthy he places Richard Nixon, who failed in a crisis--one of his own making--because he saw the world clearly. For the most part, Ghaemi writes, Nazis, too, were normal folk. For his hypothesis to be taken seriously, the author was obliged to consider the quintessential psychopathic leader, Adolf Hitler, who was a charismatic leader who became crazy to excess. Ultimately, the author provides an unsatisfying diagnosis of the dictator, and he fails to examine, among others, Stalin, Hussein or bin Laden. A diseased mind, Ghaemi candidly admits, attracts stigma, but he insists that the essence of mental illness promotes crisis leadership.

A diverting, exceedingly provocative argument--sure to attract both skeptical and convinced attention.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)