Bias, Countertransference, and Father Son Issues: A Response to Conway

As a scholar of contemporary presidents and candidates, I am quite sensitive to the issue of bias as I struggle to write jargon-free political psychology focused on childhood, coping mechanisms, empathy, personality, and overcoming trauma. For an example of this, see my article on Bush and Kerry, “A Psychobiographical Comparison of Bush and Kerry,” Journal of Psychohistory (Fall 2004, pp. 109-142). It troubled me that the biased presenter described by Professor Conway was a substitute for me when I could not attend the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) meetings in Lund.

However, I must disagree with Conway’s claim that the President refused to acknowledge asking his father’s advice about going to war with Iraq in early 2003. Though the younger Bush spoke often with his father, it is my sense that he had no reason not to admit he asked about the war: he had no need to ask since he knew his father would want him to continue down the complicated diplomatic road that he had decided to forgo after many months of frustration. Why ask a question when you already know the answer? Similarly, he never asked Secretary of State Colin Powell if he should go to war without renewed UN support (See Robert Woodward, Plan of Attack, 2004, pp. 269-272).

Regarding the President’s oedipal issues, though I do not use this term in my article, cited above, I think a strong case may be made for these, especially regarding the 2003 Iraq War which enabled him to both vindicate his father’s 1991 Iraq war and outdo him by deposing Saddam Hussein and occupying the country in the name of liberation and democratization. Professor Rudolph Binion presents the evidence for Bush’s rivalry with his father in the context of Bush’s war with Iraq as a case of traumatic reliving of September 11, 2001 (“Bush’s America Goes to War,” Clio’s Psyche, Vol. 10 No. 1, June 2003, pp. 1-3). That the term oedipal is used so loosely in our society is not a reason to dismiss it out of hand.

An additional issue is that I think it is a mistake to see the feelings of the political psychobiographer as simply a problem to be eliminated. Countertransference feelings toward a patient or a subject of research may be an asset as well as a detriment to the work of the analyst. They may provide vital information to the analyst, especially if they are clearly induced by the subject. Even if they are projections of the analyst, they can be informative, if s/he is well analyzed and determined

Page 55

to understand what motivates the many choices which are made in the course of psychoanalytic and psychobiographical work. Clearly, the individual who prompted Conway’s article showed no signs of using this information to improve his scholarship.

Page 56