Howard Hughes and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Howard Hughes standing in front of his new Boeing Army Pursuit Plane, Inglewood, California

Would that my mother had had the benefit of Dr Schwartz’s method! She suffered from OCD for most of her life. In her case it involved clasping and unclasping her hands as though in prayer, while repetitively muttering words of gibberish. Treatment by the method of the day (electro-convulsive therapy, that consists of passing currents of huge voltage through the body) did her no good at all.

Hughes’ OCD was not treated: he simply became a recluse, and died – largely of starvation - at 71 years of age, alone in a room at the Acapulco Princess Hotel in Mexico, with the windows and door sealed by masking tape.

Those of you who have seen The Aviator will recall the last words of the film, obsessively spoken by Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes: ‘The way of the future, the way of the future, the way of the future, … ‘. I believe that the film reminds us of three facts. One I have already referred to: OCD should no longer be considered a stigma but a treatable disorder.

The second is that Hughes’s ambitions did not exclude the making of money. If Hughes’ legacy is not in his films or his aeroplanes (or in beautiful descendants), it is in the ultimate success of his financial transactions. Before he died, he left his entire wealth to fund what has become one of the largest private medical foundations in the world: the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. Hughes’ philanthropy puts him firmly alongside such men as Andrew Carnegie, Sir Henry Wellcome, and John D Rockefeller. Of what other movie mogul can you say the same?

The third point concerns my meeting with Jeffrey Schwartz in Pasadena, California, as a result of us both being interviewed for a journal entitled Vision – Journal for a New World. This is the house magazine of an organisation called Vision. Its aim is to bring the hope that was inherent in the early Christian Church back to the world – without liturgical dogma, and to Jews and Christians, Muslims and non-believers alike.

Now what is wrong with that?

Charles A Pasternak is a biochemist, author of Quest: The Essence of Humanity (John Wiley, 2003; now out in paper-back) and founding director of the Oxford International Biomedical Centre (see www.oibc.org.uk). For more information about Vision see www.vision.org .