A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness
updated 3mo ago
updated 3mo ago
Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint.
Taylor had discovered “positive illusion”—the opposite of depressive realism, a kind of healthy illusion found not just in a trivial button-pushing test, but in life-threatening illness.
They became different, and two-thirds of them said they’d changed for the better.
The philosopher Karl Jaspers once said that how a man responds to failure determines who he will become.
BESIDES BEING BORN with plenty of oxytocin receptors, how can one attain a high degree of empathy? One answer, I believe, is to be depressed.
As with Martin Luther King, Gandhi’s nonviolent method sought to achieve psychological, not just political, ends.
depression led to more, not less, realistic assessments of control over one’s environment, an effect that was only enhanced by a real-world emotional desire, like making money.
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.
that normal people who became ill and then recovered would return to their former worldviews.
King tried to commit suicide as a teenager; in fact, King made two attempts.