The Hypomanic Edge
The Link Between (A Little) Craziness
and (A Lot of) Success
by John Gartner, Ph.D.
Energy, drive, cockeyed optimism, entrepreneurial zeal, Yankee ingenuity, messianism, and
arrogance are traits that have long been attributed to the "American character."
But what is the source of this American temperament? Is it our economic system, vast resources,
teachings of our forefathers, and national pride?
Or is it something deeper? Are we a nation fueled by predominating genetic characteristics
predisposed to entrepreneurialism, risky innovative ventures, and a willingness to fail in the
pursuit of an ideal?
THE HYPOMANIC ENTREPRENEUR
Entrepreneurs and the markets they energize have been commonly described in the media as
"manic . . . boastful, hyperenergized, and zany, but not crazy." And the journalists were right.
Their subjects were not manic. They were hypomanic. Hypomania is a mild non-pathological
form of mania, often found in the relatives of manic-depressives.
Hypomanics are brimming with infectious energy, irrational confidence, and really big ideas.
They think, talk, move, and make decisions quickly. Anyone who slows them down with
questions "just doesn't get it."
A HYPOMANIC NATION?
Energy, drive, cockeyed optimism, entrepreneurial and religious zeal, Yankee ingenuity,
messianism, and arrogance are traits that have long been attributed to an "American character."
But given how closely they overlap with the hypomanic profile, these traits might be better
understood as expressions of an American temperament, shaped in large part by our rich
concentration of hypomanic genes.
If a scientist wanted to design a giant petri dish with all the right nutrients to make hypomanic
genius flourish, he would be hard pressed to imagine a better natural experiment than America.
A "nation of immigrants" represents a highly skewed and unusual "self-selected" population. Do
men and women who risk everything to leap into a new world differ temperamentally from
those who stay home? It would be surprising if they didn't.
"Immigrants are unusual people," wrote James Jasper in Restless Nation. Only one out of a
hundred people emigrate, and they tend to be imbued "with special drive, ambition and talent."
A small empirical literature suggests that there are elevated rates of manic-depressive disorder
among immigrants, regardless of what country they are moving from or to. America, a nation of
immigrants, has higher rates of mania than every other country studied (with the possible
exception of New Zealand, which topped the United States in one study).
In fact, the top three countries with the most manics — America, New Zealand, and Canada —
are all nations of immigrants. Asian countries such as Taiwan and South Korea, which have
absorbed very few immigrants, have the lowest rates of manic depression.
Europe is in the middle, in both its rate of immigrant absorption and its rate of mania. As
expected, the percentage of immigrants in a population correlates with the percentage of manics
in their gene pool.
While we have no cross-cultural studies of hypomania, we can infer that we would find
increased levels of hypomania among immigrant-rich nations like America, since mania and
hypomania run together in the same families.
Hypomanics are ideally suited by temperament to become immigrants. If you are an impulsive,
optimistic, high-energy risk taker you are more likely to undertake a project that requires a lot of
energy and entails a lot of risk, and which might seem daunting if you thought about it too long
or too realistically.
I think America has drawn hypomanics like a magnet. This wide-open land with seemingly
infinite horizons has been a giant Rorschach on which they could project their oversized
fantasies of success, an irresistible attraction for restless, ambitious people who have felt
hemmed in by native lands with comparatively fewer opportunities.
Alexis de Tocqueville, a Frenchman who traveled throughout America in the 1830s, was among
the first to define the American character. He found us to be "restless in the midst of
abundance," and the proof was that we were always moving.
Tocqueville was astonished to meet people moving from east to west and west to east. That so
many people would surrender the comfort and safety of their homes in pursuit of an "ideal"
struck him as odd. And we are still the most voluntarily mobile people on Earth.
According to Jasper, the average American changes residences every five years — more often
than the inhabitants of any other nation. And we change jobs more frequently too.
Tocqueville "found an entire people racing full speed ahead, and we've kept on racing for more
than three hundred years," wrote Michael Ledeen in Tocqueville on American Character.
One outlet for this restless energy has been business. "Americans are constantly driven to
engage in commerce and industry. This is the characteristic that most distinguishes the
American people from all others," wrote Tocqueville in Democracy in America.
He sensed that the American motivation to make money was more about the excitement of
making money than it was about wealth itself. "The desire for prosperity has become an ardent
passion which they pursue for the emotions it excites as much as for the gain it procures."
And these people never stopped working. "Everybody works," wrote Tocqueville. The
aristocratic European ideal was to become wealthy enough that one did not need to labor. In
America, "work opens a way to everything; this has changed the point of honor quite around."
To Americans it was a disgrace not to work.
Americans work more hours than any other people on Earth. We've changed little in that regard
since Tocqueville's day. We tend to attribute this habit to cultural influences, without even
considering biological causes. America's workaholism is typically attributed to its Puritanical
"Protestant work ethic."
But is it reasonable to ascribe such enormous influence on the contemporary day-to-day
behavior of hundreds of millions of diverse Americans to a defunct 17th century English
Protestant sect?
The average American recalls only the barest outline of who the Puritans were, if at all. When
you talk to these strivers, they tell you that their drive comes from within and that they have
been strongly "self-motivated" since they could remember.
They hit the ground running and couldn't tell you why. I would attribute the number of hours
Americans work to what I call the "immigrant work drive," an internal biological compulsion
passed from parent to child through their hypomanic genes.
Tocqueville noticed that Americans were entrepreneurial risk takers: "Boldness of enterprise is
the foremost cause of its rapid progress, its strength, and its greatness." Though some
individuals failed, the collective efforts of entrepreneurs drove the nation forward. Americans
believed so deeply in the "virtue" of "commercial temerity" that they had all but removed the
stigma surrounding financial failure:
In Tocqueville's time, a European who went bankrupt might end up in debtor's prison, and he
was more than a little surprised that there was little shame in bankruptcy here. The stereotypic
American success story is of an entrepreneur who fails numerous times before achieving his big
success.
Our immigrant genes predispose us to optimism. "You had to be an optimist to move. Pessimists
didn't bother," wrote Yale historian George Pierson. Because this optimism comes from within,
it is not easily discouraged by external events. And optimism, like pessimism, often becomes a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
Because of America's origins, it has an abundance of people with a hypomanic temperament.
And it has made good use of them by giving them freer rein, more opportunity, and greater
respect than they have received elsewhere.
As British economic historian Edward Chancellor noted in his history of financial speculation
Devil Take the Hindmost, the result is a society of people both culturally and genetically
predisposed to economic risk:
The American is equipped with more than just a hopeful vision of the future and a drive for
self-improvement. He is prepared to take enormous risks to attain his ends. To emigrate to
America was itself a great risk. This appetite for risk — so great one might say it was imprinted
in American genes — has not diminished with time but remains a continuing source of the
nation's vitality.
The next gold rush, the next boom, the next market mania is coming. Hold on to your seat.
America has been a ship riding the waves of irrational exuberance for hundreds of years, and it's
not likely to change course any time soon. It's in our blood.
America has been good to hypomanics — a land of opportunity that has liberated their energies
and lifted their spirits. In return, hypomanic Americans have been good to America, powering a
wilderness colony ahead of every other nation on the planet in just a few hundred years.
They may be our greatest natural resource. An untold number of hypomanics helped make
America the richest and most successful nation on Earth.
These hypomanics were outrageous — arrogant, provocative, unconventional, and
unpredictable. They are not "well adjusted" by ordinary standards but instead forced the world
to adjust to them. Their stories are inspiring, comical, and sometimes tragic, as the hubris that
fueled their improbable rise often led to their fall as well.
Yet without their irrational confidence, ambitious vision, and unstoppable zeal, these outrageous
men and women would never have sailed into unknown waters, never discovered new worlds,
never changed the course of our history.
16 Characteristics of a Hypomanic Entrepreneur
These traits are viewed as faults by most but to a select few whose accomplishments have
redefined the world, they are descriptions of a core psyche that is the foundation for innovation,
creativity, and success.
He is filled with energy.
He is flooded with ideas.
He is driven, restless, and unable to keep still.
He channels his energy into the achievement of wildly grand ambitions.
He often works on little sleep.
He feels brilliant, special, chosen: perhaps even destined to change the world.
He can be euphoric.
He becomes easily irritated by minor obstacles.
He is a risk taker.
He overspends in both his business and personal life.
He acts out sexually.
He sometimes acts impulsively, with poor judgment, in ways that can have painful
consequences.
He is fast-talking.
He is witty and gregarious.
His confidence can make him charismatic and persuasive.
John D. Gartner, Ph.D., is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins
University Medical School. He is a graduate of Princeton University, and widely published in
scholarly journals and books.
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