Word: mackli
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...LAWRENCE LEFT a legacy deserving a much more intricate and subtle approach than this. In his exhaustive study, A Prince of Our Disorder, Dr. John E. Mack has brought his psycho-historical skills to all that is known about Lawrence in an effort to set the record straight. Not content with simplistic Freudian digs at Lawrence, Mack has gathered every (but every) shred of evidence he could find--friends' recollections, letters, unpublished commentaries to Lawrence's books and, of course, Lawrence's massive opus which almost no one has read, "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom." The project took Mack...
...Mack plays down the importance of "trauma" in Lawrence's development, and focuses instead on his subject's creativity. This emphasis makes a great deal of sense, since Lawrence had without doubt a one-of-a-kind imagination. The study of medieval romances consumed him as an undergraduate, and even as a boy he dreamed of someday helping an oppressed people to free themselves. The Arab campaign gave Lawrence his own modern Crusade, Mack says, and the Turks became the dragon for this latter-day St. George to slay...
...motivation behind this romantic obsession, Mack argues, was Lawrence's need for redemption--a need spurred not only by his shame about being a bastard, but also by the secret life his unwed parents led in order to evade public scorn and prejudice. What better reason for identifying with a people under the yoke of imperialist domination than his own haunting memories of his mother's rigid morality? (An illegitimate child herself, she pleaded with each of her three sons to redeem her by becoming missionaries...
...SAME TIME, Mack highlights the various ways in which a political life, first in the Arab rebellion and later in a Royal Air Force career, allowed Lawrence to exercise his talent for "enabling." Lawrence, through his sharp understanding of the needs of men, managed with grace to prod and guide them into putting their wishes into action. Erik Erikson stressed this same talent for "enabling" in Mahatmha Ghandi, in a work, Ghandi's Truth, that sets the standard for insightful psycho-history. And like Erikson, Mack demonstrates how Lawrence made this talent a continual game that challenged his considerable wits...
...Mack's only consolation during the wet weekend was beating MIT's Barbara Belt for low point skipper honors in A division. Meredith O'Donnell of third-place URI won the award for B division...