No, not “mad” as in Tea Party anger. Instead, we’re talking “mad” as in A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness. Stephen Colbert did an excellent interview with its author, Dr. Nassir Ghaemi, professor of psychiatry and director of the Mood Disorders program at Tufts University Medical Center.
Ghaemi says strong conviction, enormous creativity and deep empathy are necessary qualities for good leadership in times of crisis. Further, he argues the lines between mental health and illness are not so bright as we like to believe. Mania makes us more creative and depression gives us more empathy.
It’s a nuanced argument that’s difficult to make in a quickie interview, which makes the Colbert performance all the more impressive. This public radio interview, for example, was far less successful. I expect Ghaemi will show up on Fresh Air one day soon.
Some reviews of the book…
James Camp in The NY Observer:
“I am now the most miserable man living,” Abraham Lincoln wrote in 1841. According to Mr. Ghaemi, this is a kind of boast; Lincoln’s greatness was nourished by his glumness. “Lincoln’s depression enhanced his political realism,” he writes. Mr. Ghaemi identifies four categories of aptitude in which the compos mentis lag the mad: resilience, creativity, realism and empathy. A panoply of studies supports these claims. The mentally healthy tend to be overconfident, uninspired, thin-skinned and soundproofed from the suffering of others. Writes Mr. Ghaemi, “Depression deepens our natural empathy, and produces someone for whom the inescapable web of interdependence … is a personal reality, not a fanciful wish.” This is the theory of depressive realism. Those who see the glass as half empty may simply have better eyesight. Normality is a form of unreality.
To all this, however, Mr. Ghaemi appends two whopping provisos. The first is that mentally unbalanced leaders can succeed only in times of crisis. “In these hard times,” as William Tecumseh Sherman said in 1861, “it is hard to say who are sane and who are insane.” As the crisis ebbs, and the distinction between sanity and insanity reboots, the latter loses its usefulness. The trajectory of Churchill, who prospered in wartime but floundered in intervals of peace, exemplifies this.
The other proviso is a paradox, which Mr. Ghaemi terms “The Goldilocks Principle.” The Goldilocks Principle states that insanity is beneficial only in moderation. Too much insanity—outright psychosis—is debilitating. Too little does nothing.
Alice Gregory in The Boston Globe:
His thesis is fashionably counterintuitive, and also italicized: “The best crisis leaders are either mentally ill or mentally abnormal; the worst crisis leaders are mentally healthy.”
The book is a glistening psychological history, faceted largely by the biographies of eight famous leaders, which Ghaemi uses to illustrate the characteristics he believes to be at once most crucial to successful sovereignty and also most exaggerated by mental illness. “A First-Rate Madness’’ is organized by these attributes, with each main section encompassing two lives, twinned in their specific symbiosis of efficacy and ailment. “Creativity’’ is epitomized by William Tecumseh Sherman and Ted Turner; “Realism’’ by Winston Churchill and Abraham Lincoln; “Empathy’’ by Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King; and “Resilience’’ by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy.
Salon’s Thomas Rogers has an interview with Ghaemi:
I think if most people knew that their leaders were making important decisions, like, say, about the debt ceiling, while going through a manic phase, they would be concerned.
It’s important to get out of this all-or-nothing thinking. It’s not that you’re either completely normal or in control or completely manic or out of control. Mental illness can come in many degrees of severity; it can be mild, moderate or really severe. When people are mildly to moderately manic they have what are called racing thoughts, going down different tangents that a person normally wouldn’t, and this often produces creative links that most people would not make. Those lead to judgments that lead to decisions that often end up being correct and helpful and would otherwise not happen. Manic people, especially when their symptoms are mild or moderate, can make much better decisions than mentally healthy people who often make very poor decisions.
Ghaemi says Reagan, Bush and the current crop of Republican hopefuls are a normal lot. And that the jury is out on President Obama.
The book has been added to my reading list.