Homoclites vs. Crazies, Wartime vs. Peacetime — A Study in Leadership

This is a very interesting book on analyzing personalities, especially leadership, with a mirror of “mental illness”. The central thesis is, as author laid out, “the best crisis leaders are either mentally ill or mentally abnormal; the worst crisis leaders are mentally healthy”.

Think of a 2x2 matrix — one side with “regular (what the author — a professional psychiatrist, calls ‘homoclite’) vs not disposition”, another with “war vs peace time”. Now put your favorite leaders along four quadrants — Reagan — regular, peacetime; Churchill, Lincoln, Hitler — have documented ‘mental illness’, wartime; Chamberlain — regular, peacetime and so on.

Now, construct a 3rd dimension — results — good vs. bad. Author’s hypothesis is, simply, “a bit” of mental “abnormality”, but not too much, gets results when things get really rough. This, he adds two corollaries — one, very often this “abnormality” is borne of genetics and bolstered in childhood; two, medicines have a non-linear effect — both good and bad — on the amplitude of abnormality.

He walks through a quasi-analysis of Lincoln, FDR, Gandhi, Sherman, Churchill, Chamberlain, JFK, Nixon, Clinton, Reagan, Bush, Hitler — of course!, and many others to establish “The Inverse Law of Sanity”. Essentially, as Shaw said — “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man”.

Some takeaways —

— Aristotle first noted the link between creativity and depression. Yes, the “depressed poet” stereotype!

— Creativity is “divergent thinking” — many unusual solutions to a novel problem. Inversely, creativity may have LESS to do with solving problems than with finding the right problems to solve. Divergent thinking is a “daily experience in mania”. In other words, temperamental balance is incongruent with divergent thinking.

— Two types of execs — Commissar & Yogi — the former is bureaucratic administer and the latter is entrepreneurial crisis leader. Interestingly, to do little or nothing is often a wise course in politics but rarely in business. Business is defined almost exclusively in terms of growth.

— “Heads I win, Tails it’s chance” — we are not only susceptible to illusion of control, but falsely attribute success to our own qualities and democratize failures to others. “How a man responds to failure determines who he will become”.

— Churchill’s mood shifted very often. Cyclothymic personality involves the constant alternation between mild manic and mild depressive symptoms. A less severe bipolar disorder. Negative emotions, like pain, have generated more psychiatric interest than positive ones like empathy. The term empathy did not exist till 1850! Em — into, pathos — suffering — it means “into suffering”.

— Only 3% of animals are monogamous. This could be originated from oxytocin network — the monogamous animals have refined/different oxytocin receptors that trigger with social bonding/empathy, not just with biological sex. On the flip side of the Oxytocin wiring — there is a high correlation between depression and empathy. Empathy is central to the experience of depression, and just as central to its treatment. “Gandhi and MLK are the bookends of depressive activism”.

— Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Both Gandhi and MLK tried to commit suicide in their early lives. To achieve social change, “you have to be a little crazy”.

— Resilience is “good outcomes in spite of serious threats to adaptation or development”. Resilience is mind’s vaccine — the right amount of hardship build our future resistance. Too much of it breaks us. “45% of great leaders lost a parent before age 21.” Resilience grows out of exposure to, not complete avoidance of, risk. Trauma itself is not a disease, just as a virus is not itself an infection.

— Besides low neuroticism, hyperthymia enhances resilience. Of all positive traits associated with resilience, humor is the most powerful one. Good sense of humor is a strong sign, if not the best hallmark, of psychological maturity. Freud wrote an entire book about wit!

— “Truth is a mobile army of metaphors” — Nietzsche
— Hyperthymic personality is an innate immunity to trauma.

— Right after Pearl Harbor bombing, during a special meeting with his military advisors, FDR “launched into a 20 minute story about lobster fishing in Maine”. His verbosity reflected a generally high energy level.

— A key aspect of hyperthymic personality is “openness to experience” — they are curious, inventive, experimental souls. It can also become impulsive risk-taking and result in disaster. FDR’s “ultimate humility came from being helped physically”. He had “a degree of empathy that we’ve seen in other leaders who endured depression”. “One’s philosophy is determined by one’s personality”.

— “In leadership, and in life generally, drugs can make a major difference”. Author posits, and narrates, how the intense, non-reviewed cocktail of psychopharmacological drugs administered to Hitler from 1939 changed his personality, for far worse. Also, how controlled, reviewed drugs (e.g., anabolic steroids) changed JFK’s decision-making better — from Bay of the Pigs disaster to Cuban Missile Crisis steeliness — per author — was navigated by significant alteration in his medicine regimen.

— McClellan “had not failed enough to realize that he was not really as great as everyone said he was”. He was a success in peacetime, a failure in crisis. Plutarch commented about a failed ancient ruler: had he not become king, no one would have doubted his fitness to rule.

— Narcissism has no scientific meaning. It is just a Greek myth translated into English. It has never been “empirically validated”.

— People don’t vote for someone; they vote against someone.
— Goering had an IQ of 138, but he was only third highest IQ among the Numerberg Nazi leaders. So much for “intelligence is the hallmark for greatness”.

— “Proud mediocrity resists the notion that what is common, and thus normal, may not be the best.”

— “Mental illness is not binary, it’s not like being pregnant, it is more like hypertension — involving gradations of abnormality”.

— “Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat, and that the redeeming things are not ‘happiness and pleasure’ but the deeper satisfaction that come out of struggle.” — F. Scott Fitzgerald

— We need to aim slightly above if we wish to hit the mark. The paradox isL being open to some depression may allow us, ultimately, to be less depressed.

I love books that either, boldly, take a contrarian approach to a normative worldview or, while conventional, gently tries to unsettle part of our static mind. The windows of mind should be open and it is a good sign if the curtains sway a bit with wind. This book does both! Great read.