Richard Milhous Nixon

Review of Vamık Volkan, Norman Itzkowitz, and Andrew W. Dod, Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997. ISBN 0231108540, xii, 190 pp., $27.50.

As the first President to resign his office, Richard Nixon will always occupy a unique place in American history as one of the great tragic figures of our political tradition. He was a totally political man who lived for the arena of political action, yet at the height of his career he resigned his office, consigning himself to a kind of death in life until he actually died. Nixon was a man who people either loved or hated; there was seldom any middle ground of feeling about him. He has been the subject of many biographies of varying quality in the last 35 years. The public record about every phase of his life, especially his life in politics, is immense. Yet, there remains a sense of mystery about the man. Why was he the way he was? Why did this most political of men destroy himself politically and shut himself off from that for which he lived? What drove him to such ignominious disgrace? Even though we have ideas, the full truth may never be known. Scholars continue to write and try to understand.

Richard Nixon: A Psychobiography, one of the most recent efforts to comprehend this man, is both illuminating and disappointing. The authors profitably bring psychoanalytic sophistication to their subject. In their research the authors went on “the premise that, just as in the clinical situation or with a creative endeavor, the psychobiographical subject has ‘products’ and creations that are available for examination.” This is a nice way to put it. “In Richard Nixon’s case, we looked at his political thinking, decisions, and actions as his ‘products’ and creations and we selected certain ones for closer examination” (p. 18). This is fine as far as it goes, but in giving less attention to his childhood and family relationships they limit the quality of their and our insights into this man.

They are especially insightful on the narcissistic aspects of Nixon’s personality (something I had not thought of when I first wrote about him some 25 years ago).

With Richard Nixon we see exaggerated narcissism, but not malignant narcissism. Nixon organized his personality at such a level that he had an exaggerated need to be ‘number one’ in his own eyes as well as in the eyes of others…. His need to be ‘number one’ found an echo in reality since he was in fact successful most of the time. It is this congruence with reality that ultimately differentiates successful people with narcissistic personality organization from those who, having such an organization, try to maintain their grandiose selves in the absence of realistic validation (p. 91).

For me, their insights on this aspect of Nixon was the best part of the book.

This book would have been far better if the authors had devoted more attention to Nixon’s childhood and family relations. What they do give us is fine but there needs to be more. There is a huge, readily available public record plus extensive oral history materials in the Nixon Library. By not looking enough at this material the authors miss some important aspects of Nixon’s emotional dynamics.

It is clear that Nixon’s father, Frank, was an angry, contentious man, who could certainly be scary to his children. But what of the mother Nixon often called a “saint”? Her discipline lacked the physical brutality of the father, but the children dreaded lectures from her more than punishment from Frank because she could evoke tremendous emotional guilt in them. Thus, Nixon and his siblings lacked consistent nurturance from either parent. While the authors note the tragic losses and separations Nixon endured in his youth, they do not really discuss the emotional effect of these experiences on him. His mother noted that after the death of his two brothers he tried to be three sons-in-one to help make up for their loss.

Perhaps the authors’ major omission has to do with the persistent pattern of crisis and resurrection that is one of the hallmarks of Nixon’s

Page 60

life. The authors allude to it here and there but always as an isolated phenomenon. For example, “Not having had a ‘good enough’ mother most likely contributed to Nixon’s need to resurrect himself from the disgrace and humiliation of his resignation from the presidency” (p. 144). But why did he have to take it to the point of having to resign? In his Memoirs (1978) he admits that he set himself up for his fall via a number of poor decisions. Getting into crises and successfully surmounting them had been an aspect of his emotional life at least since high school. As he grew older the crises became increasingly extreme, and the narcissistic gratification of resurrecting himself greater and greater. When he lost the governor’s race in California and made his famous “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” speech, it was widely regarded as an act of political suicide. Winning the Presidency a few years later was felt by many to be one of the greatest political comebacks ever. He went on to win a second term by the biggest vote margin in American history and then resigned, turning success into disgrace and failure. All things considered, his comeback after the resignation was indeed remarkable. While the authors are quite correct that, as part of this, we need to understand “Americans’ perceptions of a fallen ‘hero’,” we also need to understand that Nixon had been locked into a progressively more destructive pattern of crisis and resurrection since childhood.

Though this book has its limitations, psychohistorians interested in Nixon can learn from it and should read it closely. But they should not stop with it since Nixon is a complex man and a challenging historical figure who does not lend himself to easy understanding. Because he has been so much a part of American political life in the last half of this century, it is important that we continue to work to know what he is about.

Page 61