us, whatever our criticisms and even our thoroughgoing disapproval of President Bush, regard him as psychologically a pretty normal guy. Not so a Ph.D. from Britain who has sent me a psychiatric portrait of George and Laura Bush that I’m sure the inveterate Bush-analyzers at VFR will find fascinating. It is followed by my reply. I have changed the name of my correspondent.
Dear Lawrence,
I do very much enjoy reading your web site. Just some quick comments ~
Regarding Laura Bush, I am not American and I live in the UK hence my exposure to her is less than across the water. However, if one examines the life history of George Bush, there must be sufficient evidence to make a diagnosis of a personality disorder as defined in the DSM IV or ICD10. His history of alcoholism makes this highly likely as the majority of alcoholics do have an underlying personality disorder. Whilst detoxification from alcohol appears to be complete and has been followed with a lengthy period of abstinence, the underlying PD is not curable or modifiable. It just tends to mellow out with age.
Given the psychological disorder in the husband and the tendency of psychopaths to have disturbed and abnormal interpersonal relationships in which they seek to manipulate and control others, G Bush’s choice of women is quite predictable. Most psychopaths see other people (and animals) as objects and at various times seek to dehumanise them.
His wife is a somewhat bland and superficial woman of limited education. That is essentially what attracts Mr Bush to her. These very qualities of weakness of personality, impressionability, vulgarity and a desire to be associated with powerful people are the qualities which make her easily manipulated and controlled. She likes to name drop and let it be known that she is associated with powerful people and yet she does not really have the intelligence or breeding to cope with people of that level and the situations in which she finds herself. It is said that Mr Bush has been verbally and physically abusive to her which is quite in line with a diagnosis of psychopathy. It has also been said that she has had to leave home because of his abuse, at times. However she will accept it as the price she has to pay for fame. I think her insight into the situation is quite limited.
Ms Rice is altogether better educated and undoubtedly more intelligent. She also has more poise and dress sense. But she is black and a woman in a white man’s club. Hence she has her own different vulnerabilities but the same yearning for power and acceptability. Hence she too is easily manipulated and controlled.
I think, therefore, that Mr Bush’s choice of women is explained by his striking psychopathology. The Psychopath’s ego is fragile, his sense of self worth and identity weak. A woman of strong opinions or character would destabilise him and perhaps lead him to mental collapse or psychosis. He gains strength by surrounding himself with people who are as intrinsically weak as he is. Their weaknesses allow him the sense of control that all psychopaths feed upon. He would never have married or worked with Hillary Clinton !!
I look forward to your comments.
Regards,
Dr Sally Armstrong
Dear Miss Armstrong,
What you’re describing is very interesting as a general pattern. But aren’t you overstating the supposed psychopathology of Bush? Here are the facts. Up to about age 40, he was a social drinker, becoming, apparently, an increasingly heavy social drinker. He became disgusted with the habit and the behaviors associated with it, and, without any delay or need for extraordinary help (except, he would say, God’s help), he stopped drinking instantly and completely, and has had a remarkably successful and happy life since then. From these bare facts, which seem to me admirable more than anything else, you deduce that he has an “incurable” and “unmodifiable” “personality disorder” and a “psychological disorder”; that he is a “psychopath” who has “disturbed and abnormal interpersonal relationships” in which he has a need to “manipulate” and “control” others; and, finally, that he has a psychopathic need to treat other people as “objects” and to “dehumanize” them, and so he surrounds himself with weak people, particularly weak women, since contact with a strong woman whom he could not easily manipulate would “destabilize” him and might put him in danger of “mental collapsae or psychosis.”
To repeat your core assertion. You’re saying that a man who had a drinking problem, and successfully overcame it on his own, is, for that reason alone, a psychopath. I find this assertion completely extraordinary.
Also, there is absolutely no evidence for the sort of interpersonal pathology you describe. Whatever one may think of him (and, this side of the Bush haters, I have criticized him as much and as harshly as anyone), Bush is clearly a man who is gifted at winning the affection and loyalty of people. Far from manipulating and controlling people, if anything, he seems to let people walk over him too much, ranging from his daughters to his wife to his political opponents to foreign leaders such as President Vicente Fox; as I’ve said several times, Bush gives his enemies a back rub, then they stab him in the back, and then he gives them another backrub. While I disapprove of his tendency to base his political relationships too much on personal feelings (his friendship with Edward Kennedy, his rehabilitation of Clinton, his looking into Putin’s eyes and seeing his soul), it remains the case that Bush clearly has an empathetic personality with the ability to touch people, as demonstrated by his behavior when he has met with the families of 9/11 victims and of slain servicemen. Would that I, or you, had Bush’s gift for friendship and affection.
As for his supposed pathological fear of strong women, his mother is said to be a very strong character, yet, far from fleeing her, he has by all reports an affectionate relationship with her.
But now let’s go on to your psychological portrait of Laura Bush. You describe her as a “somewhat bland and superficial woman of limited education.” In fact, Mrs. Bush has a Bachelor’s degree in Education from Southern Methodist University and a Master’s degree in Library Science from the University of Texas. I would guess that this places her in at least the 70th percentile of educational level in the American population.
In my own observations of Mrs. Bush I agree that she seems somewhat bland and superficial, as I indicated in my blog entry. Nothing unusual about that. Lots of people in this world are somewhat bland and superficial, or, at least, they may seem that way to people who don’t know them personally, such as ourselves. But let’s stipulate for the purposes of discussion that she is somewhat bland and superficial. On that basis alone, you attribute to her “weakness of personality, impressionability, vulgarity and a desire to be associated with powerful people,” all of which qualities “make her easily manipulated and controlled.”
Your jumping from her blandness to this collection of disturbing traits is as baseless as your jumping from Bush’s former drinking habit to his being a “manipulative psychopath.”
But that’s not all. You continue: “It is said that Mr Bush has been verbally and physically abusive to her which is quite in line with a diagnosis of psychopathy.” You even assert that she has been so abused by him that she has left him on more than one occasion but only stays with him because of her sick emotional dependence on him. In short, the Bushes have a relationship somewhat like that of O.J. Simpson and Nicole Brown Simpson.
In the real world, Miss Armstrong, there is not the slightest suspicion of a hint of a rumor that Mr. Bush has ever been abusive to his wife in any way. Apparently, the fact that you heard someone say this was enough to make you believe it to be probably true. When you heard it or read it, did you seek evidence that it was true? Or, since you had already decided that Bush is a manipulative psychopath, did the story simply fit with what you already “knew” about him, and so you accepted it as true?
What drives you to find—in what is an eminently happy and devoted marriage—such a pattern of sickness, cruelty, manipulation, and abuse? What would make you look at two normal people such as the Bushes and see in their relationship a dark pit of pathology? You accuse Bush of needing to objectify and dehumanize people. But if anyone is objectifying and dehumanizing anyone here, you are the one who is doing it to the Bushes, and particularly to Mr. Bush. Have you ever heard of the psychological phenomenon of projection?
In any case, I thank you very much for sharing with me your thoughts—or rather, your baseless prejudices and wild fantasies—about the Bushes. It has been most instructive.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Auster