973.7L63 Retrospective Diagnoses of DR316 Historical Personalities UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS LIBRARY the Class of 1901 founded by HARLAN HOYT HORNER and HENRIETTA CALHOUN HORNER Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2012 with funding from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign http://archive.org/details/retrospectivediaOOgold HISTORICAL PERSONALITIES AS VIEWED BY LEADING CONTEMPORARY PSYCHIATRISTS RETROSPECTIVE DIAGNOSES BY DOUGLAS GOLDMAN, M.D. NATHAN S. KLINE, M.D. VERONICA M. PENNINGTON, M.D. BURTRUM C. SCHIELE, M.D. THE BACKGROUND OF THIS BOOKLET The illustrations in this brochure were created as part of a promotional program for Trilafon, the tranquilizer developed by Schering, and appeared in The Journal of the American Medical Association. Because of the great interest evinced in this series of illustrations Schering is pleased to reproduce them in this brochure which also presents brief analytical personality interpretations. Schering wishes to thank Doctors Douglas Goldman, Nathan Kline, Veronica Pennington and Burtrum Schiele for their cooperation in making this brochure possible. ©1958, Schering Corporation, Bloomfield, N. J. All rights reserved. Printed in U.S.A. RETROSPECTIVE DIAGNOSES OF HISTORICAL PERSONALITIES AS VIEWED RY LEADING CONTEMPORARY PSYCHIATRISTS DOUGLAS GOLDMAN, M.D. NATHAN S. KLINE, M.D. VERONICA M. PENNINGTON, M.D. RURTRUM C. SCHIELE, M.D. S P I. C T I V E I) I A C N O S I S Paranoia The great-grandson of John Booth (a silversmith whose family had been driven out of Portugal), grand- son of swarthy Richard Booth (lawyer, insane drunk- ard) and bastard son of Junius Booth (actor, sot, and madman), John Wilkes Booth showed signs of his psychotic inheritance at an early age. His brother Edwin verified this in a letter to a friend: "I can give you very little information regarding my brother John. 1 seldom saw him since his early childhood in Balti- more. He was a rattle-pated fellow, filled with quixotic notions. While at the farm in Maryland he would charge on horseback through the woods, "shouting" heroic speeches with a lance in his hand, a relic of the Mexican war, given to father by some soldier who had served under Taylor. We regarded him as a good- hearted, harmless though wild-brained boy, and used to laugh at his patriotic froth whenever secession was discussed. That he was insane on that one point, no one who knew him can well doubt. When I told him that I had voted for Lincoln's reelection he expressed deep regret, and declared his belief that Lincoln would be king of America; and this I believe, drove him beyond the limits of reason. All his theatrical friends speak of him as a poor, crazy boy and as such his family think of him." The visionary experience of his mother when he was six months old suggests ideas of grandeur on her part. She interpreted the fireplace flame in the shape of an arm forming the word "country" and fiery letters spell- ing out "John Wilkes Booth," as suggesting glory for him. At least three of his seven illegitimate brothers and sisters had shown mental aberrations. He was a cruel child and tortured forest animals, yet he was fanati- cally sympathetic, weeping at the sight of a dead sparrow. This early indicated his schizoid personality. His frequent statement "I must have fame! fame!" predicted the enormity of his frustration when his plot to kidnap President Lincoln and thereby make himself famous failed. His paranoid craving for recognition and the delusional ideas of his own abilities and merits drove him on. The low grade of the associates in his plotting showed his mental deterioration. His self-pluming pride after murdering President Lincoln, "Do you know who I am? Yes! I am John Wilkes Booth, the slayer of Abraham Lincoln," attested to his grandi- osity. With maniacal hatred he felt that the victory of the North was Lincoln's personal victory and the con- dition of the South the result of his persecution. That Southerners considered his action a crime rather than a gloriously courageous act of patriotism surprised Booth. The intricately complex and slowly developing para- noid system, logically elaborated after a false inter- pretation of an actual occurrence and accompanied by delusions of his own superior qualities and unique ability, isolated him from a normal stream of con- sciousness—without hallucinations and with relative intactness and preservation of the remainder of his per- sonality, marks John Wilkes Booth as a case of true paranoia. Contributed by Veronica M. Pennington, M.I). Visiting Psychiatrist Mississippi State Hospital Whitfield, Mississippi CAGLIOSTRO COUNT ALESSANDRO 1)1 CAGLIOSTRO R I T R () S l» E C T I V I. 1) I A <; N O S I S Psychopathic personality, now officially classified as sociopathic personality disturbance Psychiatric diagnostic nomenclature cannot convey in its cold and pale terms the flamboyance and color that were characteristic of this classical sociopath. Prince of all confidence men, he flourished in the Age of Reason; during a period of great scientific advance, he sold with great success universal panaceas, love philters, and formulae for the transmutation of base metals to gold. His willing victims were not the poor and ignorant but the great and the highly placed. He was born Giuseppe Balsamo in Palermo in 1743. His little-known early life included a period in the Monastery of the Benfratelli, during which time he learned the rudiments of chemistry and the apothe- cary's skill. He was expelled from the Monastery and for a time travelled extensively in the East— Greece, Arabia, Persia, Rhodes— where he no doubt learned the mystical and magical trappings that were later so important a part of his career. He was, at various times, an itinerant painter, a panderer, a forger and an ap- prentice to a goldsmith. He married Lorenza Feliciani, and the two travelled about Europe in a grand carriage all black and gold, she as Seraphina and he as the Count Alessandro di Cagliostro, Grandmaster Supreme of the Egyptian Free-Masonry of High Science, and Grand Cophta of Europe and Asia. In this role he set up Lodges of the Egyptian Free-Masonry in most of the important cen- ters of Europe, enrolling large numbers of paying members. He was several times arrested and faced with such charges as fraud, forgery and sorcery. He was never convicted, usually bringing the influence of his powerful friends to bear on the courts. In 1785 he was implicated in the affair of the Diamond Necklace— one of the last extravagant scandals of the prerevolutionary French Court. He was freed but did not again achieve his former spellbinding influence. Finally arrested in Rome in 1789, he was tried as a heretic and con- demned to death. This sentence was commuted to life incarceration, and six years later he died in prison. We know little of the forces which, in his early life, contributed to his personality disturbance. The hostil- ity which we feel towards scoundrels who "get away" with so much nefarious behavior blinds us to the fact that such persons, in spite of all their successful esca- pades, do not find the happiness and contentment which reward the common man. With his charm, wit and ingenuity, he could have become a successful, well-accepted, solid and happy person. It is doubtful that his colorful career gave him much real satisfaction. Contributed by Burtrum C. Schiele, M.l>. Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry University of Minnesota Medical School Minneapolis, Minnesota CESAR R BORGIA II I T R S P 1 C T 1 V 1 DIAGNOSIS (Possibly) Personality pattern disturbance, paranoid personality It is difficult to assess diagnostically the personality of an individual whose cultural milieu was so different from the present Western European culture that has produced the discipline of psychiatry from which diag- noses emanate. Machiavelli is said to have used Cesare Borgia for his model of "The Prince" and credited him with qualities of completely unscrupulous opportunism arising always from cold reason and never from pas- sion. Cesare Borgia, under the protection and with the support of his father, Pope Alexander VI, relentlessly pursued the goal of total conquest and union of a large part of what is now Italy and France. In that era mur- der and assassination were considered a proper means of pursuing political goals, and in such pursuit Cesare Borgia, a paragon of propriety, was able to bring to bear force, influence and intrigue to accomplish his ends. It is in the grandiose pattern of these activities that there is evidence of pathologic functioning recogniz- able as such in any age. The implacable stubbornness of the paranoid personality is evident; suspiciousness and jealousy, particularly in relation to an older brother, the Duke of Gandia, whom Cesare Borgia was suspected of murdering, and his heartless treachery in dealing with opposition and potential enemies bear further witness to the rigid hostility of his personality pattern. The deviant psychosexual make-up often asso- ciated with development of paranoid trends is clearly indicated by Cesare's dealing with his sister Lucrezia, particularly by the murder of her husband, a deed otherwise much confused in motive by historians. It was probably because of Cesare's authoritarian and twisted accounts of Lucrezia that she has been so fre- quently maligned by uncritical historians. The highly organized drive and determination of an individual such as this may give the impression of a higher level of intelligence than actually exists. It is this defect of paranoid functioning which often leads to its recognition or to the downfall of the structure it succeeds in creating. It would be reasonable to attrib- ute to this deficiency in Cesare's personality the rapid collapse of his conquests following the death of his father, to whose influence much of Cesare's success must now be credited. As is the case with many per- sonality distortions, Cesare Borgia's brief (31 years) but meteoric career must be considered largely a prod- uct of his own origin and development and of the age in which he lived. Contributed by Douglas Goldman, M.D. Clinical Director Longview State Hospital Cincinnati, Ohio RASPUTIN RETROSP E C T I V E DIAGNOSIS Psychopath An exuberance of energy has characterized almost all the "great" of history— the bad as well as the good. Here we have Rasputin, a man whose vigor carried him from an obscure Siberian village to disputed but effective control over the church, the military and the civil affairs of the largest country in the world. Night- long revels and debaucheries did not disrupt his intense and complex days. Prince Yusupov finally lured him to his palace with the promise of a new conquest and another orgy. Two glasses of wine primed with potas- sium cyanide had no effect and some cakes under- frosted with more cyanide only made him groggy. Then, shot in the chest, he pursued his assailants, bursting through a locked door. Two more bullets and a heavy instrument to the head supposedly finished him. When his body, with hands and feet bound, was dredged from the icy river it was found he had at last died— of drowning. Rasputin's uncontrolled lust for life found a most satisfactory outlet (for him) in the Khlysty sect. The doctrine that repentance first required abasement pro- vided a raison d'etre for the wildest varieties of drunk- enness and copulation — all carried out with religious fervor and blessing. His transcendent faith in his own power and the absolute Tightness of all he did com- bined with a native shrewdness allowed him to view himself as beyond the restraints of petty social conven- tions which frowned upon systematic murder, seduc- tion and perfidy. In an age of vacillation and overrefinement of the ruling classes there was great appeal in an unkempt, unwashed peasant "mystic" who brooked no question as to his divine inspiration and political certainty. His hypnotic influence over the hemophiliac Tsarevich Alexis led eventually to his control of the Tsar himself. He effectively disorganized Russia's military potential in the first World War, prevented the country from becoming a constitutional monarchy and behaved otherwise in full keeping with his diagnosis— one of the world's most successful psychopaths. Contributed by Sathan S. Kline, M.I). Director of Research Rockland State Hospital Orangeburg, New York ^e^/rtn+tt-O CATHERINE THE GREAT OF RUSSIA R I. T R S l» I C T I V I. I) I A <; \ () S I S Compulsive Personality Sophia Augusta Frederica, Catherine the Great, entered this world in a milieu of disappointment be- cause she was a girl. Handed over to a wet nurse, and later from one governess to another because her mother gave her no attention, rarely speaking to her except to reprimand and find fault with her, she intuitively knew the sentiment she later wrote of: "I was merely endured and was often harshly and violently scolded, and not always with justice. I felt this without, however, being quite clear in my knowledge." Her childhood was unhappy. She had a perpetually unsatiated hunger for love which tormented her the rest of her life and made her thirteen lovers indispen- sable to her. She nursed a gigantic and secret resent- ment against her mother and the world. She wanted to be a man, an achievement she accomplished by trans- vestism as she rode to Peterhof— in the borrowed uni- form of a lieutenant in the Life Guards — at the head of her newly acquired troops to secure and safeguard her ascent to the throne. Betrothal and marriage to a weakling of poor mental and physical stature intensified Catherine's ambition to prove herself desirable and drove her on in hope of recognition and glory. Her worldly ambition made her change her religion and this plunged her into a conflict with her conscience which lost the battle, but the scars of this struggle remained with her throughout life. Her compulsion to achieve fame made her follow the tempt- ings of ambition without regard for her personal com- fort and welfare or for the rights and desires of others who stood in her path. She arose at 5:30 A.M. and worked as long as eighteen hours a day. She loved company but her com- pulsion made her remain closeted alone in her room with her books for weeks to prove her worth to the Russian people and the Empress Elizabeth. Her compulsion, when frustrated, drove her to many illnesses and hypochondrias from which she sought relief via frequent blood lettings and long periods in bed. Her desire to be a man was realized in the vigor of her love of horseback riding and hunting in men's clothing, for which she arose at 3:30 in the morning and often rode as long as thirteen hours. But her thoughts were constantly occupied with the Crown and the succession, her compulsion to attain fame and prove her value to the mother who had rejected her and to the world. Her inordinate capacity for work is proved by her achievements for Russia, her voluminous writings, many of them fragmentary and on scraps of paper. The inscription she prepared for her gravestone was "Work came easy to her." Her many lovers never interfered with her compul- sion but served it. Because of eighteen years' abuse from her impotent consort her indifference to or con- donation of his untimely death can be understood in the light of her compulsion. Catherine's chronic, excessive and obsessive con- cern with adherence to standards of conformity char- acterized her inordinate capacity for work, and her rigidity and lack of normal capacity for relaxation. This together with chronic tensions that led to frequent and long periods of illness were reactions that appeared as persistence of an adolescent pattern of behavior and confirm the diagnosis of compulsive personality. Contributed by Veronica M. Pennington, M.D. Visiting Psychiatrist Mississippi State Hospital Whitfield, Mississippi