Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars.

Full Abstract

Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin were tyrants who attained absolute power, and misused it in a gargantuan fashion, leaving in his wake a trail of hatred, devastation and death. All made war on their perceived enemies and on their own countrymen. In "A Brotherhood of Tyrants: Manic Depression and Absolute power" (1994) Amherst, Prometheus Books, D. Jablow Hershman and I expose manic-depressive disorder as the force that drove them to absolute power and the terrible abuse of it. We uncover manic-depressive disorder as a hidden cause of dictatorship, mass killing and war, and show how the psychopathology of the disorder can be a key factor in the political pathology of tyranny. In our earlier "The Key To Genius: Manic-Depression and the Creative Life" (1998) Amherst Prometheus Books we catalog the role of the disorder in the lives and careers of Isaac Newton, Ludwig von Beethoven, Charles Dickens, Vincent van Gogh and other creative geniuses. Thus manic-depressive disorder is variable to the extreme of paradox. Key to the destroyers is an indifference to the suffering of others, a need to control everyone and everything, a resistance to reason, and grandiose and paranoid delusions. The paranoid and grandiose delusions of manic-depressives are as infectious and as virulent as a deadly microbe, and can easily infect those in thrall to the host figure. It is a phenomenon known as "induced psychosis" and its imprint is often to be seen on the world stage. In this article I will add Kaiser Wilhelm to the list of manic-depressive warmongers, and passages from Robert Payne's "The Life and Death of Adolph Hitler" that are not only pathognomonic of manic-depressive disorder, but of the mixed variant.

Author information

Author/s: Lieb, Julian (J);

Affiliation: julianlieb(-atsign-)aol.com

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Historical Article; Journal Article

Journal: Medical hypotheses (Med Hypotheses), published in Scotland. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-; vol 70 (issue 4) : pp 888-92

Dates: Created 2008/03/10; Completed 2008/06/10;

PMID: 17881137, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 2/18/2009, IMS Date: 18 Feb 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

External Links for this article
(including full text providers, if available):

Click Electronic Full-text Provider Links to see options for finding the electronic full text links to this article. Note there may be a subscription or fee required for access to the full text. See our FAQ for information on finding FREE full text articles.

This article may also be located in paper journal collections available in many libraries. Use the Journal and Publication Information above to find the full article.