Politicians And Psychological Testing

Q: I heard someone say that Barack Obama needed the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright as a surrogate father figure because his own father abandoned him. And I heard someone else say that Eliot Spitzer had a compulsive need to be more successful in life than his enormously wealthy and self-made father -and that was what compelled him to take unacceptable risks . And of course whole books have been written about the Bushes, pere et fils, and how the younger went to war to show his father how it could be done.

These are all examples of politician's daddies and the influence they have on their sons. So, maybe instead of listening to what politicians have to say on the issue, we should call them in for some serious psychological testing. After all, we ask to see their medical records and often the press interviews their physicians, why not do something similar when it comes to mental health?

A: Actually, I think we are already unconsciously, but constantly, psychologically assessing the candidates. Of course, we listen to what they have to say on the issues and for some people these are paramount. Politicians well know the power of single issue voters - abortion, for instance - who will vote up or down on that issue alone -and nothing else really matters.

And then there's the rest of us who make our decisions for a host of reasons, some of them pragmatic - how does he or she stand on Social Security and NAFTA and gun control, etc--but also for reasons that might be considered psychological. What do we make of Hillary Clinton's tight smile or Barack Obama's soaring self-confidence. But when you are putting a candidate on the couch, you have skipped a process that all shrinks go through themselves - analysis. Before we can even start to know others, we have to know ourselves.

In the case of political candidates, especially presidential ones, we have to accept that our own unknown or unacknowledged psychological attraction to a candidate is based not only on his or her attributes, but our own psychological make-up. It is a two-way street, a relationship that works both ways. The candidate and the electorate are like a marriage. Each party's psychological needs play a role. We fill each other's needs and aspirations. And we get mad at candidates when they touch upon our vulnerabilities and don't respond in ways that make us feel comfortable.

So let's go back to the three presidential candidates still in the race. Can you empathize with Obama's apparent need for a strong father figure? Do you feel it is a sign of strength for him to not separate from or condemn this strong male figure in his life. And, if so, is that because you have a similar need? But if the answer is just the opposite, if you feel that Obama's reliance on Jeremiah Wright is silly or weak or just plain inexplicable, is that because you have never had such a need in your own life because mommy or daddy was always there. Is it because you had someone to watch as he shaved, who taught you the deep mysteries of the Windsor knot or that a gold tie clip goes with a brown suit and a silver one with black?

What comes up for you as each politician is psychologically exposed? Does it trigger fears lurking within you? Is there is a middle-aged woman alive who does not look into the mirror, look back at her husband and wonder? Did Hillary Clinton's decision to forgive Bill for his infidelity, for his shocking escapades with a (very) young woman, for the mortification he put his daughter through... does all of that threaten some women more than it ever did Hillary? Are they angry with her for not kicking him out of the White House -setting a very bad example indeed for that guy still asleep in your bed and dreaming of God-knows-who while they check the mirror for signs of overnight aging?

Both Clinton and Obama are human Rorschachs. Their web pages bristle with position papers, but the candidates themselves are unique in American history -a woman and a black man. What deep psychological reactions do they trigger? What's your feelings about women, about middle-aged woman? What's your feeling about African Americans, about African American males?

All of that, of course, is skin (or gender) deep, but it can trigger profound feelings. And then we can go on. Can you understand supporting a strong parental figure because you have always been searching for one? Have you always wanted to be a part of the "popular" group? Are you more likely to vote for the candidate who's got a lead in the polls so that, as in high school, you can be part of the popular crowd? Are you burdened by the need to prove yourself?

None of us are free from troubling psychological issues. That's a given. More problematical is whether these issues are blinding you to the true qualities, or deficits, of a political candidate. So, sure, male presidential candidates have issues about their father and female candidates about their mother -- and don't get me started about McCain and his father, the admiral of the entire Pacific fleet--and sometimes the mother is more important and sometimes the father. But we know all this. It was the stuff of Greek mythology before the couch was delivered to 19 Berggasse. What we don't know -- or don't listen to -- is ourselves, the reasons we sometimes reject or accept a political candidate.

Every election, someone wins and someone loses and the political consultants come forth to explain it all. They say it's about issues and voting blocks and such, but it is often about psychology--not just that of the candidates, but of ourselves as well.

Comments

[Annoula]

Dear Mona:
How does an experienced mental health care professional like you interpret the fact that George W. Bush has been elected AND re-elected, despite his pathetic performance and obvious inability to do the job? What does that say about American voters? Is it our naivete? Or our lack of intelectual complexity? Is it our preference for simple, black and white answers that do not require much effort? How could something that seemed unfathomable to the rest of the world happen here and nobody cared to examine it? I could partially understand the effect of the "guy you can go have a beer with" before he came to power but the fact that he got RE-ELECTED is so mind boggling to me that I am dying to hear a cogniscent explanation from an expert.

[thinkgra]

I agree that psychology is as, or more, important than issues. However, I think it's important to look at the psychological techniques used to manipulate voters. Bob Alteman has done 40 years of research, which he's made available on the net. (Google "The Authoritarians.") The Right has made productive use of Terror Management Theory for decades. Their whole politcal strategy is to appeal to the lizard brain, those reflexive survival mechanisms that override intellectual functions in periods of danger (Thus the terror color codes...and did you notice how anthrax stopped showing up in the congressional and media mailrooms as soon as the Patriot Act was passed?) Yes, psychology is important, and is being used in negative and manipulative ways to influence the vote.

[tbone99]

dirty tricks

[5150]

Eliot Spitzer has been discredited to the point no one wants to hear what he thinks of Bear Stearns. The US Attorneys scandal is beyond the time threshold of America's attention span. Put a sex stamp on someone and that's all America sees.

[waitng]

The heck with this. What w has done vs. spitzer's is not even close to comparable. I will support a person paying for sex if he and the equally repsonsible she are consentual and the money is out of his pocket or hers if she would be willing to pay for sex with him.
Comparing the records of w with a Charles Manson, Ted Bundy or anyother notable serial killer would be more appropriate.
So just thiink how many white collar criminals will not be caught and prosecuted or stopped because spitzer is put on the same level as w.

[anywho]

The photo should have been of Spitzer,Bush AND Bill Clinton. Whenever I see Spitzer my mind always includes a visual of saucy ol' Bill in the oral I mean oval ofice.

[Dap]

))))))))))­))))))))))­)))))))) BINGO ((((((((((­((((((((((­((((((((((

Who We are in the deep recesses of our psyches? INDEED!

[Ono4Hoopono]

I'm glad you brought this up. I hope we can all get a better sense of how our inner processes impact our reaction to the candidates and the spin and demagoguery that flies around about them. Making this conscious will help us make better choices.

[Ono4Hoopono]

I think Obama is the most emotionally intelligent candidate we have had come along in some time. He has done the inner work, you can tell.


Carl Jung says, "Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent." In Obama's case, it appears his mother managed her unlived life better than most, leaving him with an advantage toward establishing his own identity that few otherwise achieve, especially those unfortunate among us who are beleaguered by their parent's shadow through unconscious parenting. In that context, I don't fully subscribe to your assertion that Obama has placed Rev. Wright in the position of surrogate father figure, a position which perhaps solely for the sake of argument.


Any situation in a child's life can be managed with minimal impact through conscious parenting. And Obama appears to have had that with his mother, and his extended family and perhaps his stepfather. There may be some element of surrogate fatherhood at play, but Obama appears to have processed those early challenges in his life and come out a more emotionally intelligent and self-realized person for it. As he did with his "More Perfect Union" speech, he made lemonade out of the lemons life gave him, and this very healthy pattern in his psyche was likely developed with the help of his mother. For him to achieve that sense of self as he apparently did at such a young age, conscious parenting likely played a huge role. We should all be so lucky. He had other men in his life growing up, and considering the kind of woman his mother was, it appears the circumstances of his youth were handled quite well by the adults in his life.


And if you watch Obama with his children today, and you hear how he talks about them and relates to them, you can see the same conscious parenting at work in their lives. He has shown that he values the individual in them. And in his speech he showed how that theme of valuing the individual permeates his thinking and his approach to solving our nations problems. Valuing the individual in others is the mark of a highly individuated person. That says a lot. We should be so lucky to have him as our leader, and the leader of the free world.

[Dap]

Eloquently expressed, Kudos!

[KQuark]

Very insightful post.

[cktirumalai]

The 20th century: Picasso, the arch-modernist, thought one had to kill the father, symbolically, in art; Joyce's "Ulysses" turns in part on the search for a surrogate father.
Patriarch Joseph Kennedy was a force in the lives of all his children, as was their mother. Robert Kennedy felt that he could never return all that he owed them. A more psychological consideration: When Marlene Dietrich arrived at the White House to meet JFK and told him she only had 20 minutes and knew him to be a very busy man, he asked if she had "known" his father in Hollywood. Her response that she had not seemed to settle something in his mind. I do not know how much of the inner drama this episode hints at was intuited by those who voted for JFK and those who voted against him.