Clinton as Target of Displaced Rage (book review)

Review of Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad, The Politics of Denial. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1996. ISBN 026213330X, x, 292 pp., $25.

Politics is a highly competitive profession. The competition is especially severe and persistent in the United States and other countries with free elections and two major political parties. Politics therefore attracts people with strong aggressive feelings and intensifies those feelings.

Political expressions of aggressive behavior are described by Michael A. Milburn and Sheree D. Conrad in The Politics of Denial. The authors are professors of psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. They argue that denial and displacement of childhood rage against punishment are important sources of punitive political policies, including the death penalty and warfare against foreign enemies.

One of the astute observations by Sigmund Freud was that young children are intensely emotional and irrational, contrary to the prevalent fantasy that their small size causes them to be gentle and sweet. Punishment of children induces rage, which is defined as a furious, uncontrolled anger. Childish rage usually results in further parental punishment rather than an empathic and rational response. Children repress their rage from conscious awareness because of the overwhelming power of the adult punisher and also because they need parental love and support. Children therefore displace their rage onto other targets, while they deny the parental source of this emotion. As adults they punish their children and support punitive government policies.

The book by Milburn and Conrad cites many studies and discussions of the adverse effects of punishment. The reference list contains more than 400 publications. The principal citations on effects of childhood punishment are from a book by Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (1983). The political consequences are largely based on a classic book on authoritarian behavior by Adorno, et al, The Authoritarian Personality (1950).

The citations constitute a sampling rather than a comprehensive survey of the literature on punitive child training. The book does not cite the numerous articles on the subject by Lloyd deMause and others in The Journal of Psychohistory. (They do cite two articles in that journal, Atlas (1990) on charismatic political leaders and Godwin (1996) on Newt Gingrich.)

Milburn and Conrad include examples of punitive behavior by politicians who suffered severe punishments in childhood. Only four are described extensively. They are Pat Buchanan, who was a Republican candidate for President in 1996; Newt Gingrich; Ingo Hasselbach, who was formerly an East German neo-Nazi; and John Silber, who was the Democratic nominee for Governor of Massachusetts in 1990. Gingrich, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, is the only one of these who has been a major national leader. There are only brief mentions of more prominent leaders.

Richard Nixon is an excellent example of a major political leader with punitive policies. His only political behavior described by Milburn and Conrad is the characterization of the Democratic Presidential nominee in 1972, George McGovern, as favoring “Amnesty, Acid, and Abortion.” Watergate is referred to but not the specific punitive actions, such as Nixon’s “enemies list.” Psychobiographies of Nixon provide information on his punitive childhood experiences and aggressive reactions as a politician.

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Milburn and Conrad point out that Bill Clinton, like Newt Gingrich, grew up in a home with a violent stepfather. The authors identify several contradictory characteristics of Clinton. He is an adamant supporter of the death penalty although a supporter of the liberal cause of rights of gays in the military. They denounce his administration for ignoring genocide in Rwanda but praise him for peaceful settlement of a threatened civil war in Haiti and for supporting an international climate treaty, which may be blocked by the Republican majority in Congress.

A psychobiographical article by Barry and Elovitz (The Journal of Psychohistory, 1992) discussed contradictory characteristics of Clinton. He had a mutually close, loving relationship with his mother but also suffered severe deprivations and probably punishments during childhood. He was born after the death of his father. His mother was often absent during his first four years. His maternal grandmother was probably the main source of his early childhood punishment. Clinton described her husband but not her as the kindest person he ever knew. His mother was loving but highly emotional and a rebellious daughter of a punitive mother. He was four years old when his mother married his stepfather, who sometimes beat his mother and probably also physically punished him. Clinton’s recollections appear to indicate denial of punitive childhood experiences, typical of severely punished children. Accounts of Clinton’s behavior as President include episodes of intense rage and self-pity, in accordance with effects of childhood punishment.

A more consistent expression of displaced anger is the attack on Clinton by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr and many of the Republican members of Congress. Clinton has the unenviable distinction of being the first President of the United States to be served a subpoena to testify about allegations of his own criminal behavior. (The withdrawal of the subpoena after it had successfully forced the President to agree to testify does not diminish its importance.) The attack on the President is grossly disproportionate to the accused misconduct, which consists of an unprofitable investment prior to his Presidency, a few episodes of private sexual behavior, and election fund-raising that has been traditional in both major political parties. The bitterness of the attack against the President may indicate that he is the target of displaced rage against the punitive authority figures of the parents of his political adversaries.

Previous Presidents have often been targets of displaced rage. Denunciation and ridicule are occupational hazards for the principal political authority figure. Expressions of displaced anger may be magnified in a group situation, such as the Republican majority in Congress. This is consistent with the phenomenon of groupthink, described by Irving Janis in Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (1982).

Displaced anger also might have been exaggerated in 1974 when the Democratic majority in Congress forced Nixon to resign the Presidency. In comparison with Clinton, Nixon’s crimes were more severe and pertained to his governmental functions. Nevertheless, his principal foreign policies were rational and enlightened. Vice President Ford and the principal federal officials were patriotic and intelligent public servants. The insistence on forcing Nixon to relinquish the Presidency was a reaction to Nixon’s own hostility, but I believe that it also expressed the displaced rage of the members of Congress and the American people.

I agree with the principal message by Milburn and Conrad, associating childhood punishment with punitive political behavior. Their book contains much useful information, including summaries of research by the authors testing effects of childhood punishment on adult political opinions. However, I believe that the authors are excessively pessimistic. The book stresses denunciations of evils rather than remedies. Separate chapters are devoted to the topics of slavery, governmental violence, and environmental destruction. Originally writing shortly before the 1996 Presidential election, they asserted that political punitiveness has been worse in the 1990s than in previous decades. They did not mention evidence by deMause and others that children have been treated less punitively in recent years. Nor do the authors cite a popular book by Haim Ginott, Between Parent and Child (1961), which convincingly described the undesirable effects of spanking and emphasized advice on how parents can replace punishment with love, communication, and empathic understanding.

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