Can You Pass This Test?
27 Jan 2002
I’ve often wondered who the most interesting person was of all those I’ve interviewed over the last 27 years? It’s a tough decision. After all, how do you eliminate a two-time Nobel Prize winner like Linus Pauling? Or the discoverer of the Aids virus? Or The Queen of England’s personal physician. But in these recent black days my mind has returned repeatedly to Dr. Thomas Hackett, a professor of psychiatry at The Harvard Medical School. In these post-Bin Laden times, see if you flunk or pass this quiz.
We all have various hobbies. But I would have liked to have accompanied Dr. Hackett as he relentlessly pursued his interest year after year. His passion? Tracking down World War I fighter pilots.
Why fighter pilots? As a psychiatrist he wanted to see if they possessed a certain mental and emotional quality that helped them survive the stress of battle one-on-one. And whether this attitude also aided them later on in life.
It was not an easy or inexpensive task finding these pilots. He did it by travelling thousands of miles during vacations and finally interviewed 40 of them.
Fighter pilots in World War I faced horrendous odds. One in four was killed in training when unreliable planes crashed during take-off. Once in combat their average life span was a mere three to six weeks. Only one in 20 survived the war.
So why did pilots accept this risk? They told Hackett they were either bored, convinced Germans must be stopped or had heard French women were beautiful!
But Hackett discovered it was more than their love for glamorous French women that set these pilots apart from others. He explained that the great quality they possessed was a “wealth of optimism and a want of fear”.
These were traits he observed over and over as he talked to the men. They also shared a sense of humour and an ability to reduce or abolish fear and worry even in times of great stress. As Hackett remarked, “they could turn off the juice”.
Denial, either conscious or unconscious, was fundamental to their defence mechanism. In effect, the pilots saw themselves as indestructible. Equally important, this attitude of being invulnerable continued long after they left the air force.
Hackett’s study of fighter pilots revealed other traits. They were all obsessed with fitness. As young adults they had all been athletic and had continued to stay in good physical shape throughout their lives.
They told Hackett that their mothers were not their motivating factor. The majority wanted to emulate their fathers. And it was amazing that none of the 40 families had been split by divorce.
They had all married, one at 76 years of age. 75 percent had been married twice, most often within a year of the death of a spouse. And they all took vacations to exciting and unusual places.
Alcohol had been a problem for only three of the pilots. But each had been able to stop drinking. They had all smoked at one time, but everyone had either quit or greatly reduced this habit.
One would have thought that surviving one- in- twenty odds of death by aerial combat would have made them very religious. But only six of forty went to church.
Having survived the war they refused to take foolish risks. They developed this trait during the war spending hours oiling their guns. They knew
that a jammed gun meant death. This had also made the cautious in business only investing when risk could be minimized.
None of the pilots ever suffered from psychiatric illness. Four admitted to depression on the death of a spouse. But they all refused to seek help and recovered in time.
What happened when they became ill? They denied being frightened, displayed a fatalistic attitude and minimized the seriousness of the disease. And they overcame adversities such as the stock market crash of 1929.
Today in these terrorist times we should strive to develop the fighter pilot’s philosophy of “a wealth of optimism and a want of fear”. And I’m sure they would all pass a test used by Dr David Rosen who specializes in stress management.
So here goes; Take a look at these letters, “opportunityisnowhere”. If you decipher the letters to read “opportunity is now here” you will survive disastrous times. But you flunk the test if your read, “opportunity is no where”.
