Mental Health

Were geniuses like Andy Warhol & Albert Einstein mentally ill?

(National Geographic)

There’s a fine line, it is said, between genius and insanity. But do the two always go hand in hand?

In her new book, “Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder,” Claudia Kalb examines 12 historic figures through the lens of today’s knowledge of mental illnesses. While Warhol was considered eccentric in his time, for instance, a psychiatrist now might say his compulsive collecting of junk pointed to an underlying neurosis.

While Kalb concludes that “in many ways, historical figures are no saner or zanier than the rest of us,” she writes that these sorts of inquiries raise questions about how we do — or don’t — treat problems. Would George Gershwin, who doctors today might say had ADHD, have written “Rhapsody in Blue” on Ritalin? Would alleviation of depression have made Abraham Lincoln a different president? Consider these four luminaries.

Howard Hughes

Obesssive-compulsive disorder

Howard Hughes in 1947 — his erratic behavior is now considered to have been a symptom of OCD.Getty Images

Howard Hughes was a shy, awkward child, “exceedingly close” to his mother, Allene, who “worried about her son incessantly, rarely letting him out of her sight and creating what some remember as a wall of loneliness and alienation.” She also had “an intense fear of germs and disease.”

While her paranoia may have played on him, losing both his parents before he turned 20 — they died two years apart — affected him “profoundly.”

Leonardo DiCaprio worked with an OCD specialist to prepare for his 2004 role as Hughes in “The Aviator.”MiraMax Films

The erratic behavior we’ve long heard Hughes engaged in was, Kalb writes, a symptom of OCD, “a debilitating condition that affects more than 2 million American adults.”

Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, an OCD specialist at UCLA who coached Leonardo DiCaprio on the disease when he played Hughes in “The Aviator,” is quoted saying that Hughes was “a walking encyclopedia of severe OCD symptoms.”

He repeated instructions to his employees, a “core feature” of OCD because, in some cases, it’s a “struggle with perfectionism: an action or word has to be repeated over and over again until it feels just right.” (As an example, Kalb cites a memo where Hughes wrote, “a good letter should be immediately understandable” three times in a row.)

“Hughes’ obsessions revolved around precision and routine,” writes Kalb.

“His menu consisted of just a few items served repeatedly: whole milk, Hershey’s bars with almonds, pecan nuts and Poland bottled water. Everything had to be delivered in a brown paper bag rolled back at the outer edges and held at a 45-degree angle from his aide’s body. Hughes then used Kleenex to reach into the bag and pull out the goods.”

He wrote a treatise for his employees on how they were never to go into his room, touch his things or open any of his doors, “even for one-thousandth of an inch, for one-thousandth of a second,” as “I don’t want the possibility of dust or insects or anything of that nature entering.”

Hughes wrote a three-page guide to his aides on how to open cans.Getty Images

Hughes was so fearful that he wrote detailed instructions for his staff for even the simplest tasks: his guide on how to open a can of fruit was three pages long.

While he went untreated throughout his life, drugs and behavioral therapies that could have helped him have since evolved, and Schwartz notes that his strong engineer’s mind would have made him “an ideal therapeutic candidate.”

But Hughes had another factor working against him — his immense wealth. Most people with OCD have to develop routines that keep their OCD in check so they can make a living and function within everyday society. The enormously wealthy Hughes, surrounded by yes men, had no such pressure, leaving him free to indulge an illness that thrives on allowing it free rein.

“Not only did he not resist [his OCD urges], he indulged them,” said Schwartz. “That is a prescription for getting disastrous OCD.”

Andy Warhol

Hoarder

The author writes that “Warhol’s serial images flaunted the artist’s preoccupation with abundance.”Getty Images

Inside Pittsburgh’s Andy Warhol Museum, there are 610 “Time Capsules,” “a sprawling collection of memorabilia housed in 569 cardboard boxes, 40 filing cabinets and one large trunk.”

At a 2013 unveiling, it was discovered that the capsules “contained empty toothbrush boxes, silverware swiped from the Concorde, photographs, restaurant bills, Campbell’s soup cans, worn underwear — and even a mummified human foot.” One patron remarked, “I heard there was a slice of Caroline Kennedy’s 16th birthday cake in one of the boxes!”

All told, the capsules hold around 300,000 items. But is it art — or a symptom of Warhol’s mental illness?

“Just with junk. Paper and boxes. Things I bring home and leave around and never pick up.”

 - Warhol's response to how he decorated his home

Kalb notes that “Warhol had a thing for multiplicity in almost every area of his life,” from silk screens featuring “100 Marilyn Monroes, 210 Coca-Cola bottles, [or] 14 orange images of a mangled vehicle,” to the many people he surrounded himself with constantly.

“More was always better than less” for Warhol, Kalb writes. “In a most simplistic way, Warhol’s serial images flaunted the artist’s preoccupation with abundance.”

Kalb also notes how this extended to people.

“Lonely as a child, he amassed flocks of ‘associates,’ showing up at social events with many of them in tow.”

Hoarding was first categorized as a disorder in the latest edition of the DSM, the American Psychiatric Association’s official guide to mental disorders.

Kalb writes that hoarding disorder is marked by “a persistent inability to part with belongings,” and by “living spaces becom[ing] so deluged with possessions they cannot be used for their intended purpose.”

Warhol’s apartment was so unkempt a Picasso was found stashed in his closet after his death.Getty Images

Kalb writes that Warhol’s hoarding is differentiated from mere collecting because “he made no effort to display his items in any organized way — one of the hallmarks that differentiates collecting from hoarding.” When Warhol was once asked how he decorated his home, he replied, “Just with junk. Paper and boxes. Things I bring home and leave around and never pick up.”

Another aspect of hoarding disorder is “distress” about the hoarding, and Warhol certainly had that, writing in “The Andy Warhol Diaries,” “I’m so sick of the way I live, of all this junk, and always dragging more home. Just white walls and a clean floor, that’s all I want.”

Hoarders develop attachments to things because they’re unable to forge meaningful attachments to people. While Warhol famously had an entourage, he had “few deep and lasting connections.” He even documented this substitution, once writing, “When I got my first TV set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships with other people.”

When Warhol died, Sotheby’s appraisers found “a Picasso stashed in a closet,” and “gems tucked away in the bed.”

Warhol’s things were eventually put up for auction, and almost 10,000 pieces raised $25 million. Newsweek called it “the biggest garage sale ever.”

Frank Lloyd Wright

Narcissist

Wright’s mother determined he would be a famous architect before he was born.Getty Images

When you think of Frank Lloyd Wright, perhaps the Guggenheim Museum comes to mind, or the many gorgeous buildings he designed in Chicago. But if you had lived in one of Wright’s buildings, a different image might occur — that of a leaky roof.

“His buildings were notorious for their physical defects,” writes Kalb, “including inadequately heated rooms and drooping beams. Leaky roofs, an unwelcome feature of his flat-topped buildings, were practically an architectural insignia.”

The Guggenheim opened it’s doors on October 21, 1959—shortly after construction 21 artists signed a letter stating the design indicated “a callous disregard’ for adequate viewing of works of art.”Getty Images

The answer to why Wright’s iconic creations were also notoriously defective can be found in the DSM.

“Wright’s extraordinary talent was intertwined with a supreme narcissism that played out in myriad ways with his clients,” Kalb writes. “Rooted in nonconformity, the maverick architect pursued his artistic convictions with little concern for the utilitarian matters of stability, practicality and cost.”

Writing to Solomon Guggenheim about the design of his museum, Wright wanted to “do away with the stilted, pretentious grandomania of the old-fashioned ‘art exhibit.’ ” But his design was “its own brand of grandomania,” as Wright’s plans “required that the paintings be displayed at an angle to accommodate his dramatic and predominant spiral walkway.”

As the museum-to-be became more of an ode to its creator, exhibiting artists grew concerned.

He simply created his own moral code.

 - Wright's biographer, Ada Louise Huxtable

“In December 1956, shortly after construction began, 21 artists, including William Avery, Willem de Kooning, and Robert Motherwell signed a letter stating that Wright’s design indicated “a callous disregard’ for adequate viewing of works of art.”

Wright considered their protestations “worthless.”

Raised in a home of six children, Wright was by far his mother’s favorite. According to Wright’s recollections, his mother determined that he would be a famous architect before he was born, as she “hung a series of framed wood engravings of old English cathedrals on Frank’s nursery walls.”

Some have disputed this account, and Kalb writes that “rewriting one’s past is characteristic of narcissistic people.”

While noting that narcissistic behavior doesn’t necessarily indicate narcissistic personality disorder, Wright “would have made an exceptionally strong candidate” for the latter.

Wright didn’t even care about his own children, once writing that they were their mother’s children and he “hated the sound of the word papa.”Getty Images

“[His mother] clearly cherished her son,” Kalb writes, “but too much adulation can backfire. A spoiled or ‘golden’ child may develop a sense of entitlement, believing that he is better than anyone else and deserving of special treatment — one of the core characteristics of narcissistic personality disorder.”

Wright’s self-absorption was clear throughout his career, as he would take whatever he could from business associates before discarding them. One boss he considered a mentor loaned him the money to build his house, but this didn’t stop Wright from working for others behind the man’s back.

His self-regard was too great even for him to care about his own kids.

“Impatient with the constant hubbub of children,” Kalb writes, “Wright made it clear that any ‘father-feeling’ he had was for his work, not his offspring. ‘The children were their mother’s children,’ he wrote. ‘I hated the sound of the word papa.’ ”

Both the magnificence of Wright’s creations and their sometimes gross deficiencies were likely the result of his disorder. So, too, was the wreckage of his life.

His biographer, Ada Louise Huxtable, put it best when she said, “He simply created his own moral code.”

Albert Einstein

Autistic

Einstein once forgot his own address while heading home for the evening.Getty Images

When he worked at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study, Albert Einstein once called the study with an urgent, and embarrassing, query.

He needed the home address for one Albert Einstein.

“ ‘Please don’t tell anybody,’ he whispered, ‘but I am Dr. Einstein. I’m on my way home, and I’ve forgotten where my house is.’ ”

If Einstein’s parents had taken him for a checkup today, his late talking, intense focus, and social detachment would have raised red flags…

For all his considerable genius, Einstein had blind spots and deficiencies that seem to place him clearly on the autism spectrum.

“Had Einstein been born in the 21st century, it is almost certain that he would have been assessed for autism spectrum disorder as a very young child,” Kalb writes.

“If Einstein’s parents had taken him for a checkup today, his late talking, intense focus, and social detachment would have raised red flags, prompted an autism screening, and possibly warranted a diagnosis.”

As a boy, Einstein didn’t begin speaking until past the age of 2, almost 3 years old. Once he did, his speech was marked by the “strange habit” of “repeating sentences to himself,” a “common feature of autism.”

Einstein had blind spots and deficiencies that seem to place him clearly on the autism spectrum.Getty Images

Autistic children can also have problems controlling their anger. As a child, Einstein would throw tantrums so severe that his “face would go pale and the tip of his nose [would] turn white.”

While he clearly found success in time, his autistic traits affected his ability to launch his career in surprising ways. “Because they have difficulty detecting nonverbal cues and perceiving the feelings of others, people on the autism spectrum often speak bluntly and forcefully and may come off as tactless,” Kalb writes. Einstein “struck many as cocky and impertinent, a problem that torpedoed his academic career early on.”

But for all the problems he had due to his likely autistic qualities, they also played a role in his success. When he graduated college, he was “the only one in his division who had not landed a job offer.” This, however, became a gift. Forced to take an intellectually undemanding job with the patent office, the lack of rigor allowed him “time to come up with his special theory of relativity.”