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

Our leaders cannot be perfect; they need not be perfect; their imperfections indeed may produce their greatness. The indelible smudges on their character may be signs of brilliant leadership.

Mental illness can produce great leaders, but if the illness is too severe, or treated with the wrong drugs, it produces failure or, sometimes, evil.

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.

“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.”

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

I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could.

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

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.”

A KEY CHARACTERISTIC of a homoclite leader is that he or she is effective and successful in peacetime or prosperity, but fails during war or crisis.