Customer Reviews

THE PRESIDENT'S THERAPIST

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As the administration of George W. Bush slips into history, many people are happy to be done with him. The man inspires vitriol as few can. One recalls Cindy Sheehan's media events outside his Crawford ranch during the summer of 2005 when each enunciation of his surname was a veritable expectoration. His almost unprecedented unpopularity reached its symbolic nadir with the November 2008 ballot initiative in California known as Proposition R which proposed to rename the City of San Francisco's Oceanside Water Treatment Plant after him. So to write a piece of historical fiction about him runs twin risks: to focus attention on a subject most people are only too eager to forget or to be seen as piling on long after the heavy hits have been made and the play has been whistled dead. I believe these reasons may dissuade readers from buying The President's Therapist and that would be a shame because it is a fascinating read without being tendentious or cruel.

In the beginning of the story the author engages our interest by introducing Dr. Alter, a sympathetic protagonist. In addition to being very good at what he does, he has also suffered two huge personal tragedies with grace. We like him and want him to succeed, but can he? He faces a tough challenge with a very brief opportunity to work the problem. So far we have an ordinary work of fiction, but then as Dr. Alter assembles the mosaic of Bush's life from pieces everyone knows and some that very few people know, we come to realize that we are reading something that goes far beyond mere storytelling. Through Dr. Alter's analysis the author leads us to see with startling clarity the culminating event of Mr. Bush's life. (It was not an election victory.) The truth of this insight gripped me, made me believe in Dr. Alter, and kept me turning pages to find out how the story will end.

I heartily recommend The President's Therapist. The psychological insights are profound and the story is well crafted. The dialogue always rings true; I could not help but hear George and Laura Bush speaking their lines as I read them. The author maintains dramatic tension throughout the plot, and this kept me reading until I had finished it in one sitting. Buy the book even if (especially if) you don't like George W. Bush.

Multi-talented John Wareham, leadership counselor, writer, poet and sophisticated Freudian has created a self-help guide for presidents, or perhaps just for one. The President's Therapist, an in-depth examination of George W. Bush's travails--inner and outer--is wise and insightful. In spite of--or perhaps because of--being a compassionate, apolitical study of W, the work is ultimately devastating--and, of all the Bush books, the most informative so far. Wareham reveals a deeply troubled individual who never left childhood: a boy who for sport blew up frogs with firecrackers; a man, (allegedly, deeply religious) who chose to start a mindless game of "shock and awe" that sent 4000 young U.S. soldiers--and countless Iraqi citizens--to their deaths; a born-again Christian proud to be semi-literate. Wareham's insights are based on succinctly stated scholarly searching and researching, a meticulous trolling of the disconnections of W's words and deeds. We watch in awe, as Wareham brilliantly and gently holds up mirror in which the naked cowboy suddenly catches sight of his own impotence. Along with W, we are shown precisely how and why he handled his role so badly. As noted, Wareham is a savvy Freudian analyst, so be prepared for passages that reference that theoretical framework. Readers hoping for a full color portrait will be gratified. This work is lucid, honest and laced with a darkly wicked wit reminiscent of Truman Capote's "non-fiction novel", In Cold Blood. In this case, however, using novelistic license, and his alter-ego self in the form of the fictional Dr. Mark Alter, Wareham delivers empathetic, authentic insight into W's otherwise inexplicable mix of fundamentalism, cockiness, truculence, didacticism, obsequiousness--and alcoholism. Of particular interest is how Wareham characterizes much of the American public and media as enablers, responding as children to an alcoholic parent. Dr. Alter's encounters with Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove--and some delicious marital counseling sessions with Laura Bush--offer even more chilling insights. In all, The President's Therapist is a heady confection of piercing insight and black humor that presents the reader with a sometimes frightening but always tempting cocktail from which every truth-seeker of should drain the last drop

The PRESIDENT'S THERAPIST
(And the secret intervention to treat the alcoholism of GEORGE W. BUSH)
John Wareham - Welcome Rain Publishers, New York, 2008

John Wareham's staging of a "what if" scenario, wrapped in layers of reality offers an unnerving "case study" of alcoholism in the White House. We enter into a series of psychological and forensic intelligence forays engendered by the U.S. Secret Service along with a certain Dr. Mark Alter, leadership psychologist and wizard at "coaching" damaged C.E.O.s into restoring their acumen and performance, with the "patient" being none other than President George W. Bush. It gets even better. We become a fly-on-the-wall in Dick Cheney's office; the private quarters of the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas; and, within the ranks of the president's high echelon secret service agents. Like a calculated hornet's nest, the movements of all these characters are fine tuned into a plot in which the restorative treatment expertise of Dr. Alter circuitously sways President Bush into writing an EXECUTIVE ORDER constituting a global message of apology for the war in Iraq and an announcement of the immediate withdrawal of all troops. (I will leave the fate of Dr. Alter to you). This striking possibility theory classic will leave the reader roiling in a rapture of the truth and the comics. Even those Bushwhacked among us will find this book offering an antidote to the nightmare of the Bush years. Moreover, Wareham has deployed a new generation version of Keats' 1817 perspective of negative capability now so popular in today's leadership training. Eureka! The anxious phantoms that provoke our intuition are not foes but friends after all. Like the missing final piece to a puzzle, Wareham's 231-page bonzer will continue to delight your future parlor games. I would further submit that, The President's Therapist, is one hell of a collector's item

Jess Maghan, PhD
Professor and Director
Forum for Comparative Correction
Chester, CT - December 29, 2008

If you are looking for a deeply insightful examination of some of the reasons why the second Bush Presidency was such a failure, John Wareham's book is a must read. Not only does the book examine many aspects of President George W Bush's early life and personality that have not been widely reported, it also analyzes these events in a way that is both surprising, funny and ultimately very convincing. When you finish this concise and thoughtful book you will walk away not only with a deeper understanding of President Bush, but also and perhaps more importantly an understanding of how the roots of all of our ambitions develop throughout our lives. In short the book is good therapy.

Highly recommended for any politics buff, but doubly so for opponents of the Bush administration. Wareham allows the reader to live out the liberal's fantasy of debating George Bush into submission on the most controversial issues of his presidency.

The author's psychological analysis of the president is brilliantly formed. The book uniquely casts what could just as easily have been a dry academic paper as a thrilling suspense novel. You'll have a hard time putting it down as the pace is set from the first few pages and never lets up.

I read half of The President's Therapist on the way to Vancouver from Toronto, and had to stop myself from reading more, so that I would have it to read it on the way back; I had great difficulty in disciplining myself to do this; every word leads so clearly onward, causing in this reader delicious anticipation for the next.
It is simply frightening (and telling of our world) that such a story reads like it could in fact be true, and its outcome, were it true, would not be too much of a surprise to anyone.
As soon as I got home, I ordered Chancey on Top for me and my wife Susannah wanted (and so I ordered it as well) How To Break Out of Prison.
Dr. Mark Alter's conversations with GWB and Laura brought about suprising encounters with my own self. It was as though I were being spoken to, often, and these encounters with the "self" were meaningful, to say the least. I cannot recommend a book more strongly than this, The President's Therapist is a must read period.
Brian O'Dea
Author HIGH: Confessions of an International Drug Smuggler (Other Press May 2009)

Information in the public arena provides a foundation for the fictional character George W Bush. Author John Wareham is skilled in psychoanalysis and therapy. His character Dr Mark Alter, imaginary therapist to Bush II, brings a literary approach to his work. He knows his Shakespeare and Keats and refers to a range of readings during consultations that consider 'big ideas'. Alter draws attention to "Snakebite" by Max Phillips. Remarkable for its insight, the poem claims that many are bitten as children and irrevocably 'changed'. The novel's analysis of the harm visited on Bush II as a child is compelling. The loquacious Bush II is won over by Alter's confirming, positive responses, which keep him engaged and the dialogue lively, while viable explanations emerge for the character's excesses and addictions.
Astonishing parallels are drawn between Bush II's political philosophy and that of an especially notorious twentieth century political leader. The novel's revelation of power-wielding in an American democracy is, from one perspective, devastating. Alternatively, readers can enjoy an amazing work of fiction with the Oval Office as one of its locations.
Judith Dell Panny

What an interesting and mesmerizing way John Wareham sweeps us up into this multidimensional political thriller narrated by our last president's counselor--or so it would seem. The events of Bush's short treatment are so convincingly portrayed that readers can find themselves not concerned whether those events are fictional or non-fictional; as readers, they've simply become involved in the action early on.

Involved in something more, actually: the mind-moving themes of the book's plot tend to become mind-moving themes of the reader. Here's how it worked for me, and I assume for others too. First the book's beginning narrative: bringing us into a pattern of polyphonic themes, the narrator/protagonist, Dr. Mark Alter, gives us in the first few pages subtle hints about how these themes will soon affect each other. First comes a dream after his son's funeral that opened Dr. Alter's rigidly singular way of thinking into a less cerebral, more emotionally engaged therapeutic practice. Then we hear how this more expansive, mind-moving process, one bridging chaos (or puzzles)and resolution, has brought about a successful case for him. Before the face-to-face interaction, his client had been given puzzling readings about seemingly non-related matters. Word of the client's success reaches certain people of the White House staff, and soon Dr. Alter (well known as a leadership consultant) is brought in to work his wonders with the President, a nearly secret mission involving the President's increasingly problematic alcohol abuse. Of course Bush himself is unaware of this intrigue. Dr. Alter will have only two days, possibly three sessions from start to finish. Meanwhile we readers have been given in the early pages of our book mention of the Alter method's relation to "sobriety," and to Dr. Alter's thinking that perhaps he should have taken the option offered him to "back out of the project." At this point, we can only be curious why his thoughts run along this path.

Now the reader's mind-moving process: we are primed as we enter the several mysteries presented to us as the action moves ahead, but primed in a special way that both language and the emotionally fraught themes, used as Wareham artfully uses them, can almost force our own minds to behave in the same way as those of Dr. Alter's clients. Therapeutic action is indirect and non-threatening: the puzzling readings form metaphors that our minds identify and move with in order to understand (Bush seems, in this book, able to do so). Alter's method echoes Wareham's, in his own professional consulting, and before we realize the extent of our own mirror neurons' echoing the many related thematic dimensions, we're hooked.

Somewhere among the Amazon.com reviews, I remember reading about readers' identifying with emotional issues narrated in the book. I myself got an early start, as I fretted over how quickly and smoothly Alter could move from such a shattering experience as his child's death to the resulting dream causing his professional success. Another Amazon customer became differently aroused to exclaim in a comment "What a load of crap!" The multiple emotional avenues into the emotionally arousing atmosphere bespeak Wareham's clever structuring of the book.

In the end, I'd say that although I don't find it easy to picture incurious George becoming curious about his own stressed-out psyche, I can on the other hand imagine that in the hands of such a skilled and motivated therapist as Dr. Alter, the stories and metaphors might indeed encourage such alchemical responses as Wareham describes in this intriguing book.

What goes on inside the mind of the most powerful man in the free world? "The President's Therapist: And the secret intervention to treat the alcoholism of George W. Bush" is a novel exploring a fictionalized alcohol problem of the last president of the United States, George W. Bush. Told from the perspective of the president's psychologist, it's a story with a unique twist and perspective, blending real events from the past eight years into the tale. "The President's Therapist" is unique, highly recommended, and sure to please.

I'm someone who knows too much about alcoholism and the wounds it inflicts on innocent parties. I guess I was expecting The President's Therapist to provide a glib take on the subject. In fact, the Dr. Alter character showed a sophisticated understanding and a range of profound insights. He then gently led his patient (George W. Bush) to integrate all of the above into the kind of deep understanding that can result in the ability to forgo alcohol forever. I found this book beautifully written, the story compelling, and all the voices authentic. Someone said that author John Wareham wrote this novel book in just four weeks so as to make a timely publication. Having now read the book, I would say that no matter how quickly he may have written it, Wareham actually distilled a lifetime of understanding and created a tonic for any addict. (For any family member or friend I especially recommend the family therapy sessions between George and Laura Bush.)