An Ego Ideal of My Youth: Lincoln’s Foreshadowing Dream and the Question of Guilt

As with millions of other American boys, Abraham Lincoln was an ego ideal of my early youth. His birth in poverty in a log cabin, harsh life on the frontier, hard work, self-education, and overcoming failure and early loss prior to attaining the White House inspired me, as did his leadership in the Civil War. As a young boy I believed the tale that “Honest Abe” had walked miles to return a penny a customer had inadvertently overpaid him. This was the Lincoln of my childhood who I saw as the greatest and perhaps the most tragic American president. He represented the dream of American freedom. As an adult, Carl Sandburg’s Abraham Lincoln (1926) reinforced my idealization, though it was not until after I became more interested in psychological history that Abe Lincoln’s struggles with depression and suicide were things I was willing to confront.

Charles B. Strozier’s Lincoln’s Quest for Union: A Psychological Portrait (1982) helped me to deepen my understanding, so I readily assign it to students.  Chuck’s second Lincoln book, Your Friend Forever: The Enduring Friendship of Abraham Lincoln and Joshua Speed (2016) was a joy to read. As an editor it was a great pleasure that Jim Anderson, with his usual energy and zest for interviewing people on important subjects, arranged for this dialogue.

Jim’s reference to Lincoln’s guilt brings to mind the question of how he handled it. Given the backdrop of his earlier suicidal depression, it is my thought that while he may not have been overtly suicidal on April 15, 1865, his guilt over the enormous losses in the war led him to be insufficiently self-protective because of an unconscious death wish. It should also not be forgotten that he had to bear the burden of the loss of his young son, William, in 1862, and a troubled wife.

The lack of self-protectiveness is revealed in two incidents. One, his minimal concern for his own safety nine months before his

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assassination (in 1864) when a shot was fired as he was riding alone to the Old Soldiers’ Home. His horse was spooked, and his hat was subsequently found with a musket hole in it. The 16^th President dismissed it as a probable hunting accident.

The second incident revolves around a dream, relayed by a former law partner, who was occasionally his bodyguard during his presidency. The partner recalled that Lincoln dreamt that there was a commotion in the White House, and the President went from room to room in search of it. In the East Room he finally saw soldiers and people sobbing around a casket, leading him to demand, “What happened? Who died?” A soldier reported that the president had been assassinated. Dreams can help us become aware of that which we consciously deny; in this case, the specific dangers of assassination. Had Lincoln listened to the message of the dream and not been indifferent to the dangers of assassination, on April 15 he could have kept his bodyguard at the Ford Theatre from going next door to a saloon during the performance of “Our American Cousin.” Because each of us is the author, director, and actors in our dreams, I would hypothesize that the thought of being assassinated, however bad for the nation, the freed slaves, and ultimately the South, represented a relief from the terrible pressures of the war. Therefore, his behavior may have reflected an unconscious death wish.

The Lincoln of reality, rather than the idealized one of my childhood, was a man of enormous complexity who had struggled with depression and was insufficiently self-protective. He may also have been so burdened with guilt that he failed to listen to the unconscious warning in his “The President Has Been Assassinated Dream.” I commend Jim Anderson and Chuck Strozier for increasing our knowledge of him.

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