- Email: [email protected]
Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars
Medical Hypotheses (2008) 70, 888–892
http://intl.elsevierhealth.com/journals/mehy
Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars Julian Lieb
*
127 Cumberland Road, Burlington, VT 05408, USA Received 6 July 2007; accepted 9 July 2007
Summary 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. c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
While other psychiatric disorders disable or destroy their victims, manic-depressive disorder sometimes bestows extraordinary gifts on those in its grasp. Mania gives the fortunate ones unlimited ambition, and enough confidence in their powers to try to achieve their dreams, putting the brain into high gear, increasing the speed of thinking, speech and everything he does. It floods him with ideas and en* Tel.: +1 2033971226. E-mail address: [email protected]
ergy. It is the disorder of legions of creative geniuses. While the benign variant has given us geniuses [1], its paranoid, megalomaniacal twin has unleashed bigots, mass murderers and warmongers [2]. The disorder has produced the great destroyers in history, when in addition to ambition and egotism have been added ruthlessness, willfulness, intolerance of criticism, a consuming need to dominate others, paranoia, an indifference to the suffering of others, and delusions of omniscience, invincibility and infallibility [2].
0306-9877/$ - see front matter c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2007.07.036
Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars At the turn of the twentieth century, European psychiatrists, diplomats, and royalty knew that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was a delusional manicdepressive, who should be deposed or incarcerated lest he ignite a world war [3]. Wilhelm was born by breech delivery that caused his left arm withered and shortened. Sigmund Freud interpreted the deformity as a ‘‘narcissistic injury’’ that ostensibly deformed his character. At a conference on Wilhelm II on the island of Corfu in 1979 John C.J. Rohl, professor of history at the University of Sussex, noted such features of Wilhelm II’s disorder as restlessness, a grandiose belief in his own importance, a tendency to take all things personally, and a blinding rage against those who would not do his bidding. He displayed his deeply offensive behavior towards others, even monarchs and princes, and orchestrated hurtful practical jokes on members of his entourage. Rohl writes that German psychiatrists invented ‘‘periodic disturbedness’’ as a euphemism for manic-depressive disorder [3]. Heinz Kohut was the father of self-psychology, and originator of ‘‘narcissistic personality disorder’’ [3]. His son, Tom Kohut was in the audience and championed his father’s brainchild [3]. In ‘‘Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations (The Corfu Papers)’’ Rohl and political scientist Sombart [3] wrote that for many years before the war, rumors circulated throughout Europe about the Kaiser’s mental health. His derangement influenced his judgment, and made him liable to sudden changes of opinion no one could anticipate. A British diplomat who questioned whether the Kaiser was in full possession of his senses believed him to be ‘‘not quite sane’’. Friedrich von Holstein, the diplomat and statesman who replaced Bismarck to demilitarize German foreign policy, wrote that it was the Kaiser’s misfortune that his: ‘‘glowworm character’’ reminded everyone of Friedrich Wilhelm 1V and Ludwig 11, both of whom were deluded. Germany’s elite was unsettled by the Kaiser’s instability and his frequent outlandish rages. Count Anton Mots wrote that it was as if the ‘‘Kaiser was seized by an evil spirit. . . compelling him to make speeches that insult the nation to the quick. . . our numerous enemies here are triumphant and quietly preparing for the disintegration of the Reich. The Kaiser dismays our friends. The resentment goes deeper than ever before. Many are saying that H.M. is insane’’ [3]. In 1897 Count Philipp Eulenberg, the Kaiser’s closest friend, informed foreign secretary Bulow that the entire Foreign Office regarded the monarch as insane, and that some members of the Kaiser’s family though Wilhelm should be incarcerated. According to Rohl, Eulenberg was reassured by the
889 comments of Wilhelm’s physician, Dr Leuthold, who had recently stated that, ‘‘H.M. has no manic tendencies; on the contrary, he is too fragmented and changeable to be a freak’’. Subsequent events forced Leuthold and Eulenberg to revise their opinions. Eulenberg witnessed in his friend explosive rages, verbal abuse of people and things, megalomania, and periods of depression, or ‘‘nervous breakdowns’’ in which the Kaiser lost his nerve, felt weak and embarrassed, and was open to the influence of others [3]. Emil Kraepelin, the world’s preeminent authority on manic-depressive disorder, and six other leading German psychiatrists concluded that the Kaiser suffered from ‘‘periodic disturbedness’’, their euphemism for manic-depressive disorder. In 1916 Paul Tepsdorf, a Munich psychiatrist who had long been convinced of the Kaiser’s disorder, warned Bettman Hollweg, the German Chancellor, of this diagnosis and its political dangers. He and many of his colleagues were certain, he wrote, ‘‘that the mental illness known as periodic disturbedness, that is, the alternation of periods of pathological psychic agitation with periods of pathological psychic depression, is the cause of the numerous words and actions that have emanated for decades now from the All-Highest, which are inexplicable except in psychiatric terms, and which have determined the fate of the German Reich and those who belong to it’’ [3]. Wilhelm’s mother, the Empress Victoria tried to bring Wilhelm up as a liberal English gentleman. She did everything in her power to keep him from falling under the influence of Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s grandiose militarist and statesman. Tragically, Wilhelm’s paranoid, grandiose manicdepressive temperament attracted him to Bismarck and molded him into a warmonger [3]. Wilhelm’s bombastic behavior time and again brought Germany, France, England and Russia to the brink of war. He built a fleet solely to challenge Britain’s naval supremacy, and told an interviewer for the Daily telegraph that there was widespread anti-English feeling in Germany. With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the threatened collapse of Austria–Hungary, Wilhelm was unable to stop the general mobilization he had allowed his generals to implement and war broke out [3]. World War 1 left nearly 9 million dead and 21 million wounded. Economic losses exceeded $200 billion or over $2 trillion in today’s dollars. The war set the stage for the Bolshevik revolution, Hitler’s rise to power, the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the wars in the Middle East.
890 Sigmund Freud and Emil Kraepelin were born in 1856, destined to become lifelong rivals without ever meeting one another. Kraepelin developed into the world’s leading authority on manic-depressive disorder, and in 1921 published the first definitive manual on the illness entitled, ‘‘Manic Depressive Insanity and Paranoia’’ [4]. Freud’s interests lay elsewhere. In 1926 biographer and playwright Emil Ludwig, published a biography of Wilhelm II in which he proposed that inferiority feelings caused by the condition of his left arm were crucial factors in his character deformity. In a conversation with Ludwig, Freud insisted that it was not the withered arm that caused the narcissistic inferiority but the Empress Victoria’s attitude towards her son’s arm! [3] Rohl writes, ‘‘Sigmund Freud himself put his finger on Vicky’s sense of ‘‘narcissistic injury’’ as one of the root-causes of Wilhelm’s later psychological disturbance. In 1923 Freud wrote: ‘‘It is usual from mothers for whom Fate has prevented with a child who is sickly or otherwise at disadvantage, to try to compensate him for his unfair handicap by a super-abundance of love. In the instance before us, the proud mother behaved otherwise; she withdrew her love from the child on account of his infirmity. When he had grown up into a man of great power, he proved unambiguously by his actions that he had never forgiven his mother [3]. A Central Intelligence Agency file made public on April 27, 2001 revealed that in 1937 Adolf Hitler’s physician considered the tyrant to be ‘‘a border case between genius and insanity’’ and predicted that he could become ‘‘the craziest criminal in history’’ and Hitler obliged. An open and shut case for Hitler’s manic-depressive disorder may be found in the pages of ‘‘The Young Hitler I Knew’’ by Kubizek [5]. Robert Payne’s ‘‘The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler’’ [6] and our ‘‘A Brotherhood of Tyrants: Manic Depression and Absolute Power’’ [3]. For four years Hitler confided completely in his only friend August Kubizek, whose memoir provides the earliest, clearest picture of Hitler’s mind and behavior. Kubizek was both sensible and perceptive, quickly realizing that there were two Hitler’s, one remarkable for his ‘‘ecstatic dedication and activity’’ while the other had ‘‘dangerous fits of depression’’, so severe that they isolated Hitler from all human contact for weeks at a time. After the Vienna Academy of Arts twice rejected Hitler during his seventeenth year he fell into a deep, paranoid, delusional depression in which he spewed anti-Semitic hatred, his bigotry becoming a raging, paranoid obsession. Unable to admit to himself that his training or talent might be insuffi-
Lieb cient, he blamed the Jewish members of the faculty. ‘‘For this, the Jews will pay’’, he wrote to the academy’s director [5,2]. In ‘‘The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler’’, historian Robert Payne unwittingly captures Hitler’s manic-depressive disorder, as the tyrant self-destructed when he could have annihilated retreating allied forces. Payne writes, ‘‘Hitler slept very little during the first week of the invasion. By the end of the week his nervous condition surprised his staff, who found him simultaneously elated by victory and in a state of profound depression, screaming and abusing his generals, constantly warning them of disasters ahead, afraid that victory might be grasped from his grasp at the last moment. At the same time he was writing long letters to Mussolini, vaunting his own achievements’’ [6]. ‘‘On the evening of May 17 General Franz Halder, Hitler’s chief of staff, wrote in his diary: ‘‘A most unfortunate day. The Fuehrer is terribly nervous. He is frightened by his own success, is unwilling to take any risks, and is trying to hold us back’’. Hitler, for reasons of his own, had allowed a large enemy force to escape. His reasons were confusing and sometimes contradictory, and they owed much to his strange emotional state’’ [6]. In his epic ‘‘Manic Depressive Insanity and Paranoia’’, Emil Kraepelin referred to the concomitant occurrence of symptoms of mania and depression as a ‘‘mixed state’’ [4]. Today the entity is firmly entrenched in psychiatric diagnostics. When not in both phases simultaneously, Hitler was in one or the other; in depression, he was despairing, indecisive, isolated, and unable to care for himself, concentrate and remember. He was hesitant, confused, despondent and apathetic, and had a phobic dread of horses, water and the moon. He washed his hands constantly because of his obsessive fear of germs. He had a phobic aversion of and paranoid delusions about Jews as contaminants, and compulsively tried to cleanse the world of them [2]. When manic Hitler was egotistical, arrogant, grandiose, loquacious, aggressive, and irritable. He had grandiose delusions of omnipotence, invincibility and infallibility, Aryan delusions, violent mood swings, rages, racing thoughts and pressured speech. He was ruthless, willful, indifferent to the feelings of others, intolerant of criticism, and had a consuming need to dominate others. His overwhelming emotional force and persuasiveness, both symptoms of mania, were instrumental in infecting millions of his countrymen with his grandiose and paranoid delusions. He threatened, instigated and perpetrated war in his drive for world domination and the destruction of the Jewish people [2].
Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars Hitler’s hatred of Jews emanated from his paranoid, obsessive, and delusional fear of them. Paranoid visions of (nonexistent) Jews in the Kremlin hurling the Soviet hordes against Germany’s eastern flank compelled him to invade Russia while England remained undefeated. While Hitler thought he was preempting a Russian attack, Stalin was eager to remain at peace for at least a year while he built his military strength [6]. Historian John Toland describes Hitler’s depression as so incapacitating that a physician dosed him with oral and intramuscular amphetamines, cocaine, heart and liver extracts and other potions [7]. Theodor Morell, his quack, publicly referred to Hitler as manic-depressive [2]. Starting World War 11 was an act of insanity. By invading Poland, Hitler turned what had been a Japanese plan of conquest of the Pacific into a world war. On a sudden impulse in November 1937 Hitler summoned his military leaders to his office where, in a manic state of exaltation, he spent four hours warning them that Germany would be at war within a year. The depressive delusion that, he was running out of time due to heart disease, and manic delusions of omnipotence, omniscience and invincibility propelled Hitler. His irrational hatred of Poles formed part of his determination to conquer Poland [2]. After denying defeat until the moment that Soviet forces were racing towards his bunker, Hitler gave orders for the destruction of everything of value in Germany before joining Eva Braun in a suicide pact. His suicide is viewed in the context of denying the allies their revenge. It is also an act not unknown among manic-depressives, and Hitler had tried before. Hitler’s one stable element among Hitler’s violent mood oscillations was hatred. He detested Jews, Jehovah’s witnesses, golfers, Catholics, Poles, Gypsies, gays, Communists, skiers, hunters, journalists, judges, smokers, poets, Freemasons, and anybody not a vegetarian. He even hated the German middle class, which he accused of ‘‘dragging a whole nation with it into the abyss’’ [2]. The paranoid 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 phenomenon known as ‘‘induced psychosis’’. Had Hitler succeeded in his grandiose ambitions he would have been on course to exterminate every human being, for ultimately everyone would have earned his enmity. The same could be said about Joseph Stalin. Napoleon, Wilhelm and Hitler started wars on the pretext of leading their compatriots to glory, each using war to increase his personal power and all leaving their countries in ruins and millions of their countrymen in early
891 graves. The elite of German psychiatry tried to prevent a world war by attempting to depose their bellicose tyrant. Generations later the elite of American psychiatry failed to educate society that peace and security depend more on the actions of paranoid/grandiose manic-depressives, than on the mere possession of weapons of mass destruction. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D.S.M 1V) [8] defines narcissistic personality disorder as ‘‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts’’. It lists ‘‘inflated self-esteem or grandiosity’’ as manifestations of mania and hypomania. As for lack of empathy, Hershman and I list indifference to the feelings of others as a key feature of homicidal manic-depressive despots. Freud introduced the concept of narcissism, Kohut [9] broadened it to ‘‘narcissistic personality disorder’’ and Kernberg [10] broadened that to ‘‘malignant narcissistic personality disorder’’. Kernberg, of borderline personality disorder renown, conceptualizes as ‘‘malignant narcissism’’ a personality constellation found in many of history’s tyrannical leaders. For twenty-one years Dr. Jerrold Post profiled foreign political leaders for the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Deportment and the Pentagon [10]. In reviewing our book, Post asserts that what we describe is not manic-depressive disorder but ‘‘malignant narcissistic personality disorder’’ [11]. D.S.M. 1V lists narcissistic personality disorder, but not malignant narcissistic personality disorder [12]. Malignant narcissistic personality disorder is a psychoanalytic concept, and not a psychiatric disorder. It would seem that our policy makers didn’t bother to check. Post diagnosed Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden as malignant narcissists. As far as I know, no one has explained how the egotism of the manic differs from the narcissism of the narcissist, or how the grandiosity and paranoia of the narcissist differs from the grandiosity and paranoia of the manic-depressive.
Acknowledgments I am indebted to Professor John Rohl for granting me permission to excerpt and quote from: Rohl, C.G., Sombart, N. ‘‘Kaiser Wilhelm 11-New Interpretations: The Corfu Papers’’. 1982. Cambridge University Press. Professor Rohl has also published: ‘‘The Kaiser and His Court’’. 1996. Cambridge
892 University Press. ‘‘Young Wilhelm: The Kaiser’s Early Life’’. 1998. Cambridge University Press. Wilhelm 11: The Kaiser’s Personal Monarchy. 1888– 1900. 2004. Cambridge University Press.
References [1] Hershman DJ, Lieb J. The key to genius: manic depression and the creative life. Amherst: Prometheus Books; 1988. [2] Hershman DJ, Lieb J. A brotherhood of tyrants: manic depression and absolute power. Amherst: Prometheus Books; 1994. [3] Rohl CG, Sombart N. Kaiser Wilhelm 11-new interpretations: the corfu papers. Cambridge University Press; 1982. [4] Kraepelin E. Manic depressive insanity and paranoia. Edinburgh: E&S Livingstone; 1921.
Lieb [5] Kubizek August. The young Hitler I knew. Boston: Houghton; 1955. [6] Payne Robert. The life and death of Adolf Hitler. New York: Popular Library; 1973. [7] Toland John. Adolf Hitler. Garden City (NY): Doubleday and Co., Inc.; 1976. [8] Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 4th ed. (D.S.M-IV).Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 1994. [9] Kohut H. Forms and transformations of narcissism. J Am Psychoanal Assoc 1966;14(2):243–72. [10] Kernberg OH. The narcissistic personality disorder and the differential diagnosis of antisocial behavior. Psychiatr Clin North Am 1989;12(3):553–70. [11] Borger J. Saddam tell me about your mum. Guardian Unlimited; 2002 November 14. [12] Post J. Review of ‘‘A Brotherhood of Tyrants: Manic Depression and Absolute Power’’. J Nerv Nerv Mental Dis 1996;10:647–8.
http://intl.elsevierhealth.com/journals/mehy
Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars Julian Lieb
*
127 Cumberland Road, Burlington, VT 05408, USA Received 6 July 2007; accepted 9 July 2007
Summary 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. c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
While other psychiatric disorders disable or destroy their victims, manic-depressive disorder sometimes bestows extraordinary gifts on those in its grasp. Mania gives the fortunate ones unlimited ambition, and enough confidence in their powers to try to achieve their dreams, putting the brain into high gear, increasing the speed of thinking, speech and everything he does. It floods him with ideas and en* Tel.: +1 2033971226. E-mail address: [email protected]
ergy. It is the disorder of legions of creative geniuses. While the benign variant has given us geniuses [1], its paranoid, megalomaniacal twin has unleashed bigots, mass murderers and warmongers [2]. The disorder has produced the great destroyers in history, when in addition to ambition and egotism have been added ruthlessness, willfulness, intolerance of criticism, a consuming need to dominate others, paranoia, an indifference to the suffering of others, and delusions of omniscience, invincibility and infallibility [2].
0306-9877/$ - see front matter c 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.mehy.2007.07.036
Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars At the turn of the twentieth century, European psychiatrists, diplomats, and royalty knew that Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany was a delusional manicdepressive, who should be deposed or incarcerated lest he ignite a world war [3]. Wilhelm was born by breech delivery that caused his left arm withered and shortened. Sigmund Freud interpreted the deformity as a ‘‘narcissistic injury’’ that ostensibly deformed his character. At a conference on Wilhelm II on the island of Corfu in 1979 John C.J. Rohl, professor of history at the University of Sussex, noted such features of Wilhelm II’s disorder as restlessness, a grandiose belief in his own importance, a tendency to take all things personally, and a blinding rage against those who would not do his bidding. He displayed his deeply offensive behavior towards others, even monarchs and princes, and orchestrated hurtful practical jokes on members of his entourage. Rohl writes that German psychiatrists invented ‘‘periodic disturbedness’’ as a euphemism for manic-depressive disorder [3]. Heinz Kohut was the father of self-psychology, and originator of ‘‘narcissistic personality disorder’’ [3]. His son, Tom Kohut was in the audience and championed his father’s brainchild [3]. In ‘‘Kaiser Wilhelm II: New Interpretations (The Corfu Papers)’’ Rohl and political scientist Sombart [3] wrote that for many years before the war, rumors circulated throughout Europe about the Kaiser’s mental health. His derangement influenced his judgment, and made him liable to sudden changes of opinion no one could anticipate. A British diplomat who questioned whether the Kaiser was in full possession of his senses believed him to be ‘‘not quite sane’’. Friedrich von Holstein, the diplomat and statesman who replaced Bismarck to demilitarize German foreign policy, wrote that it was the Kaiser’s misfortune that his: ‘‘glowworm character’’ reminded everyone of Friedrich Wilhelm 1V and Ludwig 11, both of whom were deluded. Germany’s elite was unsettled by the Kaiser’s instability and his frequent outlandish rages. Count Anton Mots wrote that it was as if the ‘‘Kaiser was seized by an evil spirit. . . compelling him to make speeches that insult the nation to the quick. . . our numerous enemies here are triumphant and quietly preparing for the disintegration of the Reich. The Kaiser dismays our friends. The resentment goes deeper than ever before. Many are saying that H.M. is insane’’ [3]. In 1897 Count Philipp Eulenberg, the Kaiser’s closest friend, informed foreign secretary Bulow that the entire Foreign Office regarded the monarch as insane, and that some members of the Kaiser’s family though Wilhelm should be incarcerated. According to Rohl, Eulenberg was reassured by the
889 comments of Wilhelm’s physician, Dr Leuthold, who had recently stated that, ‘‘H.M. has no manic tendencies; on the contrary, he is too fragmented and changeable to be a freak’’. Subsequent events forced Leuthold and Eulenberg to revise their opinions. Eulenberg witnessed in his friend explosive rages, verbal abuse of people and things, megalomania, and periods of depression, or ‘‘nervous breakdowns’’ in which the Kaiser lost his nerve, felt weak and embarrassed, and was open to the influence of others [3]. Emil Kraepelin, the world’s preeminent authority on manic-depressive disorder, and six other leading German psychiatrists concluded that the Kaiser suffered from ‘‘periodic disturbedness’’, their euphemism for manic-depressive disorder. In 1916 Paul Tepsdorf, a Munich psychiatrist who had long been convinced of the Kaiser’s disorder, warned Bettman Hollweg, the German Chancellor, of this diagnosis and its political dangers. He and many of his colleagues were certain, he wrote, ‘‘that the mental illness known as periodic disturbedness, that is, the alternation of periods of pathological psychic agitation with periods of pathological psychic depression, is the cause of the numerous words and actions that have emanated for decades now from the All-Highest, which are inexplicable except in psychiatric terms, and which have determined the fate of the German Reich and those who belong to it’’ [3]. Wilhelm’s mother, the Empress Victoria tried to bring Wilhelm up as a liberal English gentleman. She did everything in her power to keep him from falling under the influence of Otto von Bismarck, Germany’s grandiose militarist and statesman. Tragically, Wilhelm’s paranoid, grandiose manicdepressive temperament attracted him to Bismarck and molded him into a warmonger [3]. Wilhelm’s bombastic behavior time and again brought Germany, France, England and Russia to the brink of war. He built a fleet solely to challenge Britain’s naval supremacy, and told an interviewer for the Daily telegraph that there was widespread anti-English feeling in Germany. With the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo and the threatened collapse of Austria–Hungary, Wilhelm was unable to stop the general mobilization he had allowed his generals to implement and war broke out [3]. World War 1 left nearly 9 million dead and 21 million wounded. Economic losses exceeded $200 billion or over $2 trillion in today’s dollars. The war set the stage for the Bolshevik revolution, Hitler’s rise to power, the Second World War, the Holocaust, the Cold War, the Korean and Vietnam wars, and the wars in the Middle East.
890 Sigmund Freud and Emil Kraepelin were born in 1856, destined to become lifelong rivals without ever meeting one another. Kraepelin developed into the world’s leading authority on manic-depressive disorder, and in 1921 published the first definitive manual on the illness entitled, ‘‘Manic Depressive Insanity and Paranoia’’ [4]. Freud’s interests lay elsewhere. In 1926 biographer and playwright Emil Ludwig, published a biography of Wilhelm II in which he proposed that inferiority feelings caused by the condition of his left arm were crucial factors in his character deformity. In a conversation with Ludwig, Freud insisted that it was not the withered arm that caused the narcissistic inferiority but the Empress Victoria’s attitude towards her son’s arm! [3] Rohl writes, ‘‘Sigmund Freud himself put his finger on Vicky’s sense of ‘‘narcissistic injury’’ as one of the root-causes of Wilhelm’s later psychological disturbance. In 1923 Freud wrote: ‘‘It is usual from mothers for whom Fate has prevented with a child who is sickly or otherwise at disadvantage, to try to compensate him for his unfair handicap by a super-abundance of love. In the instance before us, the proud mother behaved otherwise; she withdrew her love from the child on account of his infirmity. When he had grown up into a man of great power, he proved unambiguously by his actions that he had never forgiven his mother [3]. A Central Intelligence Agency file made public on April 27, 2001 revealed that in 1937 Adolf Hitler’s physician considered the tyrant to be ‘‘a border case between genius and insanity’’ and predicted that he could become ‘‘the craziest criminal in history’’ and Hitler obliged. An open and shut case for Hitler’s manic-depressive disorder may be found in the pages of ‘‘The Young Hitler I Knew’’ by Kubizek [5]. Robert Payne’s ‘‘The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler’’ [6] and our ‘‘A Brotherhood of Tyrants: Manic Depression and Absolute Power’’ [3]. For four years Hitler confided completely in his only friend August Kubizek, whose memoir provides the earliest, clearest picture of Hitler’s mind and behavior. Kubizek was both sensible and perceptive, quickly realizing that there were two Hitler’s, one remarkable for his ‘‘ecstatic dedication and activity’’ while the other had ‘‘dangerous fits of depression’’, so severe that they isolated Hitler from all human contact for weeks at a time. After the Vienna Academy of Arts twice rejected Hitler during his seventeenth year he fell into a deep, paranoid, delusional depression in which he spewed anti-Semitic hatred, his bigotry becoming a raging, paranoid obsession. Unable to admit to himself that his training or talent might be insuffi-
Lieb cient, he blamed the Jewish members of the faculty. ‘‘For this, the Jews will pay’’, he wrote to the academy’s director [5,2]. In ‘‘The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler’’, historian Robert Payne unwittingly captures Hitler’s manic-depressive disorder, as the tyrant self-destructed when he could have annihilated retreating allied forces. Payne writes, ‘‘Hitler slept very little during the first week of the invasion. By the end of the week his nervous condition surprised his staff, who found him simultaneously elated by victory and in a state of profound depression, screaming and abusing his generals, constantly warning them of disasters ahead, afraid that victory might be grasped from his grasp at the last moment. At the same time he was writing long letters to Mussolini, vaunting his own achievements’’ [6]. ‘‘On the evening of May 17 General Franz Halder, Hitler’s chief of staff, wrote in his diary: ‘‘A most unfortunate day. The Fuehrer is terribly nervous. He is frightened by his own success, is unwilling to take any risks, and is trying to hold us back’’. Hitler, for reasons of his own, had allowed a large enemy force to escape. His reasons were confusing and sometimes contradictory, and they owed much to his strange emotional state’’ [6]. In his epic ‘‘Manic Depressive Insanity and Paranoia’’, Emil Kraepelin referred to the concomitant occurrence of symptoms of mania and depression as a ‘‘mixed state’’ [4]. Today the entity is firmly entrenched in psychiatric diagnostics. When not in both phases simultaneously, Hitler was in one or the other; in depression, he was despairing, indecisive, isolated, and unable to care for himself, concentrate and remember. He was hesitant, confused, despondent and apathetic, and had a phobic dread of horses, water and the moon. He washed his hands constantly because of his obsessive fear of germs. He had a phobic aversion of and paranoid delusions about Jews as contaminants, and compulsively tried to cleanse the world of them [2]. When manic Hitler was egotistical, arrogant, grandiose, loquacious, aggressive, and irritable. He had grandiose delusions of omnipotence, invincibility and infallibility, Aryan delusions, violent mood swings, rages, racing thoughts and pressured speech. He was ruthless, willful, indifferent to the feelings of others, intolerant of criticism, and had a consuming need to dominate others. His overwhelming emotional force and persuasiveness, both symptoms of mania, were instrumental in infecting millions of his countrymen with his grandiose and paranoid delusions. He threatened, instigated and perpetrated war in his drive for world domination and the destruction of the Jewish people [2].
Two manic-depressives, two tyrants, two world wars Hitler’s hatred of Jews emanated from his paranoid, obsessive, and delusional fear of them. Paranoid visions of (nonexistent) Jews in the Kremlin hurling the Soviet hordes against Germany’s eastern flank compelled him to invade Russia while England remained undefeated. While Hitler thought he was preempting a Russian attack, Stalin was eager to remain at peace for at least a year while he built his military strength [6]. Historian John Toland describes Hitler’s depression as so incapacitating that a physician dosed him with oral and intramuscular amphetamines, cocaine, heart and liver extracts and other potions [7]. Theodor Morell, his quack, publicly referred to Hitler as manic-depressive [2]. Starting World War 11 was an act of insanity. By invading Poland, Hitler turned what had been a Japanese plan of conquest of the Pacific into a world war. On a sudden impulse in November 1937 Hitler summoned his military leaders to his office where, in a manic state of exaltation, he spent four hours warning them that Germany would be at war within a year. The depressive delusion that, he was running out of time due to heart disease, and manic delusions of omnipotence, omniscience and invincibility propelled Hitler. His irrational hatred of Poles formed part of his determination to conquer Poland [2]. After denying defeat until the moment that Soviet forces were racing towards his bunker, Hitler gave orders for the destruction of everything of value in Germany before joining Eva Braun in a suicide pact. His suicide is viewed in the context of denying the allies their revenge. It is also an act not unknown among manic-depressives, and Hitler had tried before. Hitler’s one stable element among Hitler’s violent mood oscillations was hatred. He detested Jews, Jehovah’s witnesses, golfers, Catholics, Poles, Gypsies, gays, Communists, skiers, hunters, journalists, judges, smokers, poets, Freemasons, and anybody not a vegetarian. He even hated the German middle class, which he accused of ‘‘dragging a whole nation with it into the abyss’’ [2]. The paranoid 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 phenomenon known as ‘‘induced psychosis’’. Had Hitler succeeded in his grandiose ambitions he would have been on course to exterminate every human being, for ultimately everyone would have earned his enmity. The same could be said about Joseph Stalin. Napoleon, Wilhelm and Hitler started wars on the pretext of leading their compatriots to glory, each using war to increase his personal power and all leaving their countries in ruins and millions of their countrymen in early
891 graves. The elite of German psychiatry tried to prevent a world war by attempting to depose their bellicose tyrant. Generations later the elite of American psychiatry failed to educate society that peace and security depend more on the actions of paranoid/grandiose manic-depressives, than on the mere possession of weapons of mass destruction. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (D.S.M 1V) [8] defines narcissistic personality disorder as ‘‘a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts’’. It lists ‘‘inflated self-esteem or grandiosity’’ as manifestations of mania and hypomania. As for lack of empathy, Hershman and I list indifference to the feelings of others as a key feature of homicidal manic-depressive despots. Freud introduced the concept of narcissism, Kohut [9] broadened it to ‘‘narcissistic personality disorder’’ and Kernberg [10] broadened that to ‘‘malignant narcissistic personality disorder’’. Kernberg, of borderline personality disorder renown, conceptualizes as ‘‘malignant narcissism’’ a personality constellation found in many of history’s tyrannical leaders. For twenty-one years Dr. Jerrold Post profiled foreign political leaders for the White House, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, the State Deportment and the Pentagon [10]. In reviewing our book, Post asserts that what we describe is not manic-depressive disorder but ‘‘malignant narcissistic personality disorder’’ [11]. D.S.M. 1V lists narcissistic personality disorder, but not malignant narcissistic personality disorder [12]. Malignant narcissistic personality disorder is a psychoanalytic concept, and not a psychiatric disorder. It would seem that our policy makers didn’t bother to check. Post diagnosed Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden as malignant narcissists. As far as I know, no one has explained how the egotism of the manic differs from the narcissism of the narcissist, or how the grandiosity and paranoia of the narcissist differs from the grandiosity and paranoia of the manic-depressive.
Acknowledgments I am indebted to Professor John Rohl for granting me permission to excerpt and quote from: Rohl, C.G., Sombart, N. ‘‘Kaiser Wilhelm 11-New Interpretations: The Corfu Papers’’. 1982. Cambridge University Press. Professor Rohl has also published: ‘‘The Kaiser and His Court’’. 1996. Cambridge
892 University Press. ‘‘Young Wilhelm: The Kaiser’s Early Life’’. 1998. Cambridge University Press. Wilhelm 11: The Kaiser’s Personal Monarchy. 1888– 1900. 2004. Cambridge University Press.
References [1] Hershman DJ, Lieb J. The key to genius: manic depression and the creative life. Amherst: Prometheus Books; 1988. [2] Hershman DJ, Lieb J. A brotherhood of tyrants: manic depression and absolute power. Amherst: Prometheus Books; 1994. [3] Rohl CG, Sombart N. Kaiser Wilhelm 11-new interpretations: the corfu papers. Cambridge University Press; 1982. [4] Kraepelin E. Manic depressive insanity and paranoia. Edinburgh: E&S Livingstone; 1921.
Lieb [5] Kubizek August. The young Hitler I knew. Boston: Houghton; 1955. [6] Payne Robert. The life and death of Adolf Hitler. New York: Popular Library; 1973. [7] Toland John. Adolf Hitler. Garden City (NY): Doubleday and Co., Inc.; 1976. [8] Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders. 4th ed. (D.S.M-IV).Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Association; 1994. [9] Kohut H. Forms and transformations of narcissism. J Am Psychoanal Assoc 1966;14(2):243–72. [10] Kernberg OH. The narcissistic personality disorder and the differential diagnosis of antisocial behavior. Psychiatr Clin North Am 1989;12(3):553–70. [11] Borger J. Saddam tell me about your mum. Guardian Unlimited; 2002 November 14. [12] Post J. Review of ‘‘A Brotherhood of Tyrants: Manic Depression and Absolute Power’’. J Nerv Nerv Mental Dis 1996;10:647–8.