Howard Hughes: A perfectionistic obsession to innovate

an engineer and a record setting pilot. He also gave away a good amount of his money as a philanthropist, but he also came to be known as reclusive and eccentric, which probably had to do with his psychiatric illness obsessive compulsive disorder. My guest joining me today is James B. Steele. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and best selling author, and he is the co author of the book Howard Hughes,

His Life and Madness. Howard Hughes was born in nine five, perhaps on Christmas Eve, although that seems that I documents say different things. But we'll say Christmas Eve in Humble, Texas, which is kind of ironic for a man who was

anything but humble or Houston, Texas. It sounds like I think it was Houston, because you know, one of the mysteries of his life is that his birth certificate was never found, and it was only when he in World War Two came around that his aunts had to verify as to when he was born and where the birth

took place. So it's just typical of a man who lived his whole life with mystery that we don't even have a real birth certificate for that is pretty fascinating in it of itself, a man who would ultimately come to be a mysterious figure in so many ways. An only child, two parents who really didn't have much to start with, but whose father And this is just interesting, you know, when you think about what's nature and what's nurture, that's a big question in the life of Howard Hughes,

and that his father had nothing. But his father, who was originally from Missouri, discovered, or let you say, designed, built a drill bit to drill oil, that's correct, and it revolutionized the oil industry because prior to the invention of this drill bit, conventional drills were basically destroyed when they hit extremely hard rock formations. So this particular drill devised a way to go through those formations, and in fact,

it developed a fascinating name. At the oil fields, people called it the rock Eater because that's exactly what it did, and revolutionized the oil industry and ultimately made Howard you Senior, Howard's father fabulously wealthy, and that was actually the basis of his son's fortune. What's also fascinating in terms of what do you take away from your parents and learn or what has to do with, you know, innate intelligence.

But he not only built this thing and revolutionized the industry, but he chose to a patent and be rented, not sell it, which really was instrumental in not only making his fortune but keeping his fortune in the sense that ultimately people were always dependent on renting these pieces. No one else could make these pieces, and so this became really for life in many ways, a source of Howard

Hughes Junior's money. Absolutely. And it's funny that the father intuitively understood that the way you really make money in business is to be a monopoly, and that's an effect what he was, and everybody in the oil industry was dependent on that, and he fought vigorously for years to protect that patent, to make sure nobody else ripped it off, and then Howard continued that same process, but you're absolutely right, the leasing the renting of it assured not just the

father's fortune, but particularly his sons. So fascinatingly, Howard's father was engineering, was very intelligent and innovative and business wise, intelligent, innovative, and also somewhat ruthless in his pursuit. He was also described as a loner. He didn't have very many friends himself. The father, he was the businessman, and he was away a lot. And that's just interesting because those words could be used to describe young Howard as a boy exactly.

Howard was an only child and from early on a loaner early on, very interested in mechanical things. As far as I could tell in all the research we did for our book, he really only had one friend from his childhood and who basically was kind of his only real friend. It was the son of the fellow who had developed the tool company drill Bit with Howard Sr. And in fact they weren't in close contact. They didn't correspond much. But many years later, when Howard was famous,

flown around the world, created all kinds of achievements. He was very unhappy with where he was in the world. And he called Dudley, this boyhood friend, and he said, Dudley, I've just messed up my whole life. I've messed it up terribly. And Dudley couldn't figure out what he meant, because at that point he was this famous aviator, this famous designer of airplanes, fabulously rich, Hollywood starlet's hanging off his arm. Whatever he meant by that, Dudley had no idea.

But the point of my story on this is that that, as far as I could tell, and all the research we did, was his only him. He had no siblings. His father was away a lot with this business, so often not home. His mother, on the other hand, was a very different relationship. He was very, very close to his mother, you could say really and what the term I, as a psychiatrist would use a psychoanalysts and meshed. It was hard to know where one began and the other

one ended. They were that kind of close. And it's important and interesting to note that his mother is described as being so nurturing as to being babying, being you know, sort of couldn't stop nurturing him. Was fairly intrusive with her nurturing. You will do it this way, you need to wash this way, you need to be healthy this way, and that she had a particular fear of germs herself.

She imparted that concerns about violent germs was the term she used, which is an interesting personification of germs as something though to be really feared and that were aggressive in her mind, something that she seemed to pass on to Howard. Again, it's always interesting when we think about

things like fears and phobias or obsessions. The impact of your environment certainly is there, and we know that about everything from simple phobias to O c D. But it's also true that things like simple phobias and obsessive compulsive disorder running families because there's a genetic basis for it,

and we think there's something biologic as well. But she was afraid of violent germs, and fairness to her, there was a time of the real polio outbreak where understandably a lot of people were afraid about what you could catch, and terrible things did happen. But she would tell him to clean his body, try to kind of control what he ate. He needed to eat very curative foods, and talk to him a lot about being sick and be generally overinvolved, but he describes really having this close and

nurturing relationship in a kind of positive way. Right. Absolutely. I think he was very close to her, and I think what you mentioned earlier, the fact his father was away in the oil fields selling the drill bit, building up the company that would become this great fortune. So they were together much more than he was with the entire family. It's true also that only children probably get more attention than children who are part of a multi child family. But he had been sick as a child,

and the mother was frankly obsessed by this. And some of the most revealing letters we found were when she finally got up the nerve to let him go to camp when he was a young teenager. They sent him from Houston up to northeast Pennsylvania. Houston those days there was no air conditioning, unbelievably hot in the summertime. Human also fear of malaria, other kinds of problems, which on this day and age we don't think of a place like that having that back in those days, it was

a real thing. So she sent him to this camp up in Pennsylvania, and she worried the whole time. She would send letters to the fellow who was running the camp watch out for Howard. If there's anybody who's sick near him, would you make sure that that boy gets isolated and I put Howard somewhere else. I understand there's a polio outbreak and that part of the world. Just please take care of him. And you know Howard's delicate

makes you know this, that and the other thing. So we have actual physical evidence in these letters that she wrote repeatedly to the fellow who ran the camp, saying, I'm really concerned about him. Will you be concerned about him? Will you take special care to watch my boy because he needs special care? Basically that's what she was saying. In fact, she even had one time where she was so anxious about this. She and her husband were in

New York. He was their own business. She said, I have to I have to come see him, and she apparently took the train to near the camp, and whether or not they ever got together or not was never revealed any of these records, but it was an indication of just how on the impulse wasn't her to protect him and to worry about his condition. So it's hard from Howard standpoint not to absorb some of that concern

in some of that worry. I mean, you made such a good point at the beginning about what's part of nature and what do you pick up I'm paraphrasing you in your environment. I think there's an awful lot that probably both those channels flowed into Howard. It's worth noting that the way his mother speaks and is described that she herself may have had obsessive compulsive disorder, her intense

concern about cleanliness and germs. Of course those things weren't diagnosed in those days, but that was a possibility, and that similarly his father's mother, his grandmother, is also described as having similar concerns and fears, which to have genetic loading from both sides of your family with O c D makes it not surprising at all that you would struggle with it. You're absolutely the grandmother on his father's side, I mean his father's mother. They lived in kiakak, Iowa,

and it was on the Mississippi River. His father was kind of a famous regional lawyer for the railroads at the time, and the grandmother had this terrible fear of bugs and germans, like being in the closets and Howard spent quite a bit of time as a boy with

those grandparents. Whether it was just for that visitor loan or when he was passing through town not entirely clear, but he saw first hand some evidence of that particular thing as well, and so it seems totally natural to him by the time he's like fourteen or fifteen years old, that people should be worried about these things exactly. And let's talk about him as a student. He was by all accounts, extremely mathematically minded and had a propensity for

the kinds of sciences that lead to engineering. While he seemed to have incredible aptitude, he wasn't a very good student, right, which sometimes happens with people who were quite bright. As we all know, he wasn't a particularly good student. He didn't particularly like, as far as we could tell, the organized activity that was involved in being in a school. Even how Hard was the ultimate loner, and being in that kind of environment means you're part of the community.

But he was very interested in engineering. He was very interested in mathematics even and I believe elementary school was they built some toy radio. This at a time where there were not a lot of radios around actually he built like the first transistor sort of CB type radio exactly and was in the newspaper, was like eleven years old, and it was a phenom in terms of electrical engineering sorts of feats. That was his instinct, and those were

his instincts. He was very comfortable with numbers, He was very comfortable with the kinds of engineering drawings, conceptual things of that sort. So he was more at home with them than it really was with people. And he had already as a child, it sounds like an interest in flying. That was something that appealed to him in those early days. And aviation was the hot issue, I mean, the most dramatic thing that was happening in the world when he

was a kid. I mean, the Wright brothers were only I guess a couple of years before he was born and was kiddie hawk. And so from then on there was one aviation advance after another that formed part of that whole story. So he sort of dove tailed perfectly with his mathematics and the possibility of flying. So it was a natural thing that he would later evolve into

that particular field. At that point, his father had made enough money for him to do things that maybe most boys in those days wouldn't have been able to afford

to do. He took flying lessons basically as a teen, which is pretty exciting, expensive venture, certainly in those days, but he already was sort of in pursuit of that interest of his yes, And after his mother died, his father spent quite a bit of time on the West Coast in l A, where a lot of the early aviation industry was starting to shape up because of year round moderate temperatures where you could build certain kinds of things.

So before we get to his independence, let's let's talk about for a minute about the death of his parents, which happened at an early age and created a very odd scenario for him as an only child. His mother died he was seventeen. He was away at boarding school, and she developed well what turned out to be an ectopic pregnancy, which was in those days often deadly because they didn't have a treatment for that, really, and they often didn't discover it in time. And she said to him,

I'll be fine, I'll be fine. I'm going in for something, but it's going to be fine, And of course she did not emerge. She died, and that was really devastating for both Howard and his father. Yes, and Howard at the time was in school in Santa Barbara, and his uncle Rupert Hughes, came up from Los Angeles and broke the news to him, and then the two of them took the train back to Houston. But it was a devastating blow, not just a Howard but even to the father.

After that, I think he returned to school briefly, and then of course he got the other dreadful news a little over here after that, where his father, who had appeared to be in perfect health, very robust kind of figure as home in the oil fields of Texas and Louisiana, as he was in chatting up people in the movie community in l A, which he spent some time in, suddenly just keels over at his desk in Houston one day, that of a heart attack. So here's Howard at eighteen.

Up to this time, his evidence no particular sign of independence or wanted to be his own person. He's been a very loyal son to both the mother and the father other But then something very dramatic happens. His relatives. His father had a brother by name and Rupert, who was a very famous author and screenwriter in California, and then his grandparents. I think by this time we're also

living in California. The assumption was they would all oversee the tool company, Howard's the fortune, the basis and family fortune. But Howard, right away, right away, with no indication, with no advanced warning, says I want to buy you out. I mean, here's this eighteen year old kid. There's evidence, no sign of any particular independence. Who the family is thinking, gosh, she just lost both parents. He's eighteen years old, and he wants to buy us out. And it, needless to say,

it created a tremendous rift in the family. They initially resisted this, but eventually he was so determined and so hardheaded and so stubborn about it, which was the hallmark of his character throughout his life as a boy, and I mean as young man and then as a mature man that he had. They eventually said, okay, buy us out. They were part owners somehow, or in the will they became parted in the wild, they were part owners. They were all in that together, but he was the majority

owner right exactly. And he remembered something his father had told him once which in this case. He then starts to use on the family. His father had had some difficulty with one early partner, and his father said, whatever you do, don't ever have a partner in this world. So Howard took this to heart with his own family. Let's take a quick break here, we'll be back in a moment. His father basically told him business partners are dangerous, you know, as sort of like his mother told him

germs or dangerous. And so his absorption of dangers and fears was very total. That really caught his attention. And I'm just thinking of of how he was is and these influences over the course of his life, and his being primed for danger signals and to do everything you can to batten down the hatches and avoid danger. By the way, after your two parents die, so you know, of course you think the world is a pretty dangerous place. That he would decide, you know, the most important thing

was to avoid this danger. And I think the point you just made as an excellent one. He did see these various dangerous and out of this group, I think even stronger desire to be a loner. I mean, it came naturally to being a loner. But basically I think Howard felt, you can't trust anything in this world. You can't trust the fact your parents are going to survive a small operation and they're otherwise healthy. Father is going

to live to be an old man. Don't even trust your relatives, don't trust your uncle or your grandparents, don't trust anybody. You just have to rely on yourself in this world. I think that's something that came out of that, and it's sort of dovetailed perfectly with his sense of being kind of a loaner anyway, and in so much of his life it wasn't a problem. But eventually, and I'm sure we'll get to that, it was a problem.

Fascinating and he, as you said, you know, self sufficiency became the most important thing, the most important thing to him, and he could financially be self sufficient vis a vis this company, which then allowed him to use that money to explore and develop and innovate other companies, which is in the veins of his interests, which was interesting. He

did this by at the age of nineteen. Petitioning to become legally emancipated was sort of a furthering of his I'm not going to count on anybody in this world it's me and I have to be the one, and he basically starts Hughes Tool Company. He makes that the center of things. But then he goes on to develop these other institutions, not surprisingly a medical institution, given that his parents both died of illness and he was so

afraid of illness and germs. I think that seems really overdetermined that you would choose to make a medical institution. Two things happened with the medical institution. People are always asking him as he grew through life, what are you going to do with your money? And that became also a way to tell people that's where it's going to go, and that appeared to be something that was a good thing to do. Howard Is didn't need people for much of his life, but he had this absolutely sixth cents

about what motivated the population and public opinion. He knew exactly what would ring true. And to say that you're going to leave your money to a medical institutional, that that was a good thing. That must mean Howard's a good person, and that must mean he's on the right track and he's he has bigger issues and motivations at him. Were there other indications besides this that Howard cared what people thought of him, what his public legacy would be.

I'm glad you asked that, because Howard was obsessed by his image, even though he himself was very shy in many ways, and he all throughout his life he had various public relations people churning out certain things about in blatant life. He didn't he didn't have to worry about that so much because by that time the image was built. He wanted to create the image at all times that he was possibly the richest man in the world or

one of the richest. He wanted to make sure the image that he was a great corporate leader and designer of machines and so forth. He wanted to conquer Hollywood, which he could do because of his money, not to make money. Most of his movies lost money. But he was very conscious of the image. And when he did the premier for his famous movie Hells Angels, which actually has some of the most remarkable aerial sequences for the planes of that time, the nine twenties that you'll ever see,

I mean, they truly are amazing. I mean, three people have died in the filming of that movie because of these things were so dare devilished. But anyway, you look at those and you see wow. But what was typical Howard? When that movie premiered, he shut down Hollywood, searchlights, planes flying overhead, everything in the world focusing on that kind

of thing. So Hugh was, while shy personally, in many ways, understood so well what it took to catch the public's attention, and that continued throughout life in the other movies as well. Did he talk to others about the importance of perhaps surpassing his father in success. He did not talk about that per se, but it was a conclusion we reached in our book that that was one of the great driving forces of his life. His father was a larger than life figured to him, who had really died before

Howard himself reached his maturity. So maybe by at that stage, Howard's not even noticing perhaps a few flaws in his father, if he had any. I mean, the man is really on a pedestal at that point. He's created this great company, he's engineered this amazing is unfortune. It goes west with him to Hollywood to see his uncle, and people are dazzled by Howard Senior and a handsome man, very rich Man,

so on and and so forth. So I think his whole life he wanted to do something that would equal that, but we came to the conclusion in his own mind he never did, even though he himself vastly exceeded the fame of his father in multiple areas of interest, from aviation to movies to other industries as well. That is interesting because it's not unusual, as you point out, at least through your teens to idolize a parent and see

them as a hero. And then usually as you move along in your teens and early twenties, you start to devalue them, and maybe then ultimately after your twenties or late twenties, you start to come into a more just a realistic view that includes everything. But yes, left with this purely idealized view of a hero, it would be difficult to, when you know what you know about yourself,

to feel that you could measure up. But I also think another thing comes to bear, and that is because of the many signs and symptoms of some form of

obsessive compulsive disorder. The flip side of that is that Howard, there are many things about him and his work that indicate he was extremely perfectionistic, that he was incredibly detailed oriented, and that everything he did with the development of planes, with the movies, that he would do something over and over and over again because it had to be just right.

And you could say, well, you know, this is actually a symptom of O c D, this level of perfectionism that actually can make people suffer terribly in their lives because nothing is ever exactly right. And sometimes people with O c D of this form can't get anything done because they have to keep redoing things, so nothing ever gets completed, and they're striving for it to be just right. But in the case of Howard Hughes, his perfectionism in

many ways was an incredible asset. Your description a second ago is really a one paragraph description of what kind of drove him. It was both the source of his triumphs and later on it became the source of his

really his own destruction in a way. But you're absolutely right the the O c D, the perfectionism you saw it in particular with the airplanes and actually in the making of the movies, and the reason he was able to make these movies like Hell's Angels, which cost a fortune and never made any money was because he had all this money and he could do things the average producer of a movie couldn't do, who had investors and other people to answer to. He had no partners, He

had to man to spend. You can do whatever you want if you own your own movie studio. There is no one to tell you know, you can't do that. Exactly. The one big institution he had to we owned most of them, but not all of it turned out to be a real problem for him, which was t w a. The airplane. But that perfectionism you really saw not just in health angels, but you also saw in the making of the airplanes. You know, he designed and flew some

very innovative aircraft. The original ones were a cross country Johnson and then he had his famous around the World flight in and prior to that, a lot of people thought of airplanes, it's just guys with leather caps and they get in the cockpit and they buckety buck across the Atlantic, and let's just an active, great personal heroism,

which of course it was. But in his case, the round the World flight he took with several crew members was not only in heroic jount but the plan they designed and that he helped design and perfect was an engineering and mechanical marvel for its time, the Lucky thirty eight. So that was a case where the perfectionism was extremely important. It got them out of a couple of close calls. There was one close call in Shoe where they almost

crashed into a mountain. But I think if the instruments hadn't been functioning properly, they might have been in some real trouble. They would have been in some real trouble. But anyway, later on in life, the perfectionism got out of control. And there's one it's almost a funny incident when he was having a battle that he was aircraft company which didn't actually make an airplanes and made electronics.

He was having all kinds of trouble with the Pentagon because he was a defense contractor people trying to get decisions out of it. And as you pointed out, sometimes the c D people have trouble making a decision because they're afraid they're going to make the wrong decision the way, that's that and the other thing, And pretty soon you're just you're sitting there on this fence and it's so what do you do when that happens? Well, in Howard's case,

it's almost comical. He's got this huge enterprise under government contract and generals and their force people are breathing down his neck. So what does he do. He orders the study of the all the candies that are being sold in the company's vending machines. He was kind of a funny health note as well, but again it's just something where he's able to make a decision on something that's totally unimportant that kind of saves him from making this

big decision and diverse his attention. It's sort of something he can focus on and move forward and then perhaps have the issue that was kind of crippling him, the obsessing issue, take a back burner, which actually might have allowed him to then make that decision, which would be interesting because what it would be is a personal work around or like a self treatment you know of sorts and something we might incognitive behavioral therapy use to you know,

teach a patient how to sort of unstick themselves, you know, at any time. So that's kind of fascinating. He needed something like that, I'll tell you it really did. Of course, there were not those treatments at that time, and people didn't talk about those things. The stigma was tremendous. But as you point out, hues Aircraft was really a maker

of like satellites and technology, not airplanes. But he did have this love of aviation and airplanes and he did, as you just discussed, you know, build airplanes, set world records,

and he married his interests. Which is also really interesting that he brought aviation to film in a way that both improved the brand of aviation filming himself and putting it in the films in a way that made aviation sexier if you will, and have the public be more interested in it and want to fly t w A. And at the same time he used that to make movies that he hoped obviously would be successful on groundbreaking by using the appeal of aviation absolutely and in fact

you see in the case of t Way, he was one of those who had a hand in designing t Wway is famous plane which anybody young today is not aware of. But it was this absolutely gorgeous plan called the Constellation. Even gave it this wonderful name. It had basically three tales, three fins at the rear, and it became the great luxury airliner prop plane of its time, and he was used it very much in his movie business, very starlets back and forth the movie sets and things

of that sort. And there's just unbelievable numbers of films where some famous Hollywood actress are standing on the gangway of a constellation to come out, waving to the press, waving to others, things of that sort. So it became it was a marriage of these two luxurious issues, aviation and movies. That's what was so much of Hughes's early

driving instincts. It's fascinating that while in certain areas of his life he was obviously terrified of taking risks, you know, when it came to issues that is O. C. D touched on health and and well being and perhaps social issues, taking risks. In terms of relationships, as you pointed out, he really he had two definite but you know a couple of year marriages. It seems that he was often fairly certainly emotionally absent and often physically absent from those marriages,

did not have children. Was pursued by various starlets, but it seemed more about superficial you look good with me, I'm very wealthy, I look good with you. Sorts of liaisons, but in planes, he really took risks and sadly ultimately had a terrible plane crash. But he really did take risks. That's at the heart of a lot of his image and why people are in part of him. I mean, in addition, he said a couple of ground speed records in California with a racer he designed, one of which

christ but didn't hurt him. Then he set two transcontinental flights from l A to the New York area six and the other seven I believe, where you set the record for flying across the country. This is one person doing this in a little plane that took around eight to nine ten hours. But here's one guy in a cockpit flying through the night, and his compass went out on one of the early into the flight. And here he is flying at night, looking down at the lights

of various cities, or hopes of the cities. He thinks they are on his way to Newark, New Jersey. So there's a lot of gutsiness. You're absolutely right. I mean, he took risks, and there was a lot of gutsiness in what he did. That created the image of a rich guy who wasn't just clipping his coupons. He's out there building airplanes. He's investing in this new industry called movies.

He's not just sitting still. He's advancing science, technology or understanding of the world and how we're going to get around that world in airplanes, and clearly trying to demonstrate, perhaps mostly for himself, that he has talent and ability that isn't just about inheriting money. Exactly right. That's exactly right, and I think is maybe as much as anything, what droving was not just the interest in those areas, but I honestly think trying to equal his father in part.

His father had created this great fortune, and that fortune was what made all of these other ventures possible. I mean people used to think about how are to use and how Richie was the whole heart of the fortune to the end of his days was that company invented by his father, and that financed everything else. And I think as a result of this, he was always trying to show what he himself could do. But it wasn't

just in the minds of the public of foolhardiness. I mean he headed to a science, aviation technology that the idea that mankind, humankind is moving on in advancing. It's interesting just from a psychiatric point of view that he increasingly as he aged, suffered more with his O c D symptoms and at the same time, something that's often used by people who suffer from anxiety, you know, pathologic anxiety and O c D use a defense mechanism that's

called counterphobic behavior. So instead of being afraid of something, you don't contemplate it, you just jump into it and do something extra scary, like you know, dive off the

diving board. And you could see evidence as his O c D worsened in some ways, you know, he was sort of noted to increasingly like separate his food and count his peas and you know, sort of numerical and like food shouldn't touch each other, and symptoms that we know do classically happen with certain forms of O c D that at the same time he's taking these incredibly risky brave you know, I had a plane crash, but I'm going to get it back into plane and do

still do something risky a real I think it's psychoanalytically, you might look at this as coping defense mechanism for his increasing anxiety. In other ways, that's a fascinating point, and I think he fits that description perfectly. I mean he had multiple plane crashes. I mean, if somebody had one plane crash or one nearer miss, you might and he was afraid of all the things. You might think he would pull back, and in fact he moves forward. In World War two, very serious plane crash outside of

Las Vegas that killed a couple of crew members. He himself was hurt but survived. And then there was the famous one after the war ended. I should go back a little bit on this one. During the war, he had two major contracts. Because there was a shortage of metal h he wanted to build one huge transport plane out of wood that became the famous Spruce Scoose, largest plane ever built. Another contract was of a fighter plane. Both of these contracts he was unable to deliver that

product before the war ended. Not totally his fault. I mean you could say it was way too ambitious what he planned to do, and this and that. But the fighter plane, after the war was over, he was determined to take it up and see how it performed. And he was actually warned at the time that perhaps this isn't the best time to do this. You shouldn't and there's kinds of things you should avoid there intentionally took a risk and the plane crashed in Beverly Hills and

almost killed it. And it's is actually a miracle based on what happened to his body that he actually did survive. Nobody on the ground was killed. But that christ was a direct result of errors that he made in judgment that he had been warned about. Similarly, with the Spruce Goose, the huge flying boat, he did fly it briefly for about a mile in Long Beach Harbor, but he was also warned that this thing might have come apart in the air because it was actually made out of wood

and so forth. But absolutely what you're saying, he took these risks. There were some part of a piece of his personality that said, I need to test this, I need to show the world this, I need to show this to myself. We can speculate on who was trying to show it to, but these were unnecessary risks that he can tenually took, even while he's worried about a little german getting in his food. It is notable that after the very bad crash that you mentioned, he suffered

many injuries, including head trauma. And that's very important because it does seem that his symptoms of O c D really became significantly worse after this crash. The pressure of the two contracts to build those planes, which he failed to do deliver on, along with the crash, those things all seemed to contribute greatly to what happened to him after that. By in the late forties, he's increasingly not seen in public as much as he once was, and then all through the fifties the same thing as true,

fewer and fewer people seen. He's living in the Beverly Hills Hotel in one of the bungalows. Some men who worked for him take over the other bungalows. When he Mary Jean Peters, they were both living in separate bungalows at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and in fact, one of the most amazings that tis six they weren't married, I guess twelve years. We computed that they actually lived together

only nine months of those twelve years. But this process of separation and of sealing himself off from the rest of the world, from the world a tiny world he should control, accelerates from that mid nineteen on through the rest of his life. That's a key word, you say, their control that you know, if you love someone, if you're married to someone, you know and they do things in your environment that you find difficult. Because you have O c D, you can't entirely control another person, so

that would be very very difficult. And head trauma depending on where the trauma was to the brain, but even just generally getting such a hard hit that you have essentially some mild form of organic brain damage could very

much accentuate psychiatric problem that was already there. But there was another issue too, and that is that he had so many injuries and needed pain medications to control his pain, which probably isn't very well controlled just in terms of the pain medications that were available then, which were often short acting and may not have controlled his pain very well. So he may have been also struggling with chronic pain and with addiction that was you know, created by physicians

who gave him the pain medications that he needed. This is still continues to be a dilemma for people today that you know. The thing about opioids in general is they can treat pain and they often are needed. You shouldn't leave someone in pain. But at the same time, you often end up needing more of the same medication to control the same amount of pain because we developed tolerance to those medications, and if you try to cut back, you go through withdrawal, and it's a very painful situation

to be in. Most people who get addicted to opioids today do so because they were originally given to them for a medical need, you know, post surgery or post an injury. But if you're Howard Hughes and you can get anything you want, no matter the cost and no matter the legality of it, and you are surrounding yourself with people who will basically not question anything you do, even for your own good, then unfortunately you may be left to stuff with the consequences of severe chronic pain

and an addiction. An addiction we know affects your judgment tremendously, so one's ability to say, oh, this is not looking good and you to do something about this would really be impaired. We have evidence said right after his death he was found to have needles broken off in his arms from giving himself injections. And you can only imagine if you would tolerate that, what kind of pain you

must be in it otherwise, absolutely right. And the drug addiction is unfortunately such a major part of the last chapter of his life. And you're right because of his wealth, because there were doctors around him who were giving these things. His main addiction was to coding, which is just about the worst kind of thing to be continually addicted to. I mean, coding's purpose is for a short term relief from pain, maybe a terrible tooth extraction or some other

kind of surgery. But the idea of using coding continually, the side effects are horrendous from your internal system and so forth, and that producing other problems. So I don't think there's any doubt about it. The drugs accelerated that problem, and the ways as manifested itself was really disturbing, if

you'd come back with me from it. When we did the book, there was a lot of speculation about how could somebody this smart, who designed all of these things, who had these beautiful women on his arm, How could somebody like that have long, fair nails and behave in this very bizarre way. So we were actually skeptical of a lot of the initial stories that he was this kind of crazy and so forth. Well, a lot of evidence began piling up that all those stories were in

fact true. And then one day, as part of our research, we were able to obtain something as the most chilling document that I have ever seen about anybody. And it

was called the Procedures manu. And this was a manual devised by these handful of yes men who worked around him, who never argue with him about anything, about how to do everything, how to open a can of fruit if somebody has died in the company, here's a four page memo, and how to send flowers that make sure that the bill doesn't come back to the home office because there might be germs on it. How to walk through the

door and give me something. Make sure you walk at an angle, don't come straight in, like, don't breathe on me. This thing was an inch and a half thick, and it had been written by the aids because they were continually berated by him when they had failed to do things properly into his perfectionist view of the world. So they wrote everything down says, well, this is how you told us to do these things. Let's take a quick

break here. We'll be back in a moment. I think people looked at that kind of ending for Hughes or those last years of his life and thought, what a you know, creepy, weird and villainous kind of behavior. But if people could understand that that procedural manual that the aids were simply writing down what they observed he required, and have an idea of what it would be like to live with that manual in your brain all the time.

That basically, you know, when you have obsessive compulsive disorder, there is a thought telling you constantly you know what needs to happen, and if it can't happen, the unbearable anxiety and terror you will face until you can and in often cases do some other behavior or correct it in some way. That's the compulsion part, Right, You have this thought obsession, and then you have the compulsion which

makes you feel momentarily better. So the guy's going to walk in the or I'm terrified he's going to contaminate me and and and make me sick. Oh okay, I made him walk at an angle. I'm relieved, I'm saved. And that relief is positive reinforcement for the brain, which keeps the obsession in place. It keeps it alive, and there are more and more and more, and so it's torture for somebody with O C that they live with that procedural manual in their head all the time. So

it's terribly sad. Of course, this is a treatable illness, a very treatable illness, and sadly, had that been the case at that time, and he'd been willing to do that, he might not have suffered so much and might have been able to participate more in the strengths that actually conferred to him to some degree. Also because he had

O C D perfectionism and the innovation. What is so sad about it is that he would think with the less wealthy person, a person were plugged than to a community, a person with a spouse, a person with some children, a person with some other relatives, a person was some close friends, that somebody might have come up and said, Howard, you kind of got a problem here, but let's work with this. Let's see what we can do here. We don't really have to worry about how we opened this

can of fruit. But let's let's talk about this over here. The other But he had been a loner his whole life, and in his youth and in his middle manhood, it wasn't such a big issue. He calls all the shots. He's got so much money. Everybody says yes, Mr Hughes, yes Howard, whatever you want, Howard. But later in life he needed somebody to step up and say, okay, let's work with you on this. But by then it was too late because he surrounded himself with people who were

just yes people. But what we found absolutely astonishing. We calculated that basically the last fifteen or sixteen years of his life, he didn't really see many people at all other than those six or seven or eight people who were waiting on him twenty four hours a day. There are a couple of exceptions, but even the guy who ran all his Las Vegas operations in the sixties never had a face to face meeting with it. In fact, one of the funny things that we did the book.

People always say to so, what did you ever meet Howard Used? And I said, nobody met Howard Used from that nine on, because he had pulled into this zone where he could control everything. But the funny thing was he wasn't controlling anything. Unfortunately, of course, we now understand about O. C. D. That controlling everything is a symptom of the illness in an attempt to manage what is your suffering. But we also understand that all that controlling

makes the disease worse. And it worked for him. He was still able to, you know, help functions so highly earlier on. But ultimately I think you know the disease, but also the chronic pain. I mean, some of the things that were described that you say seemed to be true, that growing along fingernails, not wearing any clothing, just draping something over your genitals and that's all, or picking anything up with a tissue also speak to the possibility that

his chronic pains had developed into a syndrome Aladinia. That when you have terrible pain, everything can become sensitized and your ability to tolerate any touch at all, which is terribly sad if you're you know, in terms of being alone already, but any touch at all is really so heightened that it's painful, and trimming your fingernails or wearing

clothing can be painful for people with Aladinia. That would explain a lot because he spent a lot of those last years basically in bed, and when you're in bed. You're not really moving around very much. You've propped up in your hospital bid watching movie after movie, sometimes the same movie three times in one day. If you're not moving,

you're not in much pain. Well, a tragic ending for Howard Hughes In in terms of his sufferings, certainly towards the last part of his life, but fascinating that the innovation and the perfectionism and the creativity and the risk taking in business as well paid off in terms of his strengths, which had a lot to do with his mental illness as well, but his strengths which have continued to this day. Right we still have medical institutions of

the hues name. Is there still technology and aviation in the Hughes name. Huge Aircraft has been bought by other institutions, but a lot of that work still does go on, a lot of the satellite work that he wasn't directly involved in the company by that point, but he had created an environment in their original Huge Aircraft company that brought some of the true best and brightest in their fields together, and by then he wasn't meddling the way he sometimes did when he was younger, but he had

created that field that brought together some astonishing companies, so a lot of early satellites, a lot of other things that created helicopters on down the line, very innovative and still part of the system out there. The Tool company bought by other companies at this point. But funny thing is one of the greatest assets that he left was he bought huge amounts of land when he did have

some money that he didn't develop. But we're just part of his estate once once he died, which later provided a lot of money to the folks that didn't inherit that money. But you're absolutely right, he did achieve a lot. He probably could have achieved more. The sad thing is it's really a human failure of nobody to step up

and really help him when he needed that help. Not that he would have necessarily welcomed it or allowed it, but it's a great statement about how really we all need somebody at some time in our life to kind of step up and maybe even tell us something we don't want to hear. He didn't have that, and it it paved the way for a lot of his own destruction down the road. And that mental illness is not so simple that it can confer terrible suffering and it

can con for potential strengths. And that's said that there weren't treatments around or that he could partake of at that time that could have made a big difference in his life. Well, that wraps things up for this episode. Thanks for joining me today. If you'd like to know more about Howard Hughes, check out James Steele's book Howard Hughes,

His Life and Madness. And if you'd like to know more about the link between psychiatric illness and genius, as you could see was the case with Howard Hughes, you could check out my book The Power of Different The Link between Disorder and Genius. And if you have a question, you can tweet me at Doctor Gayl's Salts. Personology is a production of I Heart Radio. The executive producers are doctor Gayl Salts and Tyler Klang. The associate producer is

Lowell Brulante. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. M