Word: abrahamsen
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Some episodes of Nixon's public career might support those descriptions, but Abrahamsen makes his mountains of childhood molehills. When Nixon was a boy, he would lie awake at night, listening to whistles of passing trains and fantasizing about faraway places. This wanderlust, which continued in adulthood, was an outlet for "frustrated sexual desires." Young Nixon was also adept at mashing potatoes without leaving any lumps; Abrahamsen writes that he "chose to release his energy" in this "unusual" way to win his mother's love. The "extent and intensity" of the mashing suggests "aggression" against the potatoes...
...life, and his "oral fixation" later produced enthusiasm for debating and a compulsion to talk on dates. The President-to-be suffered an "anal fixation" too. The evidence cited for this-e.g., his scatological remarks-would doom every G.I. and fraternity man. With both fixations at work, Abrahamsen solemnly concludes, "there could be tittle or no emotional growth...
...Abrahamsen leaps from the known facts to argue that Hannah's home was "joyless," that she perhaps cared for Richard "as much out of duty as out of real love," was "repressed," "anger-filled" and "castrating." Abrahamsen offers scant evidence for these judgments, relying heavily upon a single, pathetic letter from Richard as a lonely ten-year-old. The ex-President's cousin. Novelist Jessamyn West, says she tried to talk Abrahamsen out of his opinion of Hannah, and his depiction of the father, Frank Nixon, as "brutal...
Nixon vs. Nixon has won praise, particularly from those involved in similar work. It is "a good, sound portrait," says Lloyd deMause, editor of the four-year-old Journal of Psychohistory. Duke's Barber thinks that Abrahamsen has shown "how far psychoanalytic interpretations can help in understanding" Nixon...
...Abrahamsen himself has no qualms about treating a living subject without permission. Says he: "It would be more irresponsible if we didn't make people aware of who Nixon was and what he is." Abrahamsen wrote the book to warn Americans about politicians' psychology and also in fear that Nixon will return to public life. Given Abrahamsen's thinly supported theories, however, even confirmed Nixon-haters might be tempted to think that the poor man deserves a better job of analysis...