What do President
Obama's actions tell us about his mind?
Rue 89, France
Can One Put Barack
Obama on the Couch?
"Obama's
incapacity to assert himself as leader can be explained by a childhood that,
between an omnipresent mother and an absent father, castrated him."
The
author's thesis is simple (or perhaps simplistic): Obama's incapacity to assert
himself as leader can be explained by a childhood that, between an omnipresent
mother and an absent father, castrated him.
Frank
notes, however, that the shift in Obama's speeches targeting Republicans calls
for a re-analysis. Some things never change.
The
story goes that the project was of little interest to the father of
psychoanalysis, but appalled by Wilson's very "Bushian" intentions
(his presidency, according to Wilson, being chosen by God) Freud finally
decided to co-author the book.
According
to Freud, Woodrow Wilson was motivated by an outsized ego that gave him the (subconscious)
certainty of being Christ the redeemer. Hence his wish to go to war to bring
eternal peace to the world:
"His
unconscious identification with Christ made it impossible to choose to go to war
unless he could persuade himself that it was a war for peace."
Let's
not get into a debate that has already spilled so much ink, but ask ourselves
how serious psychoanalysis can be performed in the absence of the patient.
Presidents
refuse to lie down!
Such
exchanges are unheard of. Even California Governor Ronald Reagan had this
response to a psychiatrist who advised him to seek psychological counseling
after federal cuts to the profession: "If I lie down on a couch, it will
be to take a nap."
Some
years later, in 1972, the running mate of Democratic candidate George McGovern,
Thomas Eagleton, put an end to rumors about his past and revealed that in his
twenties, he had sought help at a psychiatric clinic for the treatment of
depression by electro-shock therapy. [video below].
Eagleton
may have eloquently announced that the treatment was long in the past and that
it had been successful, but the damage was done: McGovern took on the image of
a poor leader because of a carelessly-chosen team and making a serious error in
judgment by choosing Eagleton as a potential vice president.
Posted
by WORLDMEETS.US
Eagleton
stepped aside 15 days after being chosen for the Democratic "ticket."
When
asked about weapons of mass destruction over 30 years later - in March 2003 - Donald
Rumsfeld gave his thoughts to the press:
"There
are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are
known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But
there are also unknown unknowns - the ones we don't know we don't know. "
In
a very rich article, philosopher Slavoj Ziziek notes:
"What
he [Rumsfeld] forgot to add was the crucial fourth term: the "unknown
knowns," the things we don't know that we know - which is precisely the
Freudian unconscious, the "knowledge which doesn't know itself."
Body vs. Mind
In
America (and perhaps in France as well), to admit to having lain on a
psychiatrist's couch reveals a frailty that doesn't quite fit with someone
portraying himself as a virile man. The body and the mind are not one, and we would prefer to act rather than question what it is that causes us to act.
So
given this conscious rejection of issues relating to the unconscious, perhaps
it would be useful after all for some to tackle it. When will Sarkozy on the
Couch be published?
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