cuchulainn
Member
I just heard an interview with Justin Frank (Clinical professor in psychology at George Washington University) who has written a book titled Bush on the Couch. Supposedly, Frank has psychoanalyzed Bush.
I haven’t read the book (and I probably won’t), but listening to Frank, I got the suspicion that he started off disliking Bush and worked backwards to get the negative results he desired. In the interview, Frank's points struck me as similar to stuff you'd hear on Democratic Underground or in a softball interview of Michael Moore -- only Frank uses his professional credentials to lend weight to the opinions.
In any event, I found it professionally unethical for Frank to publicly analyze someone based on second-hand observations (media clips and such). Perhaps the mental health professionals on THR could tell me if Frank’s actions could ever be considered ethical.
Indeed, Frank has come to some pretty specific “diagnoses†based on simply observing Bush on TV (see the excerpt below from the Harper Collins website). http://www.harpercollins.com/catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060736704)
I haven’t read the book (and I probably won’t), but listening to Frank, I got the suspicion that he started off disliking Bush and worked backwards to get the negative results he desired. In the interview, Frank's points struck me as similar to stuff you'd hear on Democratic Underground or in a softball interview of Michael Moore -- only Frank uses his professional credentials to lend weight to the opinions.
In any event, I found it professionally unethical for Frank to publicly analyze someone based on second-hand observations (media clips and such). Perhaps the mental health professionals on THR could tell me if Frank’s actions could ever be considered ethical.
Indeed, Frank has come to some pretty specific “diagnoses†based on simply observing Bush on TV (see the excerpt below from the Harper Collins website). http://www.harpercollins.com/catalog/book_xml.asp?isbn=0060736704)
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