Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President by Dr. J. Frank

frankiespeakin

While spending time at the Whitehouse official web site and reading and listening to GW Bush's interviews, I started to see signs of mental illness in the President, such as paranoia, denial, megolamania, and detactment from the suffering he is causeing thousands of innocent people.

So I did some google searchs to see if any reputable psychologist have written anything about the pres. behaivor. I came up with a good amount of material here is just a small sample:

http://www.amazon.com/Bush-Couch-Inside-Mind-President/dp/0060736704

Book Description

A renowned Washington, DC-based psychoanalyst examines George W. Bush's public persona-and asks serious questions about whether he is fit for the office he holds.

In Bush On the Couch, Dr. Justin Frank, a renowned Washington, DC-based psychoanalyst, assembles a comprehensive psychological profile of President George W. Bush. Using the principles of Applied Psychoanalysis, the discipline of psychoanalysing public and historical figure pioneered by Freud, Frank fearlessly builds his case, which concludes with a most disturbing diagnosis. With an eye for the subtleties of human behaviour sharpened through thirty years of clinical practice, Dr. Frank traces the development of Bush's character from childhood to present day, identifying and analysing Bush's patterns of thought, behaviour and communication. A thorough and authoritative examination of Bush's public appearances and speeches, along with historical, biographical, and journalistic records, Bush On the Couch is a compelling portrait of George W. Bush, filled with controversial and disturbing revelations about our nation's leader:

. the scion of a powerful family that failed to nurture its first-born son even as it instilled within him a false sense of omnipotence
. an individual in the grip of anxieties that require a monumental effort to manage
. an untreated alcoholic supported by a nation of enablers
. a rigid thinker with a perilously simplistic worldview
. and a megalomaniacal leader driven to invent adversaries so he can destroy them

Insightful and accessible, courageous and controversial, Bush On the Couch sheds startling new light on the Bush psyche and its impact on the way he governs, tackling head-on the question no one seems willing to ask: Is the president psychologically fit to run the country?

See all Editorial Reviews

frankiespeakin

O and here is some more from another source on the mental health of the Pres.

http://www.willthomas.net/911/Bush/

Mysterious

Well for a "renowed" psychoanalyst he has certainly been quiet. Searching an extensive university digital and print journal database I found NO hits with reference to any paper, individual or collaborative ever written by this individual. Furthermore the references on him in google are in regard to this book not any other work and if you prefer other media, wikipedia doesn't have an entry on him either. I would say his book is an attention ploy at best and a misguided attempt to drum up controversy with limited evidence in all likelihood.

That said I would have to say W is "whack" but I don't need junk science to do that.

frankiespeakin

Here's his bio:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/contributors/bio.php?nick=justin-frank&name=Justin+Frank

frankiespeakin

here is a piece from the Guardian:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1033904,00.html

So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad?
Psychologist Oliver James analyses the behaviour of the American president

Tuesday September 2, 2003
The Guardian
As the alcoholic George Bush approached his 40th birthday in 1986, he had achieved nothing he could call his own. He was all too aware that none of his educational and professional accomplishments would have occured without his father. He felt so low that he did not care if he lived or died. Taking a friend out for a flight in a Cessna aeroplane, it only became apparent he had not flown one before when they nearly crashed on take-off. Narrowly avoiding stalling a few times, they crash-landed and the friend breathed a sigh of relief - only for Bush to rev up the engine and take off again.

Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility to "legitimate" targets, often ones nominated by their parents' prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious. All these traits have been described in Bush many times, by friends or colleagues.
His moralism is all-encompassing and as passionate as can be. He plans to replace state welfare provision with faith-based charitable organisations that would impose Christian family values.
The commonest targets of authoritarians have been Jews, blacks and homosexuals. Bush is anti-abortion and his fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible would mean that gay practices are evil. But perhaps the group he reserves his strongest contempt for are those who have adopted the values of the 60s. He says he loathes "people who felt guilty about their lot in life because others were suffering".
He has always rejected any kind of introspection. Everyone who knows him well says how hard he is to get to know, that he lives behind what one friend calls a "facile, personable" facade. Frum comments that, "He is relentlessly disciplined and very slow to trust. Even when his mouth seems to be smiling at you, you can feel his eyes watching you."
His deepest beliefs amount to superstition. "Life takes its own turns," he says, "writes its own story and along the way we start to realise that we are not the author." God's will, not his own, explains his life.
Most fundamentalist Christians have authoritarian personalities. Two core beliefs separate fundamentalists from mere evangelists ("happy-clappy" Christians) or the mainstream Presbyterians among whom Bush first learned religion every Sunday with his parents: fundamentalists take the Bible absolutely literally as the word of God and believe that human history will come to an end in the near future, preceded by a terrible, apocaplytic battle on Earth between the forces of good and evil, which only the righteous shall survive. According to Frum when Bush talks of an "axis of evil" he is identifying his enemies as literally satanic, possessed by the devil. Whether he specifically sees the battle with Iraq and other "evil" nations as being part of the end-time, the apocalypse preceding the day of judgment, is not known. Nor is it known whether Tony Blair shares these particular religious ideas.
However, it is certain that however much Bush may sometimes seem like a buffoon, he is also powered by massive, suppressed anger towards anyone who challenges the extreme, fanatical beliefs shared by him and a significant slice of his citizens - in surveys, half of them also agree with the statement "the Bible is the actual word of God and is to be taken literally, word for word".

XJW4EVR

Sounds more like pathological hatred on your part. Have you ever thought of going into therapy for this problem?

frankiespeakin

Xj,

You could be right or wrong, I won't argue the point. I think the important point is I'm not the President, and I don't effect the lives of millions by decisions I make.

one

Any reasonable person can get an idea about the topic viewing or listening his speech after the last mid-term election

Wasting no time, read letter to be read at the UN by the president of Iran

Woodsman

the scion of a powerful family that failed to nurture its first-born son even as it instilled within him a false sense of omnipotence

Oh please, here with go with the not being nurtured bullcrap.

. an individual in the grip of anxieties that require a monumental effort to manage

You try being President during a war.

. an untreated alcoholic supported by a nation of enablers

I thought not drinking was the best treatment for alcoholism

.

. a rigid thinker with a perilously simplistic worldview

I'll take rigidity over wishywashyness. Besides the facts show he works with his opponents.

. and a megalomaniacal leader driven to invent adversaries so he can destroy them

The adversaries he is trying to destroy were present before he took office. He didn't invent them.

JamesThomas

I agree, Frankie, and don't need a shrink to tell me Bush is an unfit leader and a danger to the world. Interestingly though, when the stakes are this high, it takes people of rare courage to publicly proclaim that the king wears no cloths. Most will continue to remain with the mindless masses and support insanity. Which, sadly, means we probably deserve what we have.

j

Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President by Dr. J. Frank

So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad?

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