A First-Rate Madness by Ghaemi Nassir

Author:Ghaemi, Nassir
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Publisher: PENGUIN group
Published: 2011-06-20T16:00:00+00:00

It was 3 a.m. The friends departed and never discussed that night again until over thirty years later, when, in 1939, the Führer invited his old friend to see a Wagner opera in Bayreuth, the site of the composer’s annual festival. Kubizek recounted that special night in their youth. Hitler was moved. Later, when they both visited Wagner’s widow in her home, Hitler took a turn retelling the story, concluding, “In that hour it began.”

I THINK there can be little doubt that these behaviors represented manic episodes, and if someone ever has a manic episode, it is 90 percent likely that he will also have depressive episodes. Hitler too had periods of behavior that meet our current definition of clinical depression, especially when he would suffer setbacks in life, such as being turned down twice by the Vienna Academy of Arts. At that time, Kubizek recalls:His mood worried me more and more as the days went by. I had never known him torment himself in this way before. On the contrary! In my opinion, he possessed rather too much than too little self-confidence. But now things seemed to change round. He wallowed deeper and deeper in self-criticism. Yet it only needed the slightest touch . . . for his self-accusation to become an accusation against the times, against the whole world; choking with his catalogue of hates, he would pour his fury over everything, against mankind in general who did not understand him, who did not appreciate him and by whom he was persecuted. I see him before me, striding up and down the small space in boundless anger, shaken to his very depths.

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