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

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.

The politics of radical empathy,

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.

Our want of independence began to smart. It was unbearable that we should be unable to do anything without the elders’ permission. At last, in sheer disgust, we decided to commit suicide! But how were we to do it? From where were we to get the poison? We heard that Dhatura seeds were an effective poison. Off we went to the jungle in search of these

Psychologists divide empathy into different parts—cognitive, affective, motor, and sensory—distinctions that, though a bit abstract, are useful. Cognitive empathy means thinking another person’s thoughts: I recognize that you have your own set of thoughts, and I try to understand what those thoughts are. Affective empathy involves feeling an emotio

The philosopher Karl Jaspers once said that how a man responds to failure determines who he will become.

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.

illness. They both attempted suicide as teenagers, endured at least one depressive episode in midlife, and suffered a very severe depressive episode in their final years, before they were killed.

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.

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