[SergeiSK]

Here are a few notes about famous people in the past. Let not the artists, but the famous explorers. A few frank, I would say:
Columbus
(1451 - 1506),
"Discovered" in 1492, America was a strange mixture of high talent and pathological psychic sphere. "Never - I noticed the German historian Leopold von Ranke - a great mistake not caused a great discovery." If only Columbus has remained at least a shadow of doubt, if he was cold and analyzing intelligence, he would be unable to defend his plan before the crowned sponsors and bring the venture to the end. The belief in his vocation was of a mystical character of Columbus: he sincerely considered himself God's messenger, and behaved accordingly status. His mysticism was reflected even in the signature, which stood on his letters and documents:
S. S.A.S. X.M.J. X. pro ferens
«Servidor de Sus Altezas Sacras Jesus, Maria, Josef Crist oforo Ferens» - «Servant Their Holiness of Jesus, Mary, Joseph - Christopher Carrier".
In connection with this circumstance, Cesare Lombroso, Columbus established a diagnosis of "religious hallucinatory paranoia with ideas of grandeur.
It is hardly possible to completely write off some of the features acting and deliberate deception, but certainly if Columbus did not give excessive promises, it would not have received funds to implement his plan. "His distinguished by a belief in divine providence and omens, and at the same time, the practicality of rare, painful self-esteem and suspicion, passion for gold. He possessed a keen intellect, persuasion, and diverse knowledge.
Opening of the "second way to Asia" in Columbus can be considered as supervaluable idea in the psychiatric sense of the term. Such assumptions are necessary diagnostic criteria. First, the idea arose as a result of real-life circumstances and be accompanied by excessive emotional stress. Secondly, this idea held in the minds of Columbus dominant position and had a stable, fixed in nature. Thirdly, the value of ideas in every way exaggerated, and all contrary views were discarded.

Vasco da Gama
(1469 - 1524),
Portuguese navigator, first paving the sea route from Europe to South Asia. He was described by biographers as a very irritable and violent man. During his famous voyage along the coast of India, Vasco da Gama captured prisoners and amused by the fact that they cut the hands, noses and ears, and instead of sewing a dog. By being cruelty towards the local population, he burned the crew and passengers of the Arab ship. When Vasco da Gama with a cargo of spices great value returned home in October 1503, he was awarded the title of count, but for many years been suspended from all activities. "Such behavior precludes any explanation, except one: Vasco da Gama was difficult mentally ill with severe manifestations of sadism" (1). In diagnostic terms, most likely, we can speak about a specific personality disorder or psychopathy. Domestic psychiatrist Basil Gilyarovsky believed that many psychopaths feel well only in an atmosphere of struggle and risk making themselves useful in the war or the participation in the remote and risky expeditions. Discoverers of new countries in the majority, apparently, and were such psychopathic adventurers.

Nikolai Mikhailovich Przewalski
(1839 - 1888)
spent on expeditions for 11 years of life, exploring Central Asia. The circumstances in which he grew up, was not favorable for spiritual development. In education the main role was played by the whip, that has not passed unnoticed for the future traveler.
Theatre, he could not bear, fiction disliked. Passion for a card game earned him a significant advantage. He always played very well and winter in 1868 won 12 thousand rubles, so now could be called a wealthy man and have him regardless of the service. The main shortcomings of his character was hot temper, rudeness, intolerance, and despotism. Another feature was manifested in the Przhevalsky - a passion to dominate others, which made him closer to his people weaker than he. This may explain his desire for solitude and intolerance of large companies. In general, the craving for solitude, he was always starting with high school and ending with the last years of life. But the most prominent feature in the character of Przewalski's - love of the pilgrim life. "He was an inveterate vagrant, for which the settled life - punishment. No risk, labor, deprivation could not kill it hunting to travel: on the contrary, it grew and grew, becoming an almost morbid passion "(2).
Good Przheval'skiy felt only outside civilized ecumene. And no wonder! Each expedition includes one of his young lovers. It is possible that a long journey Przewalski's taken away a sense of their own "abnormal" as homosexuality at that time was a criminal offense. Modern psychiatry is no longer considered a sexual perversion, requiring special treatment (or - more than that - punishment), although in a clinical sense, it can be attributed to disorders of sexual preference. And if homosexuality is becoming less dominant role, which affects the choice of profession, they can not be neglected when patograficheskom analysis.

Nikolai N. Maclay
(1846 - 1888),
scientist-ethnographer and anthropologist. Underachievement and indiscipline were peculiar to him in school. In his youth, he preferred boyish companies society's younger sister and her friends, but they were strange and in later life. For example, deciding to marry, he suddenly disappears for six months to nowhere. Abused and somatic state were Maclay: over the years, he quickly got old, suffered from almost all diseases and, although died in 1942, seemed a man of seventy. During the four years before his death, suddenly married a foreigner and the father of two sons. But before he died suddenly asked his wife to burn all his diaries and letters, which she could not explain (my wife did not understand a single word in Russian).
It is believed that the researcher has found his pedofilnoe attraction as a student, as well as the fact that he was "bad coping with this interest." Of course, he could not help but ponder over the consequences of this "interest". In Europe and especially in Russia it was a criminal and morally punishable. Maclay already knew from books that in tropical countries, among the natives, his strange attraction to a civilized country no one seems criminal. Girls mature there for love at 10 - 12 years. Maclay was a personality with anxious-hypochondriac traits and heightened conscientiousness. And he "escaped to the tropics. Biographer puts forward two assumptions: the traveler was "a pure pedophile" or that, in our opinion, more likely, "was bisexual (he has an aversion caused only mature women)" (3).
The future traveler is a good example of creative direction depending on the pathological phenomena - disorders of sexual preference. 95%of pedophiles are heterosexual, and the remaining (and to him most of his life belonged Maclay) prefer to perform sexual acts with children of either sex. Maybe that's why Maclay and was succeeded by specialty anatomist and zoologist at the ethnographer, declaring that he intended to study "Papuan race. And all in order to be able to smoothly fulfill their passion.
Thus, in the past century, to take a chance to go beyond the ecumene, we needed a serious personality disorder, which took place more frequently within the expressed personality disorder - psychopathology. In conjunction with the courage, determination, and sometimes adventurism this anomaly psyche helped achieve historic results. In later times it was enough to possess, for example, "disorder of sexual preference." So in the field of geography civilization is indebted to psychopathology.

Alexander Shuvalov