A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness

Germany and its Nazi leaders were not much different, psychologically, from any nation or any leaders. And that’s the scary part.

early failures repeatedly experienced by a person predisposed to depression inoculate against future illusion.

King tried to commit suicide as a teenager; in fact, King made two attempts.

the depressive realism hypothesis. This theory argues that depressed people aren’t depressed because they distort reality; they’re depressed because they see reality more clearly than other people do.

resilience—“good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development.”

Searching for a term less loaded than “normal” to describe these people, Grinker called them homoclites, a Latinate term he invented to indicate “those who follow a common rule.”

“I was a coward. I used to be haunted by the fears of thieves, ghosts, and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night. Darkness was a terror to me. . . . I could not therefore bear to sleep without a light in the room.”

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn. —Jack Kerouac, On the Road

that normal people who became ill and then recovered would return to their former worldviews.