Chess Legend Bobby Fisher has just died (2008) in Iceland
I'm not in the business of diagnosing mental illness from halfway across the Atlantic, but paranoid schizophrenia is a good match for Fischer. The criminal record clinches it.
(I don't care if y'all aren't interested anymore, I'm just adding to the discussion because I do what I want)
So SoonerJim's post had me thinking. After reading this intensely detailed biography, I actually don't think Fischer was schizophrenic. He was highly functional until the end of his life. He maintained lasting relationships (with those who would tolerate him) with various women and men in the international world of chess. He regularly dined out at restaurants in Hungary, Japan, and the Philippines socially with these people. They hosted him as their guests for weeks at a time in their homes in various places in Europe and Asia. His skill at analyzing chess continued to impress people until he died.
He did indeed suffer from a form of mental illness that led to delusions of sorts but it seems to me (also obviously not a psychoanalyst) they were more borne from severe narcissistic disorder rather than schizophrenia. Later in life he regularly ranted that the United States owed him, for he had done more for the United States than anyone alive (sound familiar?). And in this deep narcissistic delusion, he interpreted the lack of lavish state receptions in his honor after beating Spassky for the world title in Iceland in 1972 to be a massive insult. This perceived affront led him to begin to refuse paying taxes three years later, all of which leading to his deep hatred of the United States government and, in his narcissism, his belief that the feelings were mutual. (In fact, there is no evidence the US government had such contempt for him and quite a bit of evidence that it took a tolerant position toward his activities).
But that discussion leads to his "criminal record". Though he owed back taxes for years, he was never criminally prosecuted for it - probably because his financial status was so unknown and, in fact, he was quite destitute from about 1975 to 1992. Then, in 1992, he emerged from his self-imposed seclusion to play in the $5 million rematch with Spassky organized by a shady Serbian entrepreneur. Fischer's return to chess was major news in the chess world and the event's purse was going to rescue him from poverty (even the match's loser was to walk with $1.6 million). He went to Montenegro to train for the match, which was to be held in Montenegro and Belgrade, but 10 days before it was set to begin, the US State Department sent him a letter advising that if he played the match it would be considered conducting business in violation of the recently established US sanctions in the civil-war ravaged Yugoslavia.
In his narcissism and contempt for the US government, Fischer held a press conference and spat on the letter (he could have just ignored it without fanfare). The match went on as planned and Fischer won (perhaps in part due to Spassky's personal conviction that Bobby Fischer returning to chess was a good thing for chess), and thereafter deposited $3.4 million in a Swiss bank account. He remained in eastern Europe (Hungary for the most part) and then, several years later, a grand jury in D.C. convicted him of one count of violating the US sanctions in Yugoslavia.
Yet thereafter, he was allowed to obtain a new US passport in Bern and traveled quite freely (though never back to the US). It wasn't until 2003 that the State Department revoked his passport (perhaps due to his constant ranting on internet radio about how evil the US government was and his applauding the 9/11 attacks) . . . and this led to his ultimate arrest in Japan on charges of attempting to travel with an invalid passport (there's no evidence that Fischer received the letter informing him of the revocation, as required by law). The US never extradited Fischer from Japan - perhaps his maneuvering with his citizenship made it too murky but they probably could have if they really wanted to. During this period he married his partner, Miyoko Watai (president of the Japanese Chess Federation), who helped push Japanese authorities to allow him to stay in Japan or deport him to another country, and not hand him over to the US. Thereafter he was able to exile in Iceland where he continued what appear to have been meaningful, functional friendships with various people there including state officials and members of the chess community (including a well-known psychiatrist) until his death in 2008.
While that behavior is all wildly narcissistic and petulant, it isn't really "criminal" in the classic sense. And the US government's tolerance of his activities until his anti-US invective became so caustic that it was just embarrassing suggests the revoking of his passport may have been more about politics than prosecuting law-breaking.
Fischer's illness and delusions seem to me to have flowed entirely from his massively over-estimated sense of his own importance and a mistaken belief that he could make his own rules. (In fact, his $5 million 1975 world title defense never happened because he indeed insisted on having his own rules rather than the FIDE rules that had been in place). In the world of chess, he was revered almost like a god and he was allowed to do whatever he wished . . . and the press had a very unhealthy relationship with him. Perhaps his mind was unable to recognize that the rest of the world was not the chess world, and this was his primary delusion. Deep narcissists develop irrational contempt or hatred for those they perceive (often wrongly) to be their enemy - and this came to include Jews (clearly a very strange and disturbing delusion) and the United States government. But this kind of delusion and misplaced reality seems different than the kind of delusion and fractured reality (even fractured minds) that schizophrenia produce.