The Inner Man

Abstract

THE PSYCHIATRIST who takes it upon himself to attempt a character study of an individual whom he has never met is engaged upon a project that is full of risk. In the exercise of his profession, the psychiatrist has an unrivaled opportunity for the appraisal of character, and may justly claim that he knows more persons deeply and intimately than most of his fellows. But, when considering someone who has died, he is deprived of those special insights that can be attained only in the consulting room, and is, like the historian, obliged to rely upon what written evidence happens to be available. In the analytical treatment of a patient, the psychiatrist is able to check the validity of the hypotheses that he proffers by the patient’s response, and by the changes that occur in the patient as a result of his increased comprehension of himself The psychiatrist may often be wrong or premature in his interpretation of his patient’s behavior and character; but, as the long process of analysis continues, errors will gradually be eliminated and the truth recognized by both parties in the analytical transaction. Deprived of this constant appraisal and reappraisal, psychiatrists who attempt biographical studies of great men are apt to allow theory to outrun discretion: with the result that many so-called psychoanalytic biographies have been both bad biography and bad psychoanalysis. The disastrous study of Woodrow Wilson by Freud and Bullitt is a case in point.