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Did Howard Hughes Have Schizophrenia

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Howard Hughes Had A Grilled Cheese Sandwich Problem Didnt He

Howard Hughes | Mental Health & Personality

Howard Hughes had very persnickety tastes, and this was all about his OCD. He was a perfectionist about how things were handled and prepared, so food was a big issue. At some point, he found a grilled cheese sandwich that he really liked from a restaurant in L.A. From then on, he demanded that his staff prepare it exactly the same way. He wrote memos about all sorts of things. One of them was a grilled cheese sandwich report. The bread had to be heavily buttered, placed a certain way on the grill, then the two slices had to be put together to make the sandwich.

America’s most famous architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, shown here beside his model for New York’s Guggenheim Museum, was a raging narcissist, who abused both clients and family.

Later Years In Las Vegas

The wealthy and aging Hughes, accompanied by his entourage of personal aides, began moving from one hotel to another, always taking up residence in the top floor penthouse. In the last ten years of his life, 1966 to 1976, Hughes lived in hotels in many citiesincluding Beverly Hills, Boston, Las Vegas, Nassau, Freeport and Vancouver.

On November 24, 1966 , Hughes arrived in Las Vegas by railroad car and moved into the Desert Inn. Because he refused to leave the hotel and to avoid further conflicts with the owners, Hughes bought the Desert Inn in early 1967. The hotel’s eighth floor became the nerve center of Hughes’s empire and the ninth-floor penthouse became his personal residence. Between 1966 and 1968, he bought several other hotel-casinos, including the Castaways, New Frontier, the Landmark Hotel and Casino, and the Sands. He bought the small Silver Slipper casino for the sole purpose of moving its trademark neon silver slipper, which was visible from his bedroom, and had apparently kept him awake at night.

After Hughes left the Desert Inn, hotel employees discovered that his drapes had not been opened during the time he lived there and had rotted through.

Hughes wanted to change the image of Las Vegas to something more glamorous. He wrote in a memo to an aide, “I like to think of Las Vegas in terms of a well-dressed man in a dinner jacket and a beautifully jeweled and furred female getting out of an expensive car.” Hughes bought several local television stations .

Physical And Mental Decline

Hughes was widely considered eccentric and to have suffered with severe obsessive-compulsive disorder .

Dietrich wrote that Hughes always ate the same thing for dinner, a New York strip steak cooked medium rare, dinner salad, and peas, but only the smaller ones, pushing the larger ones aside. For breakfast, Hughes wanted his eggs cooked the way his family cook, Lily, made them. Hughes had a “phobia about germs”, and “his passion for secrecy became a mania.”:5862,182183

While directing The Outlaw, Hughes became fixated on a small flaw in one of ‘s blouses, claiming that the fabric bunched up along a seam and gave the appearance of two nipples on each breast. He wrote a detailed memorandum to the crew on how to fix the problem. Richard Fleischer, who directed His Kind of Woman with Hughes as executive producer, wrote at length in his autobiography about the difficulty of dealing with the tycoon. In his book, Just Tell Me When to Cry, Fleischer explained that Hughes was fixated on trivial details and was alternately indecisive and obstinate. He also revealed that Hughes’s unpredictable mood swings made him wonder if the film would ever be completed.

Hughes began purchasing restaurant chains and four-star hotels that had been founded within the state of Texas. This included, if for only a short period, many unknown franchises currently out of business. He placed ownership of the restaurants with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and all licenses were resold shortly after.

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Since It Was First Published In 1952 The Diagnostic And Statistical Manual Of Mental Disorders Has Increased Its List Of Mental Disorders From 80 To 157 Are We Crazier Than People Used To Be

No, I dont think so. The number of conditions has increased greatly as the experts have started to sort out the differences between conditions and fine tune treatment. For example, hoarding was originally conceived to be a sub-category of OCD . But after researchers discovered that some of the characteristics of hoarding are dissimilar to OCD, it has now been isolated out as its own disorder.

Gambling disorder is another interesting example. It is the first behavioral addiction to appear in the DSM, which up to now has focused exclusively on substance use. But having looked at brain scans of patients who have gambling addictions, theyve been able to match similarities in the reward pathway of the brain to other substance abuse disorders.

How can you perform as president, get up every day and do your job, and yet be clinically depressed? ByClaudia Kalb

Charles Darwin Solved The Mystery Of Evolution And Produced An Extraordinary Volume Of Workbut He Was A Very Sick Man Wasnt He

Mental Illness From Growing Up In Dysfunctional Family

Darwin was really sick, and I did not know the extent of that during the 20 year period he was writing On the Origin of Species. He complained of all sorts of symptoms and kept a very meticulous health journal. He had chills and trembling, headaches and stomachaches. He was very honest and forthright about what he was feeling. He talked about feeling extreme levels of anxiety. Yet he still managed to accomplish this great work.

One of the big debates is whether he picked up a tropical bug during his journey on The Beagle, which might have triggered his terrible stomachaches and gastrointestinal stress. In the course of looking at these symptoms, experts have diagnosed everything from anxiety to agoraphobia, appendicitis, hepatitis, irritable bowel syndrome, lactose intolerance, malaria, OCD, and peptic ulcer.

My sense is that underlying all this was a state of anxiety. He had hypochondria about himself and his childrens health. He worried about his wife when she was pregnant. There is a lot of evidencein his own wordsthat there was this underlying strain and anxiety running through his system.

Charles Darwin, whose notebook is shown above, suffered chronic health problems and anxiety attacks throughout the period in which he wrote his classic, On the Origin of Species.

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You Cant Say No To Me

When it came to the ladies, Howard Hughes got aroundbut not everyone wanted him. ActressJean Simmons learned the hard way that he didnt take rejection well. Simmons denied Hughess advances. As a result, the tycoon sabotaged her career. As she was under contract to Hughes, he made sure to make her life hell during filming by ordering directors to treat her as rough as possible and preventing her from taking other offers.

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Who Was Howard Hughes

Howard Hughes was an aviator and film director who inherited his family’s successful oil tool business and began investing in films. He produced several films, including the hit Hell’s Angels.

He is largely known for being one of the wealthiest men and one of the most famous recluses, but Hughes had many professional accomplishments before withdrawing from public life.

Howard Hughes Medical Institute

Did Howard Hughes Use Body Doubles? Did He Know Who Killed JFK?

In 1953, Hughes launched the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in Miami, Florida, ,_Maryland” rel=”nofollow”> Chevy Chase, Maryland) with the expressed goal of basic biomedical research, including trying to understand, in Hughes’s words, the “genesis of life itself”, due to his lifelong interest in science and technology. Hughes’s first will, which he signed in 1925 at the age of 19, stipulated that a portion of his estate should be used to create a medical institute bearing his name. When a major battle with the IRS loomed ahead, Hughes gave all his stock in the Hughes Aircraft Company to the institute, thereby turning the aerospace and defense contractor into a for-profit entity of a fully tax-exempt charity. Hughes’s internist, Verne Mason, who treated Hughes after his 1946 aircraft crash, was chairman of the institute’s medical advisory committee. The Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s new board of trustees sold Hughes Aircraft in 1985 to General Motors for $5.2 billion, allowing the institute to grow dramatically.

In 1954, Hughes transferred Hughes Aircraft to the foundation, which paid Hughes Tool Co. $18,000,000 for the assets. The foundation leased the land from Hughes Tool Co., which then subleased it to Hughes Aircraft Corp. The difference in rent, $2,000,000 per year, became the foundation’s working capital.:268

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The Takeaway Seems To Be That Historys Movers And Shakers Are Just As Neurotic As The Rest Of Us Or Am I Being Harsh On Myself

Thats true. And I hope readers can find connections with these famous people whom we all know at a superficial level. By going behind the scenes and exploring what made and motivated them, or held them back, bothered them, or made them succeed, we can see that those challenges are things we all deal with.

For instance, with Marilyn Monroe, I did not realize the extent to which she suffered. I knew her as the Hollywood actress with that beautiful, glamorous look. But I did not know the internal chaos that she struggled with throughout her life, or the extent to which she sought help and craved answers and wished she could make her life better. She had such a difficult early childhood. She was given up early to a foster family and lived in an orphanage for some time. That explains her lifelong quest for security, love, and family. The other fascinating question her case raises is whether todays psychotherapies, rather than medications, could have helped and maybe saved her.

The artist Andy Warhol, who likely had compulsive hoarding disorder, filled “time capsules” with decaying pizza, cheap watches, and wigs.

Howard Hughes And The Economics Of Mental Illness

I finally saw The Aviator, and its hard not to scream Scorsese was robbed! Larry White has already done a great job of analyzing the bread-and-butter economics of the story. Whats fascinating to me, however, is the exploration of Hughes eccentricity/mental illness.

I am a big fan of psychiatrist Thomas Szasz . Szasz is notorious for his view that mental illness is a myth which of course does not mean that self-destructive and anti-social behavior does not exist, but that diagnoses of mental illness are covert ethical judgments rather than scientific diagnoses.

In one of my favorite papers, The Economics of Szasz, I argue that microeconomics and Szasz have a natural affinity. As he puts it in Insanity:

Do we want two types of accounts about human behavior one to explain the conduct of sane or mentally healthy persons, and another to explain the conduct of insane or mentally ill persons? I maintain that we do not need, and should not try, to account for normal behavior one way , and for abnormal behavior another way . Specifically, I suggest that the principle, Actions speak louder than words, can be used to explain the conduct of mentally ill persons just as well as it can the behavior of mentally healthy persons.

In The Economics of Szasz, I argue that a key test of my position is responsiveness to incentives:

Call him OCD if you must. The Howard Hughes of The Aviator recognized and responded to incentives just like homo economicus is supposed to.

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Celebrities With Mental Health Disorders

With 26 percent of Americans 18 years or older living with a diagnosable mental disorder, it’s no wonder mental health is an increasing priority for the average person. But what about the celebrities or famous people we’ve come to follow so closely? They aren’t exempt from mental health issues, either. Some are more private about their mental health, while others strive to raise awareness in hopes of debunking misconceptions about disorders. This slide show includes some of Hollywood and history’s most well-known names.

Catherine Zeta Jones may be the new face of bipolar II disorder, but it’s no role she hoped to land. Despite now speaking publicly to help remove some of the stigma that comes with the condition, who’s to say Jones would’ve done so it if reports of her treatment hadn’t gotten out? “She went to go get some help and some other patient probably in there said, ‘Hey, you won’t believe who’s in here now,'” husband Michael Douglas said during an interview on “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” What’s the difference between bipolar I and II? According to WebMD, they possess many of the same characteristics — the highs and lows — but with bipolar II, the person never reaches full-on mania.

Next, was it manic depression that made Mad Max so sad?

Contents

Next up – this pretty face fought serious depression after the birth of her daughter. Who is it? Keep reading.

Test Your Brain: How Healthy Is Your Mind?

No Such Thing As Bad Publicity

TOP 15 QUOTES BY ELYN SAKS

As they say, any publicity is good publicity, and so Hughes created a public outcry against his own film. The controversy over the content of the film spread through the press, and the more people read about it, the more they wanted to see it, creating an undeniable demand. Though it would take three years, in the end, he got what he wanted, and the film was finally released and became a smash hit.

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Howard Hughes At One Time Was One Of The Richest Men In The World

As a maverick film tycoon, Hughes was prominent in Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1940s. Hughes also formed Hughes Aircraft Company, set multiple world air-speed records, was a test pilot, and built the Hughes H-1 Racer and H-4 Hercules or Spruce Goose Aircraft. He bought Trans World Airlines that merged with American Airlines. Hughes is one of the 51 heroes of aviation.

Howard Hughes was also known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle in his last 20 years. He suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder and chronic pain. He spent most of his life trying to avoid germs. The last years of his life, he lay naked in bed in dark hotel rooms or sat in a totally white chair. He considered these areas to be germ-free zones. He wore tissue boxes on his feet to protect them and burned his clothing if someone around him was ill. He demanded that his staff not speak to him or look directly at him. Due to his intense pain and OCD issues, Hughes became dependent on codeine and Valium.

Although Hughes was very compulsive about washing his hands, he neglected his own hygiene later in life. He rarely bathed or brushed his teeth. Yet, his staff was still asked to layer their hands with paper towels before they served his food. He didnt believe germs could come from him, just from the outside, Raymond Fowler, the doctor who conducted Hughes psychological autopsy. He was convinced he was going to be contaminated from the outside.

The Boy In The Bubble

Howard Hughes was born in 1905 in Texas to parents Howard Hughes Sr. and Allene Stone Gano. At the time of his birth, polio outbreaks were common, and Gano was terrified that her young son would somehow contract itso she went to disturbing lengths to protect him.

She kept him mostly isolated from the outside world and the young Hughes had no friends growing up.

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During This Time Time Hughes Communicated With His Aides By Scribbling On A Yellow Legal Pad Instructions Included Not Looking At Him And Not Speaking To Him Unless Spoken To First

Over those four months at the studio his personal hygiene rapidly deteriorated, even as his germ obsession intensified. When he finally emerged from the screening room in the spring of 1958, Hughes was an unkempt, ragged and pathetic mess

He immediately checked into the Beverly Hills Hotel, another place your supposed to stay temporarily, but Hughes ended up staying in for years. Here he reverted to his screening room habits, sitting naked in the dark hour after hour. Business dealings were conducted by telephone and through his handwritten instructions. His drug use escalated as he fought continuous pain, now injecting himself with morphine to supplement his mega doses of codeine and valium.

In 1966, conducting negotiations completely by telephone, Hughes sold his controlling share in TWA. This made him a billionaire and the richest man in America. But rather than sit on his fortune, Hughes, despite his pathetic physical condition, set his sights on conquering a new frontier Las Vegas.

His first move was to relocate to the penthouse suite of the Desert Inn, where he could continue his bizarre lifestyle without interruption. He then began buying up the city, starting with the hotel he was living in. His investments included a local TV station, bought so that he could call them at any time and demand that they play the movies he wanted to watch.

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