Bush on the Couch

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Bush on the Couch, by Justin Frank
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Bush on the Couch, by Justin Frank

Bush on the Couch is the title of a 2004 book by psychoanalyst Justin Frank. The central premise of Frank's book is that President George W. Bush, as an untreated alcoholic, is in constant danger of a relapse. Further, in Frank's opinion, Bush manifests the symptoms of a dry drunk, principally irritability, judgmentalism and a rigid, unadaptable world view.

Contents

[edit] Death of Robin Bush

Bush's next-eldest sibling, Robin, died of leukemia at the age of three, when he was seven years old himself. Frank argues that this loss, and the way his parents handled it, has had a lasting impact on Bush's psyche.

At the time she became ill, Robin was the future president's only sibling (although Jeb Bush was born before she died) and a favorite playmate. His parents never told him that she was sick, although he was asked to stop playing with her. Only after her death did they disclose to him her illness, which had lasted longer than doctors expected it to and had led the Bushes on a frantic quest back East to find a specialist who could treat her. These efforts kept them away from their son for long stretches of time, and he was not present when Robin died, nor at her burial.

After the service in Connecticut, Barbara and George H.W. Bush returned to Houston the next day. There was no further attempt at closure or a protracted mourning process, in keeping with upper class mores of the time.

Frank argues that the apparent abruptness of his little sister's passing and the lack of any way to deal with it have had a strong impact on Bush's later personal development. Barbara Bush has since said the way she handled Robin's death with her son was one of the few mistakes she made as a parent. Frank documents several incidents in Bush's life related to Robin's death at various points through Bush's childhood and adolesence.

[edit] Later childhood

The book recounts later instances of Bush returning to Robin's death. Shortly after Robin's death, her mother and brother went to a sleepover at the home of friend Randall Roden. The young Bush had difficulty sleeping, awakening out of frequent nightmares and having to be comforted by his mother.

Several months later, Bush attended a sporting event with his father and several business associates when he said he wished he were Robin. This momentarily distressed them, until he said it was because she had a better view of the game from heaven.

[edit] Adolescence and Young Adulthood

At Andover, the 13-year-old Bush was assigned to write an essay about an important event in his life. He chose Robin's death. Due to his difficulties in writing, it received a poor grade. The teacher made a comment that the essay was "unacceptable." Frank argues that this early incident contributed to the anti-intellectualism some have perceived in Bush's leadership style.

Later on in his teen years, he began drinking and eventually developed the alcoholism which would plague him for much of the rest of his life. Frank asserts that Bush was a very heavy drinker from the age of 15 until the age of 40. While alcoholism can have many origins, Frank argues that the unresolved pain from his sister's passing could be one motivator for this self-medication. Frank describes several incidents during Bush's presidency leading him to suspect that Bush resumed drinking during one or more of his many long vacations from the White House.

[edit] Later life

Bush's struggles with his father's shadow have been well-documented — he was never the athlete or student that George H.W. Bush had distinguished himself as. Bush's military career was lackluster as well, where his father had earned medals and was considered a war hero. Frank argues that Bush may subconsciously blame his parents, his father in particular, for taking his sister away from him, aggravating an already difficult father-son relationship.

[edit] Critical analysis of the book

Ron Suskind, author of The Price of Loyalty, wrote “A blazing, professional analysis of what everybody yearns to know: what drives this man who roils the planet?....A few hours on the couch with the good doctor might well ease tensions . . . across the globe.”

Tina Brown, former editor of the New Yorker, wrote “A compelling printout of the presidential psyche and how it has shaped our world. You will never listen to a State of the Union address again without applying his fascinating psychological read.”—


Bush on the Couch also received endorsements from such distinguished professors of psychiatry as James Grotstein (UCLA), who wrote, "This is a remarkable – and frightening – piece of careful scholarship. The author is a well-known and highly reputable object-relations psychoanalyst who has practiced on the Washington scene for quite sometime. He has brought his experience and training as a psychoanalyst and his skills in the techniques of applied psychoanalysis to bear on a carefully documented archive of George W. Bush, our president. I was immediately reminded of the reign of a terror created long ago by the late Senator Joseph McCarthy and how he was brought down almost single-handedly by the late Edward R. Murrow’s film documentation of his speeches. I consider Dr. Frank’s work to fall in that genre – with the notable exception that he elegantly brings psychoanalytic insights to bear on his subject. The result is magnificently illuminating – and devastating. We are all familiar with “George W.’s” way of speaking. His duplicity, his ingratiating fraternity-boy style, but when we are presented with an archive, a verbal documentary, in which his uttering and behavior are placed closely together for us to visualize in 3-D, we stand back in horror. Dr. Frank is not only to be congratulated for his carefully presented and tightly reasoned use of applied psychoanalysis. He is to be profoundly thanked for his labors. The rest is up to us."

Irvin Yalom, MD, the Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry, Stanford University, and author of The Gift of Therapy and Love's Executioner wrote, "An eminent and courageous psychotherapist offers us a penetrating account of the psychological makeup of the most powerful man in the world. It is compelling and persuasive and downright frightening. Most readers will end this book stunned, asking themselves how it has come about that we have chosen a leader so ill-equipped for the job."

Frank's book also has its detractors. Irwin Savodnik, a psychiatrist and failed Republican candidate for California's governor in 1998, who teaches at the University of California, Los Angeles, described Frank's book as a "psychoanalytic hatchet job" and said that "there is not an ounce of psychoanalytic material in the entire book." [1] The code of the American Psychiatric Association, of which Frank is not a current member, states that "it is unethical for a psychiatrist to offer a professional opinion unless he or she has conducted an examination and has been granted proper authorization for such a statement." [2] Although Frank had in the past written for Salon.com, the online magazine reviewed the book unfavorably, arguing that it included "dubious theories" and that Frank had failed in his avowed intention to distinguish his partisan opinions from his psychoanalytic evaluation of Bush's character. [3]

However, in interviews Frank freely admits his partisan affiliation, but claims his book is in a tradition of psychological assessments of leaders frequently undertaken, for example, by the CIA. Frank also claims that some of his readers have reacted to his book by gaining increased sympathy for Bush; for example, Joan Baez admitted this to Frank.

[edit] Reviews

[edit] References

  1. ^ Shrinking the President: A mind is a dangerous thing to psychoanalyze, Weekly Standard, September 27, 2004
  2. ^ The Principles of Medical Ethics: With Annotations Especially Applicable to Psychiatry
  3. ^ The inner W, Salon (magazine), June 16, 2004
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