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Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President

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Without a personal interview, I believe all a psychiatrist can tell about a subject, in most cases, is whether he is alive or dead. But then, there's George Bush. While the author spoke in paradigms I did not understand or accept, he brought up some interesting events and behaviors in the life of George Bush that literally crawl with clues:

The loss of his sister, and not being told she died until after the fact. (Guilt?)

Putting firecrackers up the behinds of bull frogs and lighting the firecracker. (Psychopathic?)

His temper tantrums on the golf course. (Infantile? Can't get his own way.)

Following his mother's advice not to use the same word over and over, he gets a Thesaurus to find another word for tears. He adds to his essay, "The lacerates came streaming down her face." (Learning disability?)

Telling a college professor that the poor are lazy, and wish to remain that way. (Limited thought processes?)

As governor he presided over more executions, more than any other in the state's history. One was a woman who had been domestically abused by her husband for eighteen years. Even prominent religious leaders pleaded on her behalf. George let her die. (Again, psychopathic?)

As governor he received another plea from a murderer to have her execution stayed. He play-acted a woman pleading for her life, to a stunned (conservative) commentator named Tucker Carlson. (Again, really psychopathic?)

His rather simple and linear thinking. Responding to the question why terrorists hate us, he said, "They hate our freedoms." (Inability to think in complex abstracts?)

George cannot read the line: ".... shame on me." The type was quite clear. His inability to admit a mistake. George Bush has still failed to admit any major mistake since he took office. (Rigid?)

George has trouble speaking English properly. "Is our children learning?" (Again, learning disability?)

He blames others for what goes wrong, particularly the media. (Projects his limitations onto others?)

He has not attended any funerals for servicemen or women killed in action. (Inability to feel compassion?)

Arrested for vagrancy and drunk driving. (Alcoholism?)

Holds a basic belief that he is superior to others, that his position is a birthright. (Narcisstic?)

Trying to emulate Daddy at every level and failing. Daddy: youngest pilot in the Navy; George: lowest score accepted for pilot training (25th percentile) in the Air National Guard; Daddy: Yale; George: Yale; Daddy: baseball team; George: Cheerleader; Daddy: Oilman; George: Starts Arbusto Drilling. Texans soon call it El Busto. (A need to gain parental approval?)

The author doesn't imply that George Bush may be sociopathic, but it is there for anyone who wishes to infer it.

Finally, the most powerful man in the world is on vacation, on his home turf, surrounded by secret service, family and friends, and appears afraid to meet with Cindy Sheehan, especially considering that he could have put any spin on the meeting he would have chose to. (Cowardice?)

Doesn't this author make you wonder? Does Bush really have the capacity to lead the country, and does he really give a damn about Americans?

I'm 56, a grown woman descended from a long line of Republicans, including a
multi-term Republican State Senator.

Actually I had voted for a Republican candidate in every
Presidential election since I was 21 years old.

But when George W. Bush was running for President I saw a History Channel
documentary during which one of "W"'s oldest friends was being interviewed. The man
merrily related an anecdote he considered hugely amusing...

To make a long story short, although former First Lady Barbara Bush had
suggested to her new daughter-in-law Laura that it would be unwise to ever
criticize "W", Laura Bush made the mistake of doing just that.

Once.

It was during the period of time when Bush was newly entering politics. He gave
a speech that Laura had listened to very carefully.

Driving home from the political rally, George asked his young wife how she
thought he did.

She told him honestly that she didn't think he had done as well as he might
have.

The friend relating the story laughed that Bush was so furious at Laura's criticism
that he drove clean through his back garage wall and right out the other side
of the building.

The friend of George Bush who related the story thought it absolutely hilarious.

I didn't find it the least bit funny.

What I did think, was that it suggested a major character flaw and a horrifying
lack of self control.

And I found the very idea of that kind of flaw in a Presidential candidate to
be very unsettling.

And the idea of a violent, uncontrolled response to nothing more than a minor
criticism left me extremely uncomfortable with the idea of having George W.
Bush at the helm of this country.

So although I HAD voted for his father, for the first time in my life I chose
NOT to vote Republican when George W. Bush ran for President.

Actually, the more I saw of George W. Bush in the years AFTER he assumed the
Presidency, the MORE uncomfortable I became.

And after 9/11, and the invasion of Iraq. one thought kept resurfacing....."This whole scenario just
doesn't FEEL right".

I received an email from an old friend which mentioned a book by Dr. Justin A. Frank, a Washington, D.C.-based psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry.

In his book, "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President", Frank wrote, "....when the most powerful man on the planet consistently exhibits an array of multiple, serious, and untreated symptoms -- any one of which I've seen patients need years to work through -- it's certainly cause for further investigation, if not for outright alarm".

Clearly I wasn't the only one with the feeling that something is just not quite right.

Saturday, out of curiosity, I went to see Michael Moore's documentary
"Farenheit 9/11".

Personally, I don't particularly care for Michael Moore.
But to give credit where credit is due, he does do his homework.

And I was curious. So I went.

By about halfway through the movie, the entire audience had become deathly
silent.

You could have heard a pin drop in that theatre.

So this is my take on the movie.

It doesn't matter whether you're a Democrat or a Republican.
It also doesn't matter whether you're a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Muslim,
an Athiest or an Agnostic.

Do yourself a favor and leave your political and religious affiliations at
home.

Walk in the theatre door as simply an average American citizen.

I believe that you will emerge every bit as shaken as each and every person in
that theatre did Saturday afternoon.

Do you consider yourself a reasonably intelligent human being?.

Presented with fair and unbiased information, do you think you can analyze a
situation and draw your own conclusions?.

Occasional sardonic movie commentary from Moore aside, there's MORE than enough
fair and unbiased historical video in that film to scare the living hell out of

ALL of us.

Because much of what you're going to see has been edited out of our evening
news.

You're also going to see candid interviews with our duly elected officials.
From BOTH political parties.

Read the book. Go see the documentary. Make your own decision.

My humble opinion? Man, we are in BIG trouble.

Having been a psych RN for years, I think Dr. Frank has hit the nail on the head with his analysis of Bush's behaviors and actions. For the record, he rarely mentions that Bush is a Republican (and when he does, it's usually in a situational reference to his being the Republican candidate running against the Democratic candidate), he doesn't say that all Republicans are like this, and he doesn't say that the reason Bush does and says these things is because he's a Republican. This is not a political book that way.

Instead, he focuses on one human being's very public behaviors. He has a lot of insight into the motivations of this president based on an extensive review of an enormous amount of factual information--including autobiographies of members of the Bush family, as well as everything Bush has said or done in public. For example, incidents during his childhood which were written about in his parents' autobiographies could have come up in a session. Instead, Dr. Frank was able to read about them. He also looks at situations Bush has faced during his political career, and explains that how he handled those challenges gives us a glimpse into his character and motivations.

I think it's interesting that Bush supporters criticize Dr. Frank for analyzing Bush based on the mountain of PUBLIC behaviors and statements that come right from the horse's mouth, despite not having spoken with him personally. If no one could ever be judged by their words and actions, why do we know in our hearts that "actions speak louder than words"?

Seriously, I'm a Republican and this book is chilling for a number of reasons. I do believe the unresolved issues surrounding the death of his older sister undoubtedly scarred George, and I do feel sorry for him. I am concerned about what the doctor reveals about the president's 2003 physical on page 191, that the removal of spider angiomas from his nose are quite possibly a sign of drinking that is CONTINUING rather than long in the past. His recklessness, callous attitude toward others and outright paranoia makes him a terrible leader for this country at this time.

Picture a 7 year-old boy with a 3 year-old sister. Tragically, the 3 year-old sister has just died only a few months after being diagnosed with leukemia. However, the parents never told the boy about his sister's illness; they simply told him not to play with her. The girl dies on a trip to the East Coast that the parents have undertaken in an attempt to find treatment for her. On the day after her death, her parents play golf (!) They attend a small memorial service the next day, but there is no funeral. It seems that the parents have a hard time dealing with death, because 4 years earlier the woman's mother had been killed in a car accident, yet she did not attend her own mother's funeral service. Meanwhile, the boy has no idea his sister is dead, or even that she is sick, until the parents arrive back in Texas and finally break the news to him. In the ensuing months the mother's hair literally turns white, but otherwise the woman whose cold, disciplinarian personality has led her family to label her "The Enforcer" represses all signs of grief. The father is literally absent most of the time as he focuses on his political career.

As he gets older, the boy starts having trouble in school. It's obvious that he has some sort of learning disability and attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. But the problems go unacknowledged and untreated because his parents have nothing but contempt for psychology. It's not necessarily that the boy is dumb, it's that he's unable to regulate his negative feelings, and it takes so much effort and manage his overwhelming anxiety that there's no energy left for thinking. He is impulsive and makes snap decisions because he is easily paralyzed by too much information or complexity.

As a young man he starts drinking heavily. At the age of 26, he incurs the wrath of his father, who has learned that he has been driving drunk with his teenaged brother in the car. When the father calls for a meeting, he arrives at the house drunk, again, and crashes his car into the garbage cans in front the family home. He then challenges his father to a fight while other family members look on. At the age of 30, he is arrested for drunk driving. For many alcoholics, a DUI arrest is the first step toward the very painful but ultimately beneficial recognition that they have a problem, but not him. This is a man who, no matter what the circumstance, has never been able to admit that he has a problem or has made a mistake.

After 20 years of drinking, he finds religion. He is first approached by an evangelist who is known for walking around with a 12-foot cross wherever he goes. At that moment in his life he is failing as a businessman in the oil industry, despite the fact that he lives in Texas and his father is vice president of the United States. He quits drinking, but he never confronts the issues that drove him to drink in the first place. Instead, he simply uses religion to replace alcohol as a new method to escape reality and cope with his anxiety. He submits to a brand of religious fundamentalism that provides him with a rigid worldview and moral code, which allows him to avoid thinking and all the ambiguity and uncertainty it might bring. Remember, it's not necessarily that he's stupid, it's that he doesn't like to use his brain, because it's much easier for him to take things on faith and live in a boyish fantasy of Cowboys and Indians.

Our man has changed, but he hasn't grown. He hasn't grown because he hasn't confronted his self-doubts; he's just a found a new way to avoid them. He professes to be a Christian, but anyone can see he is a pathological liar who sends soldiers to die and kill without a hint of remorse. As a man he is actually still a child throwing a never-ending temper tantrum, which wouldn't be so horrible except for the fact that his temper tantrums have the power to destroy everything from the Constitution to our schools to Iraq to our forests. But the even bigger problem is that he projects his own sadistic destructiveness onto the Other, be it the evildoers in the rest of the world or the liberal conspiracy here at home. Because he projects his sadistic qualities onto the Other, he will always believe that he is the victim rather than the victimizer, and he will always be certain that he has right on his side. Moreover, because of the kind of family he grew up in, he will always believe that he is above the law and even above the truth. No one has ever forced him to take responsibility for his actions, so he is still the rich frat boy who thinks he can get away with anything because daddy or one of daddy's friends will come and bail him out if he gets into too much trouble.

So that's our President. But it also seems to describe about 1/3 of Americans (especially American males) today, except for the part about his family's incredible power and privilege. The rest of us need to stop acting like enablers in denial, walking around on eggshells because we don't want him to blow up at us. It's time for an intervention.

The negative reviews of this book tend to pivot around one of the following dogmas:

1) Knee-jerk anti-Freudianism. I would recommend reading an actual book by Freud, rather than assuming you know about his theories because your favorite TV shows have off-handedly mentioned the Oedipus Complex. Furthermore, the many negative reviewers who associate Freud with liberalism are comically misinformed.

2) A misunderstanding of psychotherapy. Is it unethical to write a psychobiography of someone you haven't treated? Absolutely not. Freud wrote about Leonardo da Vinci, Moses, and others. The American Political Science Association has a "political psychology" caucus with scholars who write almost exclusively psychological biographies of political figures.

Attacks of either of these stripes are visceral defenses of Bush that pay little attention to the merits of Professor Frank's book.

I perused this book originally thinking, "Nah...just some ill prepared pundit bandying about psychological terms and molding them to a preconceived idea." But Dr. Franks's credentials are impressive enough and the clincher for me was a review on the cover by Dr. Irvin Yalom, a modern pioneer in group therapy and psychiatry who I admire greatly.

I am a Registered Nurse, and those of us who work with patients and families know that language and behavior matters. It often reveals much that a person could not and would not tell you otherwise. And as a Bush-watcher I have had more than one occasion to experience that frissom of alarm from Bush speech mannerisms and behaviors.

And I think Dr. Frank would never say, "only base your opinion on my book." He is actually quite humble and, I think, quite scientific in stating the limitations of his review. But I for one think that the insights of this experienced clinician and researcher are quite acute and useful. They gave substance to those shudders of concern that some us feel when we watch and hear what Mr. Bush says and does.

Dr. Frank is a Freudian psychoanalyst and so be prepared for passages that reference the theoretical framework in his thinking. For someone not greatly versed in psychoanalytic thinking these were challenging passages but also enlightening. For readers that are expecting shallow treatment of complexity, you won't find it here.

I was also struck by the underlying compassion of Dr. Frank. He connects with Mr. Bush's anxiety that drives his to do what he does. At one level, Mr. Bush is in a considerable amount of distress on a daily basis. As an American, it alarms me that Bush seeks to assuage his anxiety at the expense of so many Americans and that is the heart of this book.

Reading a psychological analysis will give anyone the sense of that individual being laid "bare-naked". I can sympathise that this might be acutely uncomfortable for Bush fans and supporters. I would surmise that had Dr. Frank seen fit to write a similar book regarding Bill Clinton the sensations might be equivalent for Clinton watchers. I am sure that Dr. Frank is not without psychiatric opinions about Mr. Clinton, but he felt Mr. Bush's psychologic state was significant in the way that it impacts his capacity and worldview as president. His comments on that are incisive and alarming.

If you are concerned about this president and his policies, this book is a valuable contributor to your perspective on what's happening in America today.

Since his first run for governor, I'd noticed oddities about Bush, how he would promise one thing and do the very opposite. He seemed oblivious to the irony of his Orwell-speak. He openly admitted (and relished) his anti-intellectualism, his distain for self-reflection.... was this simple stupidity or something more?

By the time I saw his meltdown at 9/11 (reading the children's book instead of graciously exusing himself and hot-footing it out to the flying White House, Air Force One) I knew he wasn't simply fooling everyone. Behind his posturing, he was terrified. His swagger was a way of fooling himself.

As a Zen Buddhist with an admiration for behavioral psychology, I dismissed some of the prior history Dr. Frank thought important. What I found heart-breakingly relevant was the grave illness of Bush's older sister, an illness which was shielded from him, the sister's death, the lack of a funeral and the sad, unacknowledged grief of the entire family. The recitation of those facts (and then imagining them through the eyes of a very small boy) allowed me to put my observations about Bush into a coherent whole. I understood the repressed anger, the hidden cruelty (lately, I noticed that his dog runs from him), the just-below-the-surface hurt. Bush surrounds himself with people he can manage. For others, he habitually chooses the pre-emptive strike to protect his fragile ego. This is why he is incapable of accepting blame for anything, even when a sincere "I'm sorry" would smooth the waters for him.

The funny thing is, as a Buddhist a 'strong ego' becomes as a contradiction in terms. Ego mind by its very nature stands alone and vulnerable. It's Higher Self that understands ego to be a chimera. Safety lies in numbers. Non-Buddhists may verbalise Higher Self's connectedness as the sense that we are each a small part of a greater humanity. Christians may verbalize this as being a small part of God. There are many ways to express wholeness, but it's that wholeness which makes for a happy, functioning adult. If ego mind can make no connection to anything more than itself, it remains fragile and afraid. Dangerously so.

I have sensed what others too have sensed -- Bush, under pressure, will begin to deconstruct. Eastern practice behaves much like psychiatric practice -- we delve inside to bring up each and every one of our monsters. By exposing our monsters to the light, they dissapate into the nothingness that they always were. Bush needed to do this when he wanted to stop drinking. He first had to uncover the cause of his drinking. Reading Dr. Frank's book, I think the reasons beome obvious.

Like Dr. Frank, I sense that Bush may fall apart before the end of his second term in office. As a job, it's a killer. My sense is that stress will finally bring Bush's psychiatric problems to a head. We are the heros of our own tragedies. Our personality flaws are the weapons of our own undoing. When Bush's fall from grace occurs, we should forgive him. Read Dr. Frank's book, then watch as events unfold.

Dr. Frank has excellent credentials. Relying on a multitude of data, which for the most part are publicly available, as well as careful observations of public appearances, Dr. Frank connects the dots of the Bush Family history, events in the life of George W. as a child, teenager and adolescent, as well as his behavior as a young man, governor and president. The evolving picture portrays a disturbed and, given the power of his position, disturbing public personality. In addition to Dr. Frank's presentation of verifiable information and well written, comprehensible analysis, the reader will appreciate that the book is a fascinating read. It should be a must for any thoughtful individual who is concerned about the future of this country, if not the world.

Here is an Excerpt from the book which I found available online. From Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President by Justin A. Frank, M.D......

Introduction:"Curious about George" If one of my patients frequently said one thing and did another, I would want to know why. If I found that he often used words that hid their true meaning and affected a persona that obscured the nature of his actions, I would grow more concerned. If he presented an inflexible worldview characterized by an oversimplified distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, allies and enemies, I would question his ability to grasp reality. And if his actions revealed an unacknowledged -- even sadistic -- indifference to human suffering, wrapped in pious claims of compassion, I would worry about the safety of the people whose lives he touched. For the past three years, I have observed with increasing alarm the inconsistencies and denials of such an individual. But he is not one of my patients. He is our president. George W. Bush is a case study in contradiction. All of us have witnessed the affable good humor with which he charms both supporters and detractors; even those of us who disagree with his policies may find him personally likeable. As time goes on, however, the gulf between his personality and those policies -- and the style with which they are executed -- grows ever wider, raising serious questions about his behavior: . How can someone so friendly and playful be the same person who cuts funds from government programs aiding the poor and hungry?. How is it that our deeply religious president feels free to bomb Iraq -- and then celebrate the results with open expressions of joy? . How can a president send American soldiers into combat under false pretenses and then proceed to joke about the deception, finding humor in the absence of weapons of mass destruction under his Oval Office desk? . How can someone promise to protect the environment on the one hand and allow increased arsenic in the public water supply on the other? And why does he feel he can call his plan to lift logging restrictions in national forests the "Healthy" Forest Initiative? . If the president's interpersonal skills are strong enough to earn him the reputation of being a "people person," why is he so unwilling and even unable to talk to world leaders, such as Jacques Chirac or Gerhard Schroeder, who disagree with him? . How can the president sound so confused and yet act so decisively? And given the regularity with which he confuses fact with fantasy, how can he justify decisions based largely on his own personal suspicions with such unwavering certainty? As a citizen, I worry about what these contradictions and inconsistencies say about the president's ability to govern; as a psychoanalyst, I'm troubled by their implications for the president's current and long-term mental health, particularly in light of certain information we know about his past. Naturally, the occasional misstatement or discrepancy between word and deed may be dismissed as politics as usual. But when the most powerful man on the planet consistently exhibits an array of multiple, serious, and untreated symptoms -- any one of which I've seen patients need years to work through -- it's certainly cause for further investigation, if not for outright alarm. President Bush is not my patient, of course, but the discipline of applied psychoanalysis gives us a way to make as much sense of his psyche as he is likely ever to allow.