I happened upon a sad case recently, a man named Jeff V. Merkey. (The image is from ScienceaGoGo, a great site for science lovers of all ages. The article is about how stress can be good for you.)

Merkey was once chief scientist at Novell, so he’s not dumb. But he’s also, well, a bit unusual.

From what I have seen I'd say he’s paranoid (but I'm not a psychiatrist, and I didn't sleep in a Holiday Inn Express last night). He sees enemies everywhere (including on this blog), and always shoots his mouth off before asking questions.

He also has a rather cramped, and to my mind paranoid, view of copyright. (This is something I have real experience writing about.) He allegedly tried to hide his own work from his employer, Novell, leading to a 1997 lawsuit and a 1998 settlement. (That's public record.)

He hasn’t changed. My story was his claim that all of Linux is “dirty,” filled with copyrighted material, and that the only way to protect it is with a “clean” version (that he writes) and a new license (that he’s having written). To make everything crystal clear (to his mind) he wants the Cherokee Nation to oversee the licensing scheme. (He says he's a Cherokee.)

Anyway I wrote the above (with as much humor as I could, to encourage readership), and no one cared.

Except, of course, for Jeff V. Merkey.

“Like everyone else, you are out in the weeds,” he began. “I found your story a pile of swill.” Then he got mad.

I wrote back, “I'll be glad to print what you wrote, as you wrote it, in a separate blog item. With your permission of course.” Instead, he posted it as a reply to my post (which was actually less than I offered) and wrote me another personal diatribe, with numbered bullets, implying things I hadn’t written, and taking great personal offense to all of them.

As I say I’m not a psychologist, but I have been a patient in the past, and this man has some issues. (This will undoubtedly anger him greatly, and lead to more threats, including the threat of a lawsuit. But most of us have issues. To say so isn't a personal attack.)

Geniuses often have more serious issues than the rest of us. (Read that last sentence again, Mr. Merkey -- I think you're a genius.) Some, like Van Gogh, manage to create great work despite it. Others – the great majority – don’t.

That’s my final answer to everyone who claims that psychology and drug therapies are warping us, that the mere suspicion of instability is a personal attack. It's not. It's an observation. (I'm ADD and have had great difficulties with anger in the past -- I'm not an innocent here.)

What great things could men (and women) like Merkey do, if prejudice against the possibility of emotional imperfection didn’t keep them from seeking the help they need for fear that, if they were cured, they would lose their essential genius?

What is society missing, and losing, as a result of this prejudice?

We’ll never know.