Shrinking W

My wife brought home a book called Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President by Justin A. Frank, MD. Perhaps some reader will be shocked to learn that I have a weakness for Bush bashing, even that that strains plausibility just a little. Alas, I'm afraid Dr. Frank lost me a bit early, on page xv of the introduction:

The theoretical approach I have adopted and developed here is particularly well suited to a study of President Bush. In its simplest terms, it takes as a starting point the assumption that the original anxieties that accompany and follow the trauma of birth not only shape our early emotional development, but can also remain influential for the rest of our lives. At the core of these first anxieties is the infant's early awareness that the idyllic world he knew before birth has been suddenly shattered, and that he somehow played a role in its destruction - perhaps from his kicking and his efforts to get out of the womb.

Hey, I was glad to get the heck out of that crowded, hot dark place. Idyllic? Only if your idea of an Idyll is living all scrunched up over a combination of Greek restaurant and toilet. I yelled with glee at my first breath of freedom (and air).

More seriously, I doubt that an intelligent designer (or Darwinian selection) would allow the inevitable first incident of your life to be a major problem for the rest of it. And nobody remembers it.

Actually, I think Freudian psychology is mainly a crock - but I will probably read some more of the book just to see if it has any good bits.