The Hypomanic Edge: The Link Between (A Little) Craziness and (A Lot of) Success in America

by John D. Gartner

Depression, he felt, forced one to face the deepest existential truths of sin, suffering, evil, and death, which the more superficial “healthy minded” are able to deny. Depression can transform people into seekers of ultimate truth.

When this fanatical species of men applied themselves to commerce with their missionary intensity, new levels of industry and efficiency were achieved and, as a result, these men accumulated capital.

America will never suffer a shortage of people with plans to change the world.

Ideas pour out of hypomanics, a mix of the ridiculous and the brilliant.

He sets goals that seem grandiose, yet he appears supremely confident of success.

On the other hand, minor obstacles or delays can easily irritate him, and his temper can be unpredictably explosive.

He can be suspicious and hostile towards people he feels are thwarting his plans.

As soon as an idea occurs to him, he urgently wants to act on it, without first thinking through...

Hamilton was bipolar, but more important, that if he hadn’t been, he couldn’t have led the charge to launch a nation.

Hamilton’s hypomania was an essential ingredient in his accomplishments. And his accomplishments were an essential ingredient in the creation of America.

Every hypomanic child or young adult has a larger-than-life historic figure with whom he identifies, who becomes the raw material for a secret grandiose identity.

Through his writing, Hamilton became the patriot leader he had claimed to be.

As with most hypomanics, the meaning of risk simply failed to register with him emotionally.

A compulsion to take risks is another classic sign of hypomania.

Classically, most people think of mania and depression as two opposite states that alternate, but they often coexist simultaneously—a “mixed” mood state is one that combines depressive affect with manic or hypomanic impulsivity.

Bipolar military leaders take inspired risks that seem brilliant in retrospect—if they work.

In his notes he often couldn’t finish a sentence without starting a second and then a third—evidence that a flight of ideas strained his ability to think clearly.

In the parade a man dressed as a farmer drove a plow drawn by six oxen. It was Nicholas Cruger, Hamilton’s old boss from his boyhood in Saint Croix.

Hamilton proposed that the restructured debt be serviced with monthly payments. The reliability of those payments would establish America’s credit,

Today, the world trusts U.S. Treasury bonds more than any other financial instrument short of cash itself.

In more than two hundred years, the U.S. government hasn’...

in government securities by organizing a “stock market.” They met daily to trade bonds under the shade of a large buttonwood tree on Wall Street in Manhattan. They formalized their association in a document quaintly called “The Buttonwood Agreement.” One day this group would name itself the New York Stock Exchange.

Eventually it would trade in public companies as well as government securities, providing capital for canal companies, then railroads, then automobiles, forever fueling America’s expansion.

The creation of the stock market was just one result of H...

him. Only two men have been crazy enough to invade Russia, and both were full-blown manic-depressives: Hitler and Napoleon

A Brotherhood of Tyrants: Manic-Depression and Absolute Power).

Unfortunately, neither of them answered to a higher r...

The immigrant to America found “no royal family,” “no established church,” and “no aristocracy” to keep him down.52 Furthermore, Americans were not just politically free; their minds had been “freed from superstitious reverence for old customs.”53 America emanated an intangible vitality, energy, and creativity that young Carnegie attributed to its youth. “Everything around us is in motion,” he wrote his cousin in wonder. “Old England” was epitomized by “the lassitude of old age,” while “young America showed the vigor of manhood.”

“In less than a year, he had achieved complete familiarity with the most sophisticated railroad operation in America.”

Carnegie quickly saw a return on his investment in the form of a $10 dividend check.

Carnegie decided to sell everything he had and concentrate on one industry. “Put all your eggs in one basket, and then watch the basket” became one of his slogans.

Machines and systems that could increase efficiency were worth their weight in gold, but people who could design, run, and improve such systems were worth their weight in platinum.

man progressed through the “ceaseless devouring of the weak by the strong.”127 It was actually Spencer, and not Darwin, as most people assume, who coined the term “survival of the fittest.”

Carnegie’s hypomanic pace of relentless innovation dramatically dropped the price of steel, and the positive consequences were manifold. Carnegie’s affordable steel rails formed the spine of the

continent’s developing transportation infrastructure, allowing millions of people to do what Americans like to do best: move. The easy movement of goods and workers stimulated the economy and tied a gigantic landmass into one country. Carnegie’s steel built America’s cities.

His mills supplied the steel for the Brooklyn Bridge, the New York and Chicago elevated subways, the Washington Monument, and—perhaps most...

These tall buildings became integral to the rise of America’s cities, as millions of immigrants poured into urban centers and population density increased. As Jefferson had feared, America ceased being a pre...

The effect of these methods on the American economy is incalculable.

Morgan combined Carnegie’s company with his competitors to create the greatest monopoly of all time: U.S. Steel, the world’s first billion-dollar company.

Morgan was himself a bipolar type II.

In 1889, in the North American Review, Carnegie wrote an essay entitled “Wealth,” where he put forth the proposition that “he who dies rich dies disgraced.”148 He argued that it was the duty of every successful entrepreneur to give away his money before he died. The owner and editor of the journal proclaimed it the “finest essay he had ever read.” British Prime Minister William Gladstone was so impressed that he had Carnegie’s essay reprinted in England under the title “The Gospel of Wealth.”

If he could move millions of tons of steel faster than anyone had ever imagined, he could elevate millions of people faster, too. He would speed up evolution!

“Libraries were his cathedrals, a holy place to worship knowledge, hallowed buildings where the sin of ignorance was washed away and individuals could improve their station in life.

The flow of immigrants into the United States was a “golden stream” which contributed more to her national wealth than “all the gold mines in the world.” Immigrants were America’s economic secret weapon.

Being an astute politician, TR rose above his feelings and cleverly co-opted Carnegie for his own agenda.

Human nature is harder to bend than steel, and evolution doesn’t hurry easily.

By 1920, there were 3,600,000 Jews in America, 23 percent of the world’s Jewish population. It was the greatest exodus since Moses led the Jews out of Egypt.

Like many hypomanic entrepreneurs, Lewis Selznick’s problem was that “he always went too far too fast,”

Most of the movie moguls were Jewish immigrants who began their career as theater owners in their own neighborhood and later expanded into production.

Edison sued the Jewish filmmakers, who defied him by making movies illegally. Eventually they won in court the right to make movies.