George Bush's long history of excessive drinking is well known. Additionally, Bush has never accepted that he is an alcoholic or attended AA or other therapy. What does this have to do with Katrina and the administration's current behavior? Everything. Bush is, in Alcoholics Anonymous parlance, a "dry drunk." That is someone who has stopped drinking, but has not accepted that he is an alcoholic so he has never attempted to change the personality defects that lead to his alcholism. The most striking characteristic of a drunk is blaiming others for things going wrong and never admitting mistakes. Because the administration reflects Bush's personality, it is, as
in toto, a dry drunk.
In his book Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President Psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank, provides an analysis of Bush using family history and other historical data to draw a scary picture of the president.
"I don't spend a lot of time trying to figure me out. ... I'm just not into psychobabble."
-- George W. Bush
For all his simplicity and affability, George W. Bush has remained, to paraphrase Sir Winston Churchill, "a mystery wrapped in an enigma." In Bush on the Couch, Dr. Justin A. Frank, a well-respected Washington, D.C.-based psychoanalyst and professor of psychiatry, unwraps that mystery, assembling a comprehensive psychological profile of President Bush. Using the principles of applied psychoanalysis -- the discipline of psychoanalyzing public and historical figures pioneered by Freud -- Frank fearlessly builds his case ... and reaches conclusions that are at once highly persuasive and deeply disturbing.
Through a close analysis of Bush's public statements and behavior, as well as the historical record provided by journalists, biographers, and those who have known the president well, Frank traces the development of Bush's character from childhood to the present day. Examining closely the role of the president's parents -- especially Barbara Bush, an acknowledged disciplinarian whose own insecurities may have prevented her from adequately nurturing her son -- Frank finds in Bush's childhood the roots of a dramatic psychic split that remains a dominant influence on his adult worldview. Frank argues that this split has inevitably hampered Bush's ability to manage his emotions, charging his psyche with restless anxiety, and conditioning him to view the world in the black-and-white terms that have so evidently shaped his administration.
Among the other subjects Frank explores:
* Bush's false sense of omnipotence, instilled within him during childhood and emboldened by his deep investment in fundamentalist religion
* The president's history of untreated alcohol abuse, and the questions it raises about denial, impairment, and the enabling streak in our culture
* The growing anecdotal evidence that Bush may suffer from dyslexia, ADHD, and other thought disorders
* His comfort living outside the law, defying international law in his presidency as boldly as he once defied DUI statutes and military reporting requirements
* His love-hate relationship with his father, and how it triggered a complex and dangerous mix of feelings including yearning, rivalry, anger, and sadism
* Bush's rigid and simplistic thought patterns, paranoia, and megalomania -- and how they have driven him to invent adversaries so that he can destroy them
* * *
Is our president psychologically fit to run the country?
In an August 25, 2005 article on
Capirolhillblue.com it appears even before Katrina Bush was cracking up.
Bush, administration aides confide, frequently explodes into tirades over those who protest the war, calling them "motherfucking traitors." He reportedly was so upset over Veterans of Foreign Wars members who wore "bullshit protectors" over their ears during his speech to their annual convention that he told aides to "tell those VFW assholes that I'll never speak to them again is they can't keep their members under control."
White House insiders say Bush is growing increasingly bitter over mounting opposition to his war in Iraq. Polls show a vast majority of Americans now believe the war was a mistake and most doubt the President's honesty.
"Who gives a flying fuck what the polls say," he screamed at a recent strategy meeting. "I'm the President and I'll do whatever I goddamned please. They don't know shit."
Bush, while setting up for a photo op for signing the recent CAFTA bill, flipped an extended middle finger to reporters. Aides say the President often "flips the bird" to show his displeasure and tells aides who disagree with him to "go to hell" or to "go fuck yourself." His habit of giving people the finger goes back to his days as Texas governor, aides admit, and videos of him doing so before press conferences were widely circulated among TV stations during those days. A recent video showing him shooting the finger to reporters while walking also recently surfaced.
Bush's behavior, according to prominent Washington psychiatrist, Dr. Justin Frank, author of "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," is all too typical of an alcohol-abusing bully who is ruled by fear.
* * *
Dr. Frank, in his book, speculates that Bush, an alcoholic who brags that he gave up booze without help from groups like Alcoholics Anonymous, may be drinking again.
"Two questions that the press seems particularly determined to ignore have hung silently in the air since before Bush took office," Dr. Frank says. "Is he still drinking? And if not, is he impaired by all the years he did spend drinking? Both questions need to be addressed in any serious assessment of his psychological state."
Last year, Capitol Hill Blue learned the White House physician prescribed anti-depressant drugs for the President to control what aides called "violent mood swings." As Dr. Frank also notes: "In writing about Bush's halting appearance in a press conference just before the start of the Iraq War, Washington Post media critic Tom Shales speculated that `the president may have been ever so slightly medicated.'"
Dr. Frank explains Bush's behavior as all-to-typical of an alcoholic who is still in denial:
"The pattern of blame and denial, which recovering alcoholics work so hard to break, seems to be ingrained in the alcoholic personality; it's rarely limited to his or her drinking," he says. "The habit of placing blame and denying responsibility is so prevalent in George W. Bush's personal history that it is apparently triggered by even the mildest threat."
I remember Bill Clinton discussing a book on adult children of alcoholics. He admitted that he recognized many of the traits in himself and his brother. Among them and a desire to always please.
Perhaps this explains why Bush refuses to learn from past presidents. Kennedy took full responsibility for the Bay of Pigs and his approval ratings went up. Truman and Nixon suffered from a war with no end in sight. If the republicans in Cingress gave a shit about the country, they would begin impeachment hearings now. His psycholocal state must be at a crisis point now.