A First-Rate Madness (47 page)

224
“on the naked edge of a nervous breakdown”:
Ibid., 256.

224
“Almost uniformly”:
Ibid., 235.

224
“Each painted Nixon”:
Ibid., 244–245.

224
Narcissism has never been empirically validated:
The concept of narcissism was heavily used by Freud, and is a psychoanalytic belief. It is often used pejoratively. Though it can be operationalized and identified in populations (Robert Raskin and Howard Terry, “A Principal-Components Analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory and Further Evidence of Its Construct Validity,”
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
54, no. 5 [1988]: 890–902), it is not validated as a distinct and separate personality trait or personality disorder or unique personality condition. By validation, I mean scientific standards as described in this book: being distinct from other conditions in the four validators of symptoms, course of illness, family history, and treatment response. In such studies, it is poorly separable from a host of other claimed personality disorders. Andrea Fossati, Theodore P. Beauchaine, Federica Grazioli, Ilaria Carretta, Francesca Cortinovis, and Maffei Cesare, “A Latent Structure Analysis of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Narcissistic Personality Disorder Criteria,”
Comprehensive Psychiatry
46 (2005): 361–367. W. John Livesley, “Diagnostic Dilemmas in Classifying Personality Disorder,” in
Advancing DSM: Dilemmas in Psychiatric Diagnosis,
ed. Katharine A. Phillips, Michael B. First, and Harold Alan Pincus, 153–168 (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 2003).

225
“so outlandish as to be downright silly”:
Greenberg,
Nixon's Shadow,
238.

225
“Do not inflict this Freudian horseshit”:
Ibid., 253.

225
Regarding
treatment
:
Ibid., 242–243.

226
“I cannot help thinking”:
Ibid., 232.

226
“dangerous emotional instability”:
Ibid., 257.

226
“crazy with rage”:
Ibid.

226
“as if he were a tape”:
Ibid., 258.

226
Haig . . . remove his sleeping pills:
Ibid., 259.

226
“I think I've got a lousy personality”:
Christopher Matthews,
Kennedy and Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America
(New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), 282.

226
“cocksucker” and “damn Jews”:
Greenberg,
Nixon's Shadow,
254. Rick Perlstein,
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America
(New York: Scribner, 2008), 353.

226
“screw” and “fuck”:
Nigel Hamilton,
JFK: Reckless Youth
(New York: Random House, 1993), 143. Robert Dallek,
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy
(Boston: Little, Brown, 2003), 172.

226–227
Johnson . . . favored metaphors of urination and defecation:
In one of my favorites, Johnson once commented to John Kenneth Galbraith as follows: “Did y'ever think Ken that making a speech on economics is a lot like pissing down your leg? It seems hot to you, but it never does to anyone else.” John Kenneth Galbraith,
A Life in Our Times
(New York: Ballantine, 1981), 450.

227
McGovern told a heckler:
Perlstein,
Nixonland,
739.

227
Victor Frankl would have known:
Said Frankl, “An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.” Viktor Frankl,
Man's Search for Meaning
(Boston: Beacon, 2000), 32.

227
Nixon constantly encouraged the sick JFK:
Matthews,
Kennedy and Nixon,
87–102.

227
Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. sent word to Nixon:
Ibid., 132.

227
Robert Kennedy . . . quietly voted:
Ibid., 113.

227
“I just saw a crushed man today”:
Matthews,
Kennedy and Nixon,
199. Garry Wills,
Nixon Agonistes
(New York: Signet, 1969), 40.

227
to invite the widow and her two children:
Matthews,
Kennedy and Nixon,
292–297.

228
It was 1946:
What follows is based on Matthews,
Kennedy and Nixon
.

229
“Chotiner had two working precepts”:
Ibid., 35.

229
“I understand yours was Whittier”:
Ibid., 61.

230
as author Rick Perlstein puts it:
Perlstein,
Nixonland,
435.

231
“you've got to be a little evil”:
Tom Wicker,
One of Us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream
(New York: Random House, 1991), 686.

231
“The notion of Nixon”:
Greenberg,
Nixon's Shadow,
263.

231
“a study in psychiatric imbalance”:
Ibid., 261.

231
In truth, Nixon was rather normal:
Three authors who appear to come to similar conclusions based on journalistic and historical evidence are Wicker (
One of Us
), Wills (
Nixon Agonistes
), and Perlstein (
Nixonland
).

231
“How is the nation to be protected”:
Greenberg,
Nixon's Shadow
, 261.

231
“A man harassed, tortured, and torn” . . . “There is a delicious inconsistency”:
Ibid., 262.

232
the Hubris syndrome identified by David Owen:
David Owen,
In Sickness and in Power: Illnesses in Heads of Government During the Last 100 Years
(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2008).

233
As a young man:
The material in this paragraph is drawn from Ronald Kessler,
A Matter of Character: Inside the White House of George W. Bush
(New York: Sentinel, 2004).

233
“He was Huck Finn and Tom Sawyer”:
Ibid., 16.
2

33–234
about 15 percent of all adults . . . lose a parent or a sibling:
http://www.disabledworld.com/communication/community/parent-loss.php
(accessed February 27, 2011).

234
childhood parental loss . . . increases the risk of depression:
Kenneth Kendler and Carol Prescott,
Genes, Environment and Psychopathology
(New York: Guilford, 2006).

234
some studies show that . . . losses during childhood:
Norman F. Watt, James P. David, Kevin L. Ladd, and Susan Shamos, “The Life Course of Psychological Resilience: A Phenomenological Perspective on Deflecting Life's Slings and Arrows,”
Journal of Primary Prevention
15 (1995): 209–246.

234
SAT score was 1280 . . . IQ of about 120:
Kessler,
A Matter of Character,
23.

235
his memoir
Decision Points:
George W. Bush,
Decision Points
(New York: Crown, 2010).

235
his blood alcohol level was found to be 0.10:
Kessler,
A Matter of Character,
35.

235
pressured him to quit drinking . . . he apparently did:
A psychiatrist colleague has told me that he knew a Bush family member who claimed that Bush continues to drink and has even been drunk at times at family meals, as recently as just before the 2000 presidential election. However, according to my colleague, that person was not willing to make that accusation publicly, and since I cannot confirm the source or corroborate the claim, I cannot present it as probably or even possibly true.

235
This history is actually the best possible outcome:
George E. Vaillant,
The Natural History of Alcoholism Revisited
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

237
“solved my biggest political problem”:
Kessler,
A Matter of Character,
54.

238
one sign of creativity is “integrative complexity”:
Simonton,
Greatness,
80,

238–239
“I would be at a press conference with him”:
Tony Blair,
A Journey: My Political Life
(New York: Knopf, 2010), xiv.

239
“No one was more shocked and angry than I”:
Bush,
Decision Points,
262.

239
“I remembered the shattering pain of 9/11”:
Ibid., 252.

239
Santayana's dictum that fanaticism:
This view does not undermine my assertion that Bush was mentally healthy. I do not see fanaticism as a type of mental illness. It occurs most commonly, in fact, in the mental health of homoclites, who do not have much integrative complexity. Grinker's work showed this possibility in his description of how homoclites were similar to “muscular Christianity.”

240
Blair was a classic British amalgam:
These pages on Blair draw mostly from his memoirs, and from Philip Stephens,
Tony Blair: The Making of a World Leader
(New York: Viking, 2004), 2–15.

241
a major intellectual guide:
Blair,
A Journey,
80–81. John Burton and Eileen McCabe,
We Don't Do God: Blair's Religious Belief and Its Consequences
(London: Continuum, 2009), 4–8.

242
“It was his manner that won us over”:
Burton and McCabe,
We Don't Do God,
20.

242
became Kinnock's posse:
Alastair Campbell,
The Blair Years
(New York: Knopf, 2004).

242
likable persona and moderate politics:
Stephens,
Tony Blair
.

243
“Progress in Northern Ireland”:
Campbell,
The Blair Years,
xxix.

243
“Some indeed advocated this strategy”:
Blair,
My Journey,
349.

244
“The other way, the way we chose”:
Ibid.

244
liberal imperialism of William Gladstone:
Stephens,
Tony Blair,
16.

244
“We are interventionists”:
Ibid., 215–219.

244–245
“Who knows which [option] is right” . . . “All these years”:
Blair,
My Journey,
349.

245
“The battle is not”:
Ibid., 348.

246
“Friends opposed to the war”:
Ibid., 380.

247
“The world provides sources”:
Shelley E. Taylor and David A. Armor, “Positive Illusions and Coping with Adversity,”
Journal of Personality
64 (1996): 873–898.

249
“The difference between the TB of 1997”:
Blair,
My Journey,
651.

250
“normal basic personality” . . . “mystical fatalism”:
Jack El-Hai, “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist,”
Scientific American,
January 5, 2011, available at
http://www.saloforum.com/index.php?threads/the-nazi-and-the-psychiatrist-goering-and-kelley.286/
(accessed May 1, 2011). Authors have previously wondered whether Kelley committed suicide because of his desperation in realizing how the Nazi horror happened at the hands of normal, ordinary men and thus could happen again anywhere, anytime. El-Hai, who has interviewed Kelley's son and conducted new research, notes that Kelley had alcohol problems and that he killed himself impulsively while in the midst of an argument with his wife. His son believes that Kelley swallowed the cyanide pill by accident.

250
Goering also had an IQ of 138:
El-Hai, “The Nazi and the Psychiatrist.”

250
“Your excellency Major Kelly!”:
John Michael Steiner,
Power Politics and Social Change in National Socialist Germany
(New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1976), 395. The original text of the letter is presented by Steiner in both English and German. The English translation begins, “Dear Major Kelly,” but the original German reads, “
Sehr geehrter Major Kelly!
” The literal translation for the German salutation is “Your excellency”; I've altered the English translation on this point to capture the respect in which the Nazi leaders held Dr. Kelley.

250
the Rorschach tests of the Nazi leaders . . . A follow-up analysis:
Barry A. Ritzler, “The Nuremberg Mind Revisited: A Quantitative Approach to Nazi Rorschachs,”
Journal of Personality Assessment
42 (1978): 344–353. Molly Harrower, “Rorschach Records of the Nazi War Criminals: An Experimental Study After Thirty Years.
Journal of Personality Assessment
40 (1976): 341–351.

252
“I have yet to hear one of these men say”:
Robert H. Jackson,
That Man: An Insider's Portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 170.

253
“You must not picture Professor Brandt as a criminal”:
Robert Lifton,
The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide
(New York: Basic Books, 1986), 116–117.

254
in prominent historical works on Hitler and the Nazis:
John Lukacs,
The Hitler of History
(New York: Vintage, 1998).