Method to the madness

To be a leader or an innovator it helps to have some sort of operative dysfunction. Furthermore it is very difficult to separate and identify certain impulses as wholly negative or as wholly positive. Often times what looks like irrationality or mental impairment is the source of an even greater rationality or flashes of brilliance.

Jung’s clear and persuasive Fordham lectures were begun only a week after ‘Transformations and Symbols’ was finished. The second part of Jung’s manuscript for that book had become totally unreadable. It was essentially a self-indulgent series of associations and there were passages upwards of twenty pages. It was out of this psychological mess of reveries and half baked notions from which fully formed concepts sprang forth. Out of Jung's confused unconscious thoughts came the more sophisticated and elegant constructs of the lecture series. Jung wrote Freud effectively discussing this paradox of rationality from irrationality:-

Please don’t worry about my wanderings in these infinitudes. I shall return laden with laden with the rich booty for our knowledge of the human psyche. For a while longer I must intoxicate myself on magic perfumes in order to fathom the secrets that lie hidden in the abysses of the unconscious.

Napoleon

Napoleon offers us another example of the potential value of irrationality. One of Frank McLynn’s underlying theses in his biography of Napoleon would appear to be just that. Before the invasion of Russia an imaginary Red Man appeared to Napoleon and warned him against invading Russia. Now the Red Man is a delusory element of Napoleon’s psyche and on one reading a wholly irrational part of Napoleon’s thought process. The advice it was giving though was highly rational. Invading Russia was foolhardy and in ignoring the Red Man’s advice Napoleon made the highly irrational move of invading Russia. This is perhaps an extremely clear cut and almost over the top demonstration of how rationality can come out of irrationality.

The story of the Red Man illustrates another important point about the value of madness and irrationality. Napoleon had made a series of concordats with the Red Man at various stages of his career as if this Red Man was the decider of his fate. McLynn suggests that the Red Man also represents the huge weight of guilt bearing down upon Napoleon. The exteriorization guilt and responsibility allowed Napoleon to do things that a healthier person might not be able to do.

In a more direct sense Napoleon delved into the unconscious to achieve his insight. McLynn suggests that reason was the servant of Napoleon’s imagination. McLynn says that Napoleon spoke of an ‘after-midnight presence of mind’ to convey a sort of unconscious process like that of an artist. He suggests that Napoleon would often awake in the middle of the night with an intuition like that of an Einstein or a Coleridge. It is a romantic style of leadership that attached a great deal of importance to dreams like with Jung.

When I read about these magnificent unconscious processes of these great leaders I can't help but try and relate to their material. Napoleon reminds me of myself because of the way in which he drops so many plans, rules and schemes that he at one point declares indispensable to the future of France. I similarly tout a new philosophy nearly every fortnight and raise up particular codes and ways of doing things one week and discard them the next week. When we think of Napoleon we probably think of a decisive and steadfast leader but the record shows many inconsistencies and contradictions.

So all of this irrationality and inconsistency actually makes the man and interestingly, according to McLynn, what actually undermined him was his humanity. The point is explicitly made a number of times that unlike Hitler and Stalin Napoleon was too indulgent especially in relation to his family. In fact Napoleon said something to the effect that had he betrayed his brother Joseph by removing him from the Spanish command they could have won in that theatre.

Delusions and confidence

It seems that the mania and delusions of these leaders can give them the confidence they require to do their job. When Napoleon’s concordat was beginning to unravel Cardinal Fesch was sent to negotiate. At that meeting Napoleon became frustrated and brought the Cardinal out to the night sky and asked him if he say anything. The Cardinal responded that he did not to which Napoleon responded: -

In that case, learn when to shut up. I myself see my star; it is that which guides me. Don’t pit your feeble and incomplete faculties against my superior organism.

This seems to indicate that his irrational and magical style thinking feeds directly into confidence. Emperor Hadrian was another leader who was possessed of confidence which seems to border on mania. He regarded himself as the greatest polymath of all time. He thought he was an expert astrologer. He claimed to be the first in terms of knowledge of military science, etymology and architecture. He composed his own poetry and viewed himself as a literary expert despite favouring inferior works over Homer and Virgil.

Returning to the Napoleon book for a moment though perhaps some of the most interesting and cryptic remarks in the Napoleon book relate to the 18 Brumaire coup where Napoleon really begins to take power. McLynn suggests of this event that:-

What seem on the surface blundering and inept interventions in the Ancients and the Council of Five Hundred actually answered deep drives in Napoleon’s psyche. There was unconscious method in his conscious madness.

This is a extremely useful piece in terms of making the point that I am trying to make. Unfortunately it does not elaborate enough as the nature of the method in the madness other than to say that it answered deep drives in Napoleon’s psyche. It leaves me to imagine that Frank McLynn might also feel that these ‘inept interventions’ actually had some specific utility within the context of the coup. I would argue that the irrationality served some rational goal even within the confines of the coup. I would like to read more around Napoleon's actions during this particular coup to see if my suspicions are proven correct about the usefulness of this irrationality within the specific context of the coup. At the very least though what appeared to be irrational and botched interventions allowed for Napoleon to achieve a greater integration.