corrente

OK, psychoanalysis of a public figure from written sources and the media is just a parlor game. But hey! Inerrant Boy might take us all down with him, so we'd better analyze Him with the tools that we have, however inadequate. And Georgetown psychoanalyst Justin Frank has done just that in a new book:

• 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 cultures
• 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

(via Bush on the Couch)

Not to mention narcissism (back).

Funny how the well-documented story about Bush torturing small animals as a child makes it, shall we say, entirely reasonable that Bush not only condoned but encouraged a policy of torture as an adult, even if with winks, nods, and "plausible deniability."

Eh?