Reply #259: I read the book by Dr. Frank " Bush on the Couch" [View All]

[jamesinca]

He starts the book off by letting the reader know that he has never had Bush in his office. He makes it clear that he is doing it from a distance based on biographies and autobiographies, televised interviews and press conferences, statements from people around Bush and facts that are known about him. "President Bush is not my patient, of course" (pg xiii)
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The opening two paragraphs of the book state it too.

"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 the president."

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I am not defending the ethics or motives of the book, but I will say he is up front from the beginning in letting the reader know that Bush is not a patient of his.

He states in the introduction that he is basing his analysis on the model set forth by Melanie Klein, the child psychoanalyst.

He also states that for years the CIA has been doing psychological profiles of other world leaders to help guide the U.S. governments approach to these people. In that same spirit and non-consented distant analysis he is doing this to George Bush.

Your comment about the alcoholism he addresses in the book in chapter 3 "Message in the bottle". He states clearly that Bush may have put a cork in the bottle and took care of the "alcohol" part, but there has not been anything that shows he dealt with the "ism" part. These will be hard to know simply because of the secretive nature of the Bush family. As he said in the introduction of the book, this is being based on interviews, press conferences, speeches, biographies and autobiographies that have been written him and the rest of the Bush family.

Be it tripe or dead on accurate, it is a fun read.