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Why Bush Loves Violence
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Psychiatrist Justin Frank, author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President, says the trail of destruction wrought by Bush over the last eight years is the direct consequence of handing a man with a destructive personality profile tremendous power.
George Bush’s presidency is the culmination of a lifelong history of sadistic practices that he must deny in order to maintain his fragile psychological equilibrium. Since childhood, Bush was labeled a bad child, a troublemaker, and a delinquent. He stuck firecrackers into frogs and exploded them; he shot and wounded his little brothers with a b-b gun; he branded fraternity pledges at Yale with red-hot coat hangers; he mocked others and was a verbal bully, irreverent about anything serious.
What do bad boys do when they grow up? They stop; they change. But Bush never stopped being a bad boy; he only did it in more subtle, arguably socially acceptable ways.
Now, as this bad-boy president prepares to leave office, many of his critics are pinning his failures on bumbling incompetence. The conventional wisdom holds that Bush is either a good hearted guy who got in way over his head—or the puppet of Dick Cheney. But if he were simply good-hearted he wouldn’t have mocked his own reasons for committing our young men and women to war; if he were a puppet, he was a puppet who chose his puppeteers. In my psychoanalytic exploration, the trail of destruction wrought by Bush over the last eight years is the direct consequence of handing a man with a destructive personality profile tremendous power.
What do bad boys do when they grow up? They change. But Bush never stopped.
Bush is leaving office immensely satisfied with his presidential accomplishments: Not merely wreaking havoc worldwide—actively destroying Iraq, and passively turning his back on New Orleans—he became feared both abroad and at home, where Congress and the press have yet to muster the courage to confront him. Now, the financial devastation of his policies seems to be hurtling the globe ever faster towards an economic Judgment Day.
The secret sadist in Bush greets all this as wonderful news, made even better by the possibility that he won’t get caught or punished, and that others will at least have to clean up his mess if they can. He may look and sound uncharacteristically sheepish of late, but his sense of self as president remains unchanged at its core. His primary concern remains self-regard, not history’s.
Evading responsibility has always been a central element of the pleasure he takes in the suffering of others, and his evasion has taken many forms, from colluding with questioners to let him off the hook, asking “Ken who?” when asked about Enron’s Ken Lay, to making light of his cruel deeds, casually dismissing the fraternity branding as nothing worse than a “cigarette burn,” or insisting that the United States does not torture when confronted by reporters about Abu Ghraib.
Sadism serves purposes besides giving the sadist pleasure at the pain he inflicts on others. For Bush, the roots of his bad-boy sadism run deep. As a young boy, he identified with his harsh and often cruel mother, whose inability to provide necessary maternal early nurturing culminated in her withdrawal after George’s young sister’s illness and untimely death. He was a ruthlessly-teased, learning-disabled little boy who was criticized by teachers for not being able to keep up in class. And he was left behind by an emotionally distant father who reinforced the message from his mother that it was pathetic for a seven-year-old to show grief about his sister’s death. All of these factors contributed to an unrelenting self-hatred that made him feel weak and ashamed, things he tried to deny by posing as superior, exploiting weakness in others and becoming a bully. This process of externalizing his damaged sense of self, which he then attacked, became so strong later in life that it could only be partly managed by daily exercise and prayer.
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Paul Schrodt is a writer living in New York City. He has contributed to New York magazine, Radar, and Esquire.com.
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The Daily Beast is dedicated to news and commentary, culture, and entertainment. We carefully curate the web’s most essential stories and bring you original must-reads from our talented contributors.
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Justin A. Frank is a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and a teaching analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
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Justin A. Frank is a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the George Washington University Medical Center and a teaching analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. He is a regular contributor to The Huffington Post and author of Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President.
jaclynde
The best point in this article is when it mentions how he knows he'll never be really punished for what he's done...even though he's done many things that could be considered war-crimes.
I think that the movie Frost Nixon is really relevant this year because someone should seriously make Bush sit through a 20 hour interview. We need (needed) to be tougher on him, because he is not untouchable.
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jaguarxjs
Let us not forget that he is also a Christian Fundamentalist that believes he is living during the 'end times' . For him and his deluded ilk war in the Middle East, economic collapse and natural disasters are all merely portents of the coming of their mythical savior, so why should they care or try and make things better?
If we lowly humans can fix our own problems then Dubyah and his fundies would be irrelevant, best not to fix it and just say 'God works in mysterious ways'.
estcruzer
It seems to me that if we knew this about Bush prior to the 2000 election we might have avoided much of the pain and suffering of the last 8 years. Maybe all politicians should have a certified psychoanalysis publicly viewable prior to any election voting. Certainly before we give a gun to someone we need to have some idea what direction they are going to shoot.
wiseguy77
Much of this was apparant to anyone with an eye for behaviour. His mockery as he sent a woman to her death while governor, his Blutto strut, and his disregard for the meaning of words - words were whatever he wanted them to be. This excellent analysis explains a great deal about Bush, but what does it say about those Americans who voted twice for this towel snapping, incorrigable bully? He water-boarded a country - and that was some accomplishment.
Samalabear
Click on the book link and it will take you to Amazon. I read the first review by A Customer, written in 2004, a 56-year-old lifelong Republican, as she describes herself, and she talks about this book and why she did not vote for Bush. It's a shame more people did not see the interviews she apparently saw before Bush was elected the first time. Chilling, positively chilling. She talks about her account of seeing Moore's Farenheit 9/11 and that, too, is fascinating.
My own reason for not voting for Bush was something gut instinct. I didn't know anything about him, but there was something about him and it was very unlikeable and, yes, scary.
estcruzer
Would it be possible to do a public psychoanalysis of Jeb Bush, prior to his bid for the presidency?
pumpkinshirt
from a previous post:
"Let us not forget that he is also a Christian Fundamentalist that believes he is living during the 'end times' . For him and his deluded ilk war in the Middle East, economic collapse and natural disasters are all merely portents of the coming of their mythical savior, so why should they care or try and make things better?"
The merits of the article aside, this little chestnut has become the liberal equivalent of the old conservative insistence that every environmental program is really just a Trojan horse for socialistic big government....that is, it's an easy, simplistic, (and in the case of the majority of those who style themselves as conservative Christians) factually incorrect little thought-package that lets someone act superior and knowing and dismiss anything the other side has to say.
Even if there are people who believe this (and, of course, there are, I'm not denying that), Bush probably isn't one of them. The idea that he's a Fundamentalist shows either a confusion between political pandering and belief or an ill-informed worldview in which all conservatives who are also Christian must be "fundamentalists."
Cognomen
Whenever I got skeptical and thought the author was going a bit far with his speculation I remembered the fact of Bush, as he left the G8 summit in Japan, punching the air, smiling and declaring "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."
baptox
Dr. Frank's psychoanalytic speculation about Bush's childhood behavior and experiences and how they correlate to his adult character are so weak and ridiculous that they are laughable.
His explanation on how the public was "seduced" into supporting Bush and his policies is outright hogwash. Frank conveniently ignores the fact that a lot of us were not only not seduced, but repelled by this moron and worked hard to keep him and his like from getting elected.
Bush was, is and always will be a jerk. Yet he's a jerk who, along with his Rovian Republican machine, knew how to inspire a lot of Americans to vote for him by appealing to the basest human emotion, namely fear. Those Americans who voted for him and his cadre of know-nothing Republican automatons, are responsible for the mess in which this country finds it's self.
Anyone who couldn't see this selfish, petty, intellectually stunted, bully-boy/alcoholic snothead for what he was needs their own psychoanalysis. It is we the people who are ultimately responsible.
cajola
Bush is in a state of denial, he just does not see that he has done anything wrong....and he has inflicted his messed up logic on us all for the past 8 years.
Thank God we only have a few more days to endure his presence and what a legacy he is taking with him...not one to proud of that's for sure!
penscott
What arrant quackery! Does Justin Frank not understand that it is unethical to publish a psychological evaluation of someone he has never had the opportunity to meet and spend extensive time with?
Darsan54
Man, Mr. Frank doesn't pull any punches and his comments make a lot of sense. I have always thought there was something
disturbingly off about George. And yet, the American people were convinced after the first term to give him another shot. That says something about our lack of emotional health.
lenhart
Bush is just batshit crazy. The world would have benefited if Bush had been less rich. The rich can get away with being batshit crazy. Everyone else MUST face the consequences of idiocy, psychopathic behavior or even overt criminality. Bush is all three ---an idiot, a psychopath, a war criminal. The GOP is largely to blame. This is party that has put forward and adored Reagan, Bush Sr (another psychopath) and Bush Jr since 1980. The cold, hard stats from the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the US Dept of Commerce-BEA all paint a picture of UTTER ECONOMIC FAILURE because of the policies of these three psychopathic personalities.
Visualmyth
Having just watched the last press conference of a president I didn't vote for, I was unsurprised by his verbal dodges and inability to see beyond himself in all of his comments. What bothers me in a more fundamental way is the sign behind him. It reads, " The White House - Washington" . This was changed by the Bush Administration from the original and acurate location," Washington DC" . A seemingly small point, but in light of Dr. Frank's observations, perhaps the American people should be suspicious of an administration whose grasp on reality does not even allow them to properly locate themselves on the planet. My question is how does the good doctor evaluate our next president, based on the same criteria, youthful experiences, emotional maturity, an intellectual grasp on reality devoid of self references. I hope that President Obama changes that sign, perhaps then Columbia, female and poetic, will represent a true demarcation point from a period of delusion, self and shared by the nation as a whole. A pity that none of the complacent reporters asked him about his signing statements, where he ran amouk and caused the most damage.
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