Review Essay/Woodrow Wilson

and the Case for Psychohistory

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

Dorothy Ross

Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography. By Edwin A. Wein-

stein. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981. xiii + 399 pp. Illustra-
tions, notes, sources and works cited, and index. $18.50.)
If a case can be m a d e for p s y c h o h i s t o r y - - a n d given the n u m b e r of its critics, it
surely needs defending--Woodrow Wilson would seem to provide t h e ideal
forum. Biographers and historians of all persuasions have recognized t h a t
Wilson's personal psychology was a factor in his behavior at a crucial h i s t o r i c a l
juncture. Wilson t h u s gives us an issue t h a t u n m i s t a k a b l y requires
psychological explanation and is of significance to history. He allows us to de-
fend psychohistory on its most elementary ground, that of p s y c h o b i o g r a p h y .
And he stands close enough in time and culture to our current p s y c h o l o g i c a l
theories to avoid the troubling problem of historical anachronism.
Most important, Wilson is the subject of a large body of p s y c h o h i s t o r i c a l
work. The publication of Edwin A. Weinstein's biography is a l a n d m a r k e v e n t
not only because it raises the standard of evidence and skill to be e m p l o y e d in
biography but also because it builds on a considerable body of p s y c h o h i s t o r i c a l
work on Wilson. Nearly all critiques of psychohistory focus on the s h o r t c o m -
ings of single works. But the most revealing unit for historiographical a n a l y s i s
is the c u m u l a t i v e body of scholarship on a subject. What ranks as a contribu-
tion is w o r k that improves upon previous work by expanding the base of
evidence, clarifying patterns of action and causation, or r e f o r m u l a t i n g and
refining the questions asked. Psychohistory has often been criticized for failing
to meet historical standards of scholarship. Weinstein's biography is an ap-
propriate occasion to ask whether the body of psychobiographical w o r k on
Wilson displays the kind of cumulative gains that w o u l d m a k e it a w o r t h y tool
of the historian's craft.
To pose this test for psychohistory is to ask of it no more nor less t h a n
historians have been willing to demand of other kinds of social science
history. Historians are frequently warned off psychological theories, par-
ticularly p s y c h o a n a l y t i c ones, because they are n o t truly scientific. Yet n o n e
D o r o t h y Ross is a s s o c i a t e p r o f e s s o r of h i s t o r y at t h e U n i v e r s i t y of V i r g i n i a .

The Journal of American History Vol. 69 No. 3 December1982 659

660 The Journal of American History

of the social sciences meets the positivistic tests of science established by the
physical sciences. At a time w h e n m a n y social and behavioral scientists, and
m o s t psychoanalysts, have given up the claim to science in that sense, it
seems inappropriate for historians, of all people, to uphold the positivistic
canon, i
Beneath the charge that psychological theories are not truly scientific is the
fear t h a t psychology is so divided and its different theories so contradictory
t h a t no historical agreement can follow from their use. But this fear is un-
founded. While a n u m b e r of schools of psychology are focused on problems or
types of evidence that cannot be of use in historical study, the most relevant to
history, certainly to biography, are the personality theories, and here the range

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

of difference and convergence is not unlike the range of difference and con-
vergence between different schools of historical interpretation.
Historians' use of differing psychological theories can play the same
disconcerting but fruitful role in historiography as other kinds of interpretive
variation. Historians would feel justly aggrieved if social scientists studying
r e v o l u t i o n a r y m o v e m e n t s read Lawrence H e n r y Gipson, Merrill Jensen, and
Bernard Bailyn on the American Revolution and t h e n m e r e l y threw up their
h a n d s in dismay. We would recognize t h a t m u c h of the difference between
these interpretations was caused by their focus on different aspects of a
m u l t i d i m e n s i o n a l problem and that other differences were the result of
divergent causal theories that m a y or m a y not be necessary to decide in the
present instance. We would recognize that as one delved more deeply into the
t e x t u r e of a r g u m e n t and primary sources, one w o u l d achieve a closer sense of
t h e complex p h e n o m e n a of history and a more artful interpretation. The
h i s t o r i a n who goes to psychology and makes a similiar c o m m i t m e n t to critical
reading and observation will achieve similar gains.
Psychology and the social sciences are like history, then, in having multiple
paradigms, but t h e y are like the natural sciences in their attempts to form
s y s t e m a t i c descriptive and causal theories, and these do present special dif-
ficulties for the historian. When dealing w i t h the social sciences, m o s t
historians seem willing to import systematic theories and m e t h o d s into
h i s t o r y , w i t h the recognition that they set up an inevitable tension w i t h tradi-
t i o n a l historical values. The precision of technical language and the clarity of
relations, w h i c h are specified by the closed theories of the social sciences,
bring gains to analysis even while they war against the resonance, flexibility,
and openness t h a t historians gain from their use of ordinary language, and need
in their traditional goal of reaching the complex particularity of the historical
past. Psychohistory offers similar gains and threatens similar losses, and it re-
quires similar watchful attention, monitored and adjusted case by case. Let us
1 The most recent critique of psychohistory to suffer from misplaced positivism is David E.
Stannard, Shrinking History: On Freud and the Failure of Psyehohistory (New York, 1980). Even
Hayden White remarked that one reason he did not use psychological categories to analyze
historical rhetoric was that "psychologyhas not attained to the kind of systematization which
characterizes the physical sciences, but remains divided into contending 'schools' of interpreta-
tion." Hayden White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Europe
(Baltimore, 1973), 431. Yet White borrowed categories from philosophy, linguistics, and
sociology, surely fields that equally fail to meet that test of science. For a similar defense of
psychohistory, see Saul Friedlander,History and Psychoanalysis: An Inquiry into the Possibilities
and Limits of Psychohistory, trans. Susan Suleiman (New York, 1978), 12-16.
Wilson and the Case for Psychohistory 661

turn, then, to the particular case of Wilson and the historical tests appropriate
to it.
I would like to deal here with the three major psychological studies of
Wilson by Sigmund Freud and William Bullitt, Alexander L. George and
Juliette L. George, and Weinstein, as well as with the work of Wilson's preemi-
nent historical biographer, Arthur S. Link, and that of his former student, John
M. Mulder. 2 These biographers represent very different interpretive stances.
Link and Mulder approach Wilson as traditional historians, untrained in
psychology, though Mulder is sensitive to Eriksonian theory; Freud and Bullitt
as embittered contemporaries of Wilson, wielding a simplified version of
orthodox psychoanalysis; the Georges as political scientists, who combine

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

psychoanalysis and Harold D. Lasswell's theory of political personality; and
Weinstein as a neurologist, an expert in both neurological illness and the
psychological responses to organic illness, who is skeptical of psychoanalytic
theories and adopts an eclectic, clinical approach, organized most often around
the concept of physical and psychological stress.
These biographers have the additional virtue of constituting a rich historical
discourse. Link's original biography in 1947 was one of the principal sources
for the Georges' study in 1956. When the Freud and Bullitt biography was
published in 1967, Link wrote a critique of it; recently he and Weinstein have
exchanged sharp words with the Georges. a In writing his own biography of
Wilson, Weinstein worked closely with Link, and the book has been published
as a supplementary volume to the Papers of Woodrow Wilson, which Link
edits. Mulder's study of Wilson before 1912 built on both Link and Weinstein,
and they in turn base some of their recent writing on his findings.
To m y mind, the most striking and encouraging aspect of this diverse body
of literature is the degree of agreement displayed. There are, to be sure, impor-
tant areas of disagreement and diverging theoretical implications. Never-
theless, there is a surprising degree of consensus about the quality of Wilson's
behavior and about its causes. All these biographers have recognized that
Wilson's personality had a destructive effect on the way he negotiated the
Treaty of Versailles and the way he sought United States ratification, and all
have agreed that his quarrels as president of Princeton, starting in 1906, bore
significant similarities to his later failures.
Next, all have described the qualities of Wilson's personality chiefly respon-
sible for those failings as overconfidence, egotism, unrealistic faith in his own
judgments and powers, and stubborn adherence to his principles, combined
with ambition and desire for power. Link originally described this personality
2 Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt, Thomas Woodrow Wilson, Twenty-eighth President of
the United States: A Psychological Study (Boston, 1967); Alexander L. George and Juliette L.
George, Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Personality Study (New York, 1964}; Arthur S.
Link, Wilson (5 vols., Princeton, 1947- ); Arthur S. Link, Wilson the Diplomatist: A Look at His
Major Foreign Policies (Baltimore, 1957); John M. Mulder, Woodrow Wilson: The Years of
Preparation (Princeton, 1978). Edwin A. Weinstein's book expands upon an earlier article, Edwin
A. Weinstein, "Woodrow Wilson's Neurological Illness," Journal of American History, 57 (Sept.
1970), 324-51.
3 Arthur S. Link, "The Case for Woodrow Wilson," Harper's Magazine, 234 (April 1967), 85-93;
Edwin A. Weinstein, James William Anderson, and Arthur S. Link, "Woodrow Wilson's Political
Personality: A Reappraisal," Political Science Quarterly, 93 (Winter 1978-79), 585-98; Juliette L.
George and Alexander L. George, "Woodrow Wilson and Colonel House: A Reply to Weinstein,
Anderson, and Link," Political Science Quarterly, 96 (Winter 1981-82), 641-65.
662 The Journal of American History

constellation as an ordinary characterological failing; the Georges and Wein-

stein have placed it within a larger pattern of psychological disturbance, and
Link now appears to agree with Weinstein's formulation. Only Freud and
Bullitt regarded Wilson's overconfidence as nearly psychotic.
In addition, all have recognized that Wilson's personality displayed a strik-
ing degree of insecurity. Freud and Bullitt emphasized Wilson's fundamental
passivity, which made him seek submission to his father and others. The
Georges and Weinstein have emphasized Wilson's constant need for reassur-
ance and approval and have described the relationships through which he
sought this reassurance--relationships with his wife, numerous women
friends, and a few close male friends like Colonel Edward M. House--as

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

involving, on his part, highly idealized images of these partners.
For Freud and Bullitt and the Georges, Wilson's overconfidence and his in-
security were systematically connected. For them, in fact, the insecurity or
passivity was fundamental and the overconfidence a consequent result. An ar-
ticle by Weinstein, James William Anderson, and Link suggested rather an
eclectically mixed picture, finding Wilson "confident in some areas, insecure
in others." Weinstein thus demurred as well from the view of both Freud and
Bullitt and the Georges that Wilson's public career was at bottom an acting out
of personal deficiencies. He admitted that concern for the public good is never
divorced from personal gratification, but he found Wilson's particular desire
for political power "a complex, multidetermined process." In his new book,
however, Weinstein shows us a level of unconscious compensation in Wil-
son's political behavior that Freud and Bullitt and the Georges have missed.
Examining Wilson's liaison with his closest woman friend, Mary Alien
Hulbert Peck, Weinstein suggests that Wilson's subsequent effort to "devote
himself to the service of others and to purifying politics" was in part an
attempt to erase his personal impurity in the Peck affair. 4
A final element in Wilson's personality on which there is substantial agree-
m e n t is the importance of language and oratory. All biographers have agreed
that Wilson's facility with spoken language was a major strength, an impor-
tant source of his political achievements, but also that he placed excessive
reliance upon it during those critical episodes of failure.
In their search for the causes behind this personality pattern, Wilson's
biographers have placed a great deal of emphasis on the formative influence of
his parents. His biographers have regarded Wilson's relationship with his
preacher father as the chief source of his political ambitions, moral idealism,
and oratorical drive. In addition, they have pointed to the importance of
religious belief in Wilson's personality and have seen it as reinforcing the
determination to fight for principle, knowing that God would ultimately vin-
dicate the Right.
For Freud and Bullitt and the Georges, Wilson's father was the principal
source of his pathology. Although Freud and Bullitt painted the elder Wilson as
loving and the Georges saw him as predominantly a critical, dominating
figure, they both described the boy's response to him as one of conscious ac-
quiescence and unconscious hostility. In their view, Wilson's " c o m p u l s i v e "
4 Weinstein, Anderson, and Link, "WoodrowWilson's Political Personality," 598; Edwin A.
Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson: A Medical and Psychological Biography (Princeton, 1981), 225.
Wilson and the Case for Psychohistory 663

need for power or success and his ambivalent acquiescence to, a n d s t u b b o r n

hatred of, male rivals all derived from patterns established in his struggle w i t h
his father.
The m o r e recent biographers have agreed that Wilson had an especially
strong a t t a c h m e n t to his father and expressed no o u t w a r d h o s t i l i t y t o w a r d
him, but t h e y have seen the relationship as a h e a l t h y one, in w h i c h no un-
conscious hostility existed. Weinstein paints the elder Wilson as d e m a n d i n g
but loving and supportive; and Mulder showed how, over the years, t h e son
came to take the d o m i n a n t position in the relationship, as his f a t h e r experi-
enced failure in his o w n career and came increasingly to rely on his successful
son. Noting that Wilson did not learn to read until about eleven years old, t h e

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

Georges had suggested t h a t this tardiness was a result of u n c o n s c i o u s h o s t i l i t y
on Wilson's part toward his tyrannical father. Weinstein suggests r a t h e r t h a t
Wilson suffered from developmental dyslexia.
The chief source of the weaker aspects of Wilson's personality, according to
Weinstein, was his m o t h e r . Weinstein is the first to explore W i l s o n ' s relation-
ship w i t h his mother. He portrays a sickly and fearful w o m a n w h o e n c o u r a g e d
a prolonged a t t a c h m e n t w i t h her son and a neurotic pattern of i d e n t i f i c a t i o n
centering on m u t u a l concerns about ill health. Wilson's m o t h e r l a v i s h e d on
h i m excessive anxiety, affection, and approval and protected h i m f r o m a n y im-
putation of failure. Weinstein shows that major debilitating features of
Wilson's personality derived from this prolonged a t t a c h m e n t to his m o t h e r .
He was left w i t h a " n o t a b l e lack of curiosity and reluctance to engage in n e w
experiences." Separation and emotional stress brought on depression and
psychosomatic s y m p t o m s for the remainder of his life. Most c o n s p i c u o u s l y , he
always felt the need for the "close companionship of w o m e n , p a r t i c u l a r l y in
stressful s i t u a t i o n s . " s
The principal n o v e l t y of Weinstein's approach is his suggestion t h a t W i l s o n
suffered from progressive arteriosclerosis, a disease that resulted in a series of
strokes of increasing severity, starting probably w i t h m i n o r episodes in 1896,
accelerating to a major stroke in 1906, and c u l u m i n a t i n g w i t h t h e o v e r w h e l m -
ing one of 1919. Weinstein concludes that while these strokes m a y have pro-
duced organic effects t h a t affected Wilson's behavior, such effects w e r e prob-
ably transient u n t i l the 1919 stroke left h i m badly disabled. Before 1919 t h e
really disabling aspect of Wilson's neurological disease was his p s y c h o l o g i c a l
response to it. Weinstein m a k e s a convincing case t h a t Wilson d e n i e d the
seriousness of his illness, suppressing his anxiety and depression, and t h a t this
denial substantially altered his behavior in the periods after his experience of
organic s y m p t o m s . The denial heightened his sense of his o w n abilities and his
stubborn d e t e r m i n a t i o n to do right--his sense of m i s s i o n in t h e w o r l d - - a t
times to a m a n i c degree. At the same time, his fears increased t h e e m o t i o n a l
stress under w h i c h he lived, weakening his rational control over feelings of in-
security and anger.
s Weinstein, Woodxow Wilson, 80-81. As a theoretical guide to this mother-son relationship,
Weinstein finds John Bowlby's theory of attachment behavior more "attractive" than orthodox
psychoanalytic theories. Bowlbyis a British psychoanalystwho couches his theory in behavioral
terms. However, ego-psychoanalytictheories would agree with the link Weinstein draws between
Woodrow Wilson's attachment and his subsequent disabilities. On Bowlby, Weinstein refers to
Mary D. Salter Ainsworth and Silvia M. Bell, ' 'Mother-InfantInteraction and the Development of
Competence," in The Growth of Competence, ed. Kevin Connolly and Jerome Bruner [London,
1974), 97-118.
664 The Journal of American History

Thus, in two ways, Weinstein's formulation leads back to the character

shaped in Wilson's early family life. First, Wilson was inclined to respond to
his illness by denial because of the ambition and stubborn moralism he had
learned from his father and the need for controlling anxiety and the exag-
gerated sense of his abilities that accrued from his attachment to his mother.
Second, these legacies left him highly vulnerable to emotional stress. Quite
apart from the response to his organic symptoms, Weinstein shows Wilson
overreacting or underreacting to situations and people that roused his anxi-
eties.
T h e final picture to emerge from Weinstein's analysis, then, differs in degree
and shading, but not in kind, from that of earlier Wilson biographers. The per-

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

sonality Weinstein draws was not the result of neurotic tendencies formed in
the childhood response to the Oedipus complex. Rather it was the result of a
m o r e complex etiology. Yet the behavior to result was in m a n y ways similar to
that shown by Freud and Bullitt, the Georges, and Link. Weinstein believes
that had it not been for the final stroke, Wilson would have compromised. But
this reader at least is inclined to agree with Link's original judgment, and with
the Georges, that Wilson was by that time bent on principled martyrdom. 6 In-
deed, Weinstein's evidence points in the same direction. His detailed account
of the long history of Wilson's recurrent illnesses--organic, psychosomatic,
and emotional--leaves the reader with a deeper sense of Wilson's psycho-
logical instability than Weinstein perhaps realizes.
Given the important agreement among Wilson's biographers, does their
w o r k also display some progress in understanding? The first thing to note is
that in psychohistory, as in other kinds of history, evidence does make a dif-
ference. Freud and Bullitt lacked information or relied on misinformation at
crucial points in their analysis, and the Georges were able to draw their hostile
picture of Wilson's father and sketchy accounts of his mother in part because
of the paucity of primary source material. A new group of Wilson letters, in-
cluding correspondence between Wilson and his parents during his college
years, was discovered in 1963, and although the Georges republished after that
date without consulting the papers, the work done since by Link, Mulder, and
Weinstein has reflected the less tyrannical view of Wilson's father and/or
m o r e important position of his mother indicated in those letters. I believe that
historians who now go over the complete historical record will find Freud and
Bullitt's and the Georges' accounts of Wilson's early family life faulty and
inadequate--and this will be true regardless of what psychological theory they
bring to the material. Weinstein's view of the family relationships is not
altogether satisfactory, as I will indicate in a moment, but any personality
t h e o r y will have to take into account his detailed findings.
N e w historical evidence also makes a difference in evaluating Wilson's
Princeton failure. As Mulder stressed, Wilson's policies reflected real problems
of power and principle at Princeton more fully than Link originally, or Freud
and Bullitt and the Georges, recognized. This new iudgment of the real
historical situation in which Wilson acted is bound to affect one's iudgment of
his personality. For historians and psychologists alike, a fundamental tool of
6 Link, Wilson the Diplomatist, 154-55; George and George, "Reply to Weinstein, Anderson,
and Link," 654.
Wilson and the Case for Psychohistory 665

personality analysis is the evaluation of the extent to w h i c h a p e r s o n under-

stands and responds to a situation in a realistic manner. As historical j u d g m e n t
of the " r e a l " situation shifts or b e c o m e s more refined, so t o o m u s t any
psychological judgment dependent upon it. If Mulder's view of t h e P r i n c e t o n
situation is correct, it no longer appears, as it did to the Georges, t h a t W i l s o n
m a n u f a c t u r e d the quarrel out of whole cloth or that the p o w e r struggle w i t h
Dean Andrew F. West was his central dominating motive.
If p s y c h o h i s t o r y responds to evidence, it is also true t h a t different
theoretical orientations lead psychohistorians, as they lead o t h e r k i n d s of
historians, to bring to light different aspects of a complex reality. W e i n s t e i n ' s
general skepticism toward orthodox psychoanalysis led h i m to l o o k e l s e w h e r e

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

than at the traditional Oedipus complex. His neurological expertise is a rarer
c o m m o d i t y in historiography and has led to novel results. As in all areas of
specialized knowledge, though, experts s o m e t i m e s disagree, and t h e G e o r g e s
have already mobilized a physician w h o has raised serious q u e s t i o n s a b o u t
Weinstein's diagnosis, z Given the detailed circumstantial evidence available,
however, it is possible that a consensus on Wilson's neurological illness will
u l t i m a t e l y emerge among experts and among the historians w h o m u s t w e i g h
the experts' evidence by their o w n light.
Even pending that consensus, Weinstein's effort has produced c o n s i d e r a b l e
gain. In order to prove his argument about the importance of organic disease
and the psychological response to organic disease, in the light of t h e c o n t r a r y
psychological theories already in the field, Weinstein has had to d i s t i n g u i s h
carefully w h a t in Wilson's behavior could be attributed to organic causes,
what to psychological response to illness, and what to e m o t i o n a l p r o b l e m s of
separate origin. It is precisely his careful rendering of the evidence, so as to dis-
entangle these threads, that gives the book its rich texture, presenting us w i t h
nuanced views of Wilson's actions on w h i c h all future historians will h a v e to
build. O n e instance is crucial. The Georges had no explanation for w h y
Wilson's plans at Princeton after 1906 became suddenly so unrealistic, except
for the s o m e h o w c u m u l a t i v e effect of a " c o m p u l s i v e " drive for p o w e r , b u t
Weinstein shows clearly that whether or not Wilson actually e x p e r i e n c e d a
stroke in 1906, he and his family understood his s y m p t o m s to be s e r i o u s l y life
threatening, and his behavior t h e r e H t e r - - e v e n before meeting o p p o s i t i o n - -
altered significantly. It appears that what destabilized Wilson at P r i n c e t o n w a s
the real threat of narcissistic injury.
One other area of particular interest that Weinstein clarifies is W i l s o n ' s in-
tellectual style. Link had originally pointed out some of the m a i n features, b u t
Weinstein sharpens the portrait. Wilson's m i n d and m e m o r y w e r e f o c u s e d on
metaphor and imagery rather than the literal meaning of words, on t h e large
contour of ideas and their emotional content rather than t e c h n i c a l detail.
These qualities gave Wilson's speech great eloquence and also a l l o w e d h i m to
invest his language with "self-referential" symbols. Wilson's reading w a s
remarkably narrow and centered on works that offered e m o t i o n a l r e s o n a n c e .
He wrote and fantasized repeatedly about constitutionalism and t h e orator-
statesman, and he often used organic metaphors that expressed his c o n c e r n
z A detailed letter from Michael F. Marmor, an expert ophthalmologist, who questions the
ophthalmological and neurological bases of Weinstein's diagnosis, appears in George and George,
"Reply to Weinstein, Anderson, and Link," 663-65.
666 The Journal of American History

about health. Wilson's cognitive style, in other words, was manifestly not that
of w h a t the Georges call a "compulsive" personality.
Finally, we must address the bald contradictions and open questions these
authors raise. Does Weinstein's biography allow us to reformulate or refine the
issues for future biographers? There are still major contradictions in the his-
toriography regarding the influence of Wilson's father and mother on his per-
sonality, the relation or lack of relation between his overconfidence and his in-
securities, and the degree and precise character of his personality problems.
W i t h his eclectic, clinical approach and interpretive caution, Weinstein seems
to have deliberately left these issues open. However, the mother-son relation-
ship Weinstein has drawn and the centrality of narcissistic issues both point to

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

the use of recent psychoanalytic ego psychology to reach a more subtle and
integrated view of Wilson's personality.S
A boy who clings to his mother is likely to feel ambivalent toward her, to
desire continued closeness but also to fear being swallowed up in the relation-
ship. 9 The father in such a situation is likely to meet an analogous fate--being
at once .the object of "over" identification as a model of independent
masculine identity and the object of anger for his failure to protect the child
from his overprotective mother. Oedipal conflicts could only exacerbate these
tensions. It is noteworthy that clinging mother-son relationships can result
w h e n the husband is physically or emotionally absent, as the elder Wilson
often was. The first clear instance of psychosomatic symptoms Weinstein
finds occurred the first summer Wilson returned home from college, when his
father went off on vacation, leaving him alone with his sick mother. The col-
lege letters disclose that the covert tensions in this triadic relationship were
covered with lavish affection. Wilson was " c h o s e n " by both parents as the
s The term psychoanalytic ego psychology usually embraces a diverse body of theoretical
developments in psychoanalysis since the 1930s, including the developmental psychology of Erik
H. Erikson, the work of Margaret S. Mahler on separation and individuation, and the work of
Heinz Kohut on narcissism. See David Rapaport, "A Historical Survey of Psychoanalytic Ego
Psychology," in Erik H. Erikson, Identity and the Life Cycle: Selected Papers [New York, 19591,
5-17; Gertrude Blanck and Rubin Blanck, F,go Psychology: Theory and Practice INew York, 1974J.
Still others within this general designation have explored ego styles or the intersection of ego and
society. See, for example, David Shapiro, Neurotic Styles {New York, 19651; Fred Weinstein and
Gerald M. Platt, Psychoanalytic Sociology: An Essay on the Interpretation of Historical Data and
the Phenomena of Collective Behavior {Baltimore, 1973). Sigmund Freud's structural theory took
cognizance of the importance of independent ego development, but his fundamental dynamic
remained--as in the volume on Wilson--the distribution of libido fixed by resolution of the
Oedipus complex. Alexander L. George and Juliette L. George used the mixture of Freudian, neo-
Freudian, and ego psychologies that Harold D. Lasswell drew together in his theory of the political
personality. See Harold Dwight Lasswell, Power and Personality {New York, 1948); and Harold D.
Lasswell, "The Selective Effect of Personality on Political Participation" in Studies in the Scope
and Method of "'The Authoritarian Personality," ed. Richard Christie and Marie Jahoda [Glencoe,
Ill., 1954), 197-225. They trace Wilson's original pathology to an ego factor, low self-esteem, and
show how the dispositions formed in childhood, chiefly in the Oedipus complex, were shaped by
interaction with situational factors throughout his life. However, their account of his personality
focused so exclusively on a "compulsive" drive for power that their analysis was far more reduc-
tionistic than interpretations based in psychoanalytic ego psychology need be.
9 The reconstruction of childhood feelings that follows is not a historical reconstruction but a
theoretical one, designed to clarify and extend the patterns of adult behavior found in the
historical record. What we know of Wilson's family and childhood conforms to the model. For
discussion of this psychohistorical strategy, see Richard L. Bushman, "On the Uses of Psychology:
Conflict and Conciliation in Benjamin Franklin," Historyand Theory, 5 [no. 3, 1966), 225-40.
Wilson and the Case for Psychohistory 667

child of special promise, a judgment in w h i c h his younger b r o t h e r w a s ex-

pected to join. The wall of m u t u a l admiration they erected allowed W i l s o n n o
m e a n s of escaping his a t t a c h m e n t to his mother. T h u s neither the G e o r g e s ' ex-
clusive emphasis on the father-son relationship nor Weinstein's a t t e m p t to ex-
onerate it seems adequate. Wilson's response to his father m u s t be u n d e r s t o o d
in the larger d e v e l o p m e n t a l context. 10
In this singularly closed household, no expression of hostility w a s a l l o w e d
toward either parent, and the family's combination of pride and s o u t h e r n Pres-
byterianism led to reserve or self-righteous antagonism toward e v i l d o e r s o u t -
side. The elder Wilson's streak of bitter sarcasm flashed out at his c o l l e a g u e s '
failings. It is thus n o t surprising that Wilson learned to project his anger o n t o

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

those outside the circle of his o w n identity and s h o w e d little if any h o s t i l i t y
toward his parents. Such a person would tend in later life to turn t h o s e w h o
sparked his affection into idealized loved ones and those w h o sparked his anger
into alien and evil enemies, as Wilson did. Or he might also s w a l l o w his anger
in p s y c h o s o m a t i c gastrointestinal illness, as Wilson began to do w h e n separa-
tion from his m o t h e r strained his earlier defenses.
A child clinging to his m o t h e r is likely to have difficulty forming an inte-
grated and realistic self-image, as well as an independent one. An idealized im-
age of one's good self and an exaggerated image of o n e ' s bad self are n a t u r a l for-
mulations of the y o u n g child, but Wilson's childhood situation retarded t h e
process by w h i c h these are progressively moderated and integrated into a
realistic self-structure. Both his overconfidence and his insecurity can be
understood as products of these persisting early self-conceptions, and his ef-
forts to realize ideal goals can be seen as attempts to validate t h e good and
disprove the bad. Frustration or feelings of failure w o u l d only drive h i m to
angry self-defense and m o r e strenuous vindication of his ideal self.
The denial of illness, as Weinstein formulates it, w o u l d be the n a t u r a l resort
of such a person. So too w o u l d be the constant search for reassuring figures to
keep one's destructive feelings at bay. Although Weinstein does n o t d e v e l o p
the observation, he indicates that Wilson felt his wife to be a part of h i m s e l f , as
he had felt his m o t h e r to be. The desolate loneliness he felt w h e n p h y s i c a l l y
apart from her s e e m s far less the "condition of modern m a n , " than t h e conse-
quence of this i m m a t u r e relationship. 11 Assimilating all his lovers to t h e s a m e
idealized image, he needed constantly to shore up his fragile self b y in-
corporating additional support.
Finally, this f o r m u l a t i o n suggests another dimension to Wilson's r e l i a n c e on
oral language and his magical sense of its powers. It suggests w h y t h e desire to
create integrated, organic unities was so fundamental to him. M u l d e r w a s t h e
first historian to point out h o w central that t h e m e was to Wilson's i m a g i n a -
tion and to his policies at Princeton, but he attributed it to W i l s o n ' s
Covenanter heritage. This organic political goal appears also to reflect his
fundamental psychological needs.
10 Psychohistorians who wish to explore the role of Oedipal dynamics in Wilson's personality
would be well advised, I think, to abandon the Georges' view of Wilson as a stubborn, " c o m -
pulsive" personality, whose central goal was power. Wilson's cognitive style, his defensive
reliance on denial, his dramatic flair, emotional intensity, and pattern of sexual relationships all
suggest a dominant hysterical component in his personality.
n Weinstein, Woodrow Wilson, 79.
668 The Journal of American History

The way in which Wilson's skills and political motives developed, however,
brings us directly to the most glaring problem in the Wilson historiography. A
persistent feature of the psychobiographies, as indeed of most psychohistorical
literature, is their concentration on the pathological aspects of personality.
Most psychoanalytic theories focus on psychological illness, and the easiest
way to sight the contours of an individual personality is through its deviance
from the norm. Weinstein, although he tries to show how Wilson was able to
convert his emotional weaknesses into strengths, writes from the medical
viewpoint and altogether passes over Wilson's periods of health and major
political accomplishment. Thus, unlike the Georges, who made a considerable
effort to explain Wilson's political successes, Weinstein inadvertently leaves

Downloaded from http://jah.oxfordjournals.org/ at University of New South Wales on July 6, 2015

the reader wondering how such an unstable person as Wilson accomplished
w h a t he did.
In theory, at least, psychoanalytic ego psychology now makes clear that con-
structive behavior bears the stamp of one's personal history as thoroughly as
self-destructive behavior does, and the pattern of personality, once perceived,
can be seen to be operative in all aspects of life. Surely that is what now needs
to be done for Wilson. The degree and location of Wilson's psychological dif-
ficulties cannot begin to be assessed until they are seen in the context of his
strengths.
Weinstein and the Georges have given us m a n y clues to the ways in which
Wilson's personal inclinations became realistic public strengths. But to make
use of such insights, historians will need the kind of robust appreciation of the
soul's artistry that poets have always had. Reductionism is not a necesary
posture for the psychohistorian. A child's concern about separation from his
m o t h e r and the integration of self is not the same thing as a statesman's lofty
vision of a harmoniously united world, but they can be developmentally
related. Wilson's constant efforts to bring the elements of his world into har-
monious organic connection, his constant construction of constitutions that
would lay down boundaries and control exchanges within the body politic, and
his fantasy of the orator-statesman who united leader and led disclose the
prime-moving elements of both his personal and public life. Surely the
historian can appreciate the irony of that fact, an irony inherent in the h u m a n
condition, and still honor Wilson's mature vision and the strength that
brought him to it.