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at the funeral of Winston Churchill, the novelist Rebecca West summed up the feelings of those acquainted with the great British statesman: “Really, the world will not come to peace with itself except as it acknowledges that some men are simply superior.” Yet Churchill himself suffered from classic harm obsessions: intrusive impulses to suicide. They did not interfere into his life in a major way, and it is not at all certain that Churchill had diagnosable OCD, but his obsessions were anxiety provoking and a nuisance.

Churchill once confided to his personal physician, Charles Moran: “I don’t like standing near the edge of a platform when the express train is passing through. A second’s action would end everything. I like to stand right back, and if possible to get a pillar between me and the train.” Because of similar obsessional impulses to jump to his death, Churchill didn’t like to travel by boar. “I don’t like to look down into the water,” he once told Moran. “A second’s action would end everything. A few drops of desperation.” For the same reason, Churchill didn’t like to sleep in rooms with access to a balcony.

Yet Churchill was not suicidal. As is always the case with obsessional, to follow through on his tormenting thoughts was the last thing he wanted. He explained to Moran, “I don’t want to go out of the world at all in such moments. I’ve no desire to quit this world, but thoughts, desperate thoughts, come into my head.”

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