Word: paranoia
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...There is ... a probable hysterical identification in subconscious fantasy with Frederick the Great and . . . Napoleon, which makes him appear, judged by modern standards, as an atavistic monster. . . . [He also has] Messianic feelings. This is a further development of his paranoid tendency, making his followers paranoid and producing collective paranoia. ... In Freud's view all paranoiacs were homosexual, but in Herr Hitler's case this, in recent years, apparently has been repressed, and today all manifestation of love is self-love and love of Germany...
...Harry C. Steinmetz of San Diego State College noted that, in environments where erroneous beliefs are trumpeted, something like an epidemic of paranoia (systematic delusions of persecution and grandeur) may spread, and that then large groups may become dependent on a paranoiac for their wellbeing. He mentioned, without naming, "a leading American research physician, recently returned from Germany, who tells me that a psychiatrist is in almost constant touch with the Fuhrer . . . that his Excellency suffers from paranoid manic-depression. ... It may be today that power does not so much corrupt as that the process of acquiring it maddens...
...dream world which Dali has recorded is as specialized as it is vivid. Once a boy wonder at copying Vermeer and Leonardo, he discovered by self-analysis in Paris that he had a persecution complex (paranoia). His oil technique remains that of a brilliant, baleful Vermeer; his images are obsessive, malignant, and recur in painting after painting: unearthly shores and infinite plains, cliffs glowing with sunset, exhausted human profiles on flesh-blobs like stranded sea cows, attenuated human limbs held up by forked props and peduncles, shiny French telephones, lustrous big black ants. No. 1 criticism of Dali is that...
Hooke's Cells. Robert Hooke (1635-1703) probably suffered from a mild case of paranoia. A brilliant British scientist, he had many ideas, carried few of them through to solid achievement. He invented a wheel barometer, conceived the idea of using a pendulum as a measure of gravity, helped famed Robert ("Boyle's Law") Boyle make his air pump. He clearly conceived the motion of heavenly bodies as a mechanical problem, but his conception was almost obliterated in the glory of Isaac Newton's formulation of the gravity laws. He was jealous of Newton, made violent attacks...
Medically speaking, insanity is a disease of the mind such as schizophrenia or paranoia. But in the eyes of the law, insanity may be a temporary mental derangement which renders a person not responsible for his acts. After Dr. Smith Ely Jelliffe, a Manhattan neurologist, told a jury that Thaw was thus deranged at the time of the shooting, he was acquitted, confined in an asylum. Later a jury found him sane, set him free...