pressure when confronted with his political opponents, and generally shy and retiring with both. During formal dinners he often said nothing at all except for the occasional cascade of dramatic rhetoric. Indeed, he did not react well to pressure and would often let slip over-dramatic sentiments when put on the spot. Normally open to criticism, he was prone to assuming larger groups were conspiratorial. Post-war interpretations of Quisling's character are similarly mixed. After the war, collaborationist behaviour was popularly viewed as a result of mental deficiency, leaving the personality of the clearly more intelligent Quisling an "enigma." He was instead seen as weak, paranoid, intellectually sterile and power-hungry: ultimately "muddled rather than thoroughly corrupted." As quoted by Dahl, psychiatrist Professor Gabriel Langfeldt stated Quisling's ultimate philosophical goals "fitted the classic description of the paranoid megalomaniac more exactly than any other case [he had] ever encountered." During his time in office, Quisling arose early, often having completed several hours of work before arriving at the office between 9:30 and 10:00. He liked to intervene in virtually all government matters, reading all letters addressed to him or his chancellery personally and marking a surprising number for action. Quisling was independent minded, made several key decisions on the spot and, unlike his German counterpart, he liked to follow procedure to ensure that government remained "a dignified and civilised" affair throughout. He took a personal interest in the administration of Fyresdal, where he was born. He rejected German racial supremacy and instead saw the Norwegian race as the progenitor of Northern Europe, tracing his own family tree in his spare time. Party members did not receive preferential treatment, though Quisling did not himself share in the wartime hardships of his fellow Norwegians. Nevertheless, many gifts went unused and he did not live extravagantly. Religious and philosophical views Quisling was interested in science, eastern religions and metaphysics, eventually building up a library that included the works of Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Schopenhauer. He kept up with developments in the realm of quantum physics, but did not keep up with more current philosophical ideas. He blended philosophy and science into what he called Universism, or Universalism, which was a unified explanation of everything. His original writings stretched to a claimed two thousand pages. He rejected the basic teachings of orthodox Christianity and established a new theory of life, which he called Universism, a term borrowed from