Prof diagnoses Martin Luther King Jr.

“Ghaemi’s research involves looking at past leaders whom he suspects suffered from mental illness and seeing how their behavior matches up with contemporary classifications of mental disorders, he said.”

“In times of crisis leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill displayed signs of mental illness and actually performed better than their “more sane” counterparts.”

“Ghaemi defined “mental illness” as the possession of a sickness like bipolar disorder, and “mental health” as the absence of mental disease plus being near to the statistical average of normal personality traits.”

“Some of the leaders I’ve examined — such as [General] William Sherman, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. — were severely, mentally abnormal at certain points. The reason for their success comes from their having had traumatic experiences and then recovering from them. They were improved by their failures.”

“Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., who both attempted suicide at various points in their lives…” “Ghaemi says his research revealed that both King and Mohandas Gandhi tried to kill themselves during adolescence, and that both suffered severe bouts of depression later in life.” “At 12 years old he jumped out of a second story window in an apparent suicide attempt following the death of his grandmother.” Whaaaa?

“Creativity and resilience is higher in people with mania and realism and empathy is higher in people with depression compared to normal subjects. The problem often with mentally healthy, average leaders is — even though they’re not weak in the sense of not having any of these qualities — they often don’t have enough to meet the very high demands of crises.”

“Being mentally ill” may lead to success

Well, of course, it is a truism:

“Being Black” may lead to success.
“Being tall, short, thin, fat” may led to success.
“Being female” may lead to success.

“Being” may lead to success.

Single descriptors do not determine, a host of descriptors does.