This excellent book covers the mental illnesses and/or personality disorders of 12 very famous people: Marilyn Monroe (borderline personality disorder), Howard Hughes (obsessive-compulsive disorder), Andy Warhol (hoarding), Princess Diana (bulimia), Abraham Lincoln (depression), Christine Jorgenson (transgender), Frank Lloyd Wright (narcissism), Betty Ford (alcoholism/drug addiction), Charles Darwin (anxiety), George Gershwin (hyperactivity), Fyodor Dostoevsky (gambling addiction), and Albert Einstein (Asperger's syndrome). I love personality theory and found this book to be extremely engrossing and accessible with many sources and notes listed for each person, some of which I can't wait to read for a deeper understanding. The author is not making diagnoses on her own (she's a journalist and editor) but used these many sources to paint a fascinating and usually compassionate portrait of these well known people. I found all except the final two figures and their diagnoses to be engrossing, probably because I don't find gambling addiction and Asperger's syndrome to be all that interesting. However, the fact that all of these people made great contributions to society while trying to deal with sometimes debilitating problems makes their accomplishments all the more remarkable. (Except for Frank Lloyd Wright - he was just a huge jerk to everyone around him and probably could have achieved even more if not for his extreme narcissism.) 320 pages.
Monday, February 29, 2016
"Andy Warhol Was a Hoarder: Inside the Minds of History's Great Personalities" by Claudia Kalb
This excellent book covers the mental illnesses and/or personality disorders of 12 very famous people: Marilyn Monroe (borderline personality disorder), Howard Hughes (obsessive-compulsive disorder), Andy Warhol (hoarding), Princess Diana (bulimia), Abraham Lincoln (depression), Christine Jorgenson (transgender), Frank Lloyd Wright (narcissism), Betty Ford (alcoholism/drug addiction), Charles Darwin (anxiety), George Gershwin (hyperactivity), Fyodor Dostoevsky (gambling addiction), and Albert Einstein (Asperger's syndrome). I love personality theory and found this book to be extremely engrossing and accessible with many sources and notes listed for each person, some of which I can't wait to read for a deeper understanding. The author is not making diagnoses on her own (she's a journalist and editor) but used these many sources to paint a fascinating and usually compassionate portrait of these well known people. I found all except the final two figures and their diagnoses to be engrossing, probably because I don't find gambling addiction and Asperger's syndrome to be all that interesting. However, the fact that all of these people made great contributions to society while trying to deal with sometimes debilitating problems makes their accomplishments all the more remarkable. (Except for Frank Lloyd Wright - he was just a huge jerk to everyone around him and probably could have achieved even more if not for his extreme narcissism.) 320 pages.
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