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Title
The Madman in the White House : Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson / Patrick Weil.
ISBN
9780674293267
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2023]
Copyright
©2023
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (384 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/9780674293267 doi
Call Number
E767.F73 W4513 2023
Dewey Decimal Classification
973.91/3092 B
Summary
The notorious psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson, rediscovered nearly a century after it was written by Sigmund Freud and US diplomat William C. Bullitt, sheds new light on how the mental health of a controversial American president shaped world events.When the fate of millions rests on the decisions of a mentally compromised leader, what can one person do? Disillusioned by President Woodrow Wilson's destructive and irrational handling of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles, a US diplomat named William C. Bullitt asked this very question. With the help of his friend Sigmund Freud, Bullitt set out to write a psychological analysis of the president. He gathered material from personal archives and interviewed members of Wilson's inner circle. In The Madman in the White House, Patrick Weil resurrects this forgotten portrait of an unbalanced president.After two years of collaboration, Bullitt and Freud signed off on a manuscript in April 1932. But the book was not published until 1966, nearly thirty years after Freud's death and only a year before Bullitt's. The published edition was heavily redacted, and by the time it was released, the mystique of psychoanalysis had waned in popular culture and Wilson's legacy was unassailable. The psychological study was panned by critics, and Freud's descendants denied his involvement in the project.For nearly a century, the mysterious, original Bullitt and Freud manuscript remained hidden from the public. Then in 2014, while browsing the archives of Yale University, Weil happened upon the text. Based on his reading of the 1932 manuscript, Weil examines the significance of Bullitt and Freud's findings and offers a major reassessment of the notorious psychobiography. Weil also masterfully analyzes contemporary heads of state and warns of the global catastrophes that might be brought on by their unbalanced personalities.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 29. Mai 2023)
Available in Other Form
print 9780674291614
Frontmatter
Contents
Introduction
1 The American Collapse of the Treaty of Versailles
2 The Making of William C. Bullitt
3 An American in Paris and Vienna
4 Sigmund Freud, Coauthor
5 The Failure of the First Atlantic Alliance
6 Princeton Nightmares
7 Neurosis on the World Stage
8 Analyzing Wilson
9 Signing On with FDR
10 Ambassador Bullitt Goes to Moscow
11 Diplomacy to the Rescue?
12 After Munich
13 A Phony War
14 Liberating France, Confronting the "Red Amoeba"
15 America's Freelance Secretary of State
16 The Wilson Book, at Last
17 The Return of the Father
18 The Secret
19 Wilson in Retrospect
Conclusion: Personality in History
Notes
Acknowledgments
Index
