Shrink Justin A. Frank Talks to BuzzFlash

In 2004, Psychoanalyst Justin A. Frank, MD, published a book titled, “Bush on the Couch”. The book blurb says Dr. Frank is “a clinical professor in the Department of Psychiatry at George Washington University Medical Center. He is also a teaching analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute.” Other sources say Frank has 30 years experience as a psychoanalyst. It always bugs me when I can’t find out how old someone is. Frank’s book jacket pic looks like he and actor Wilford Brimley were twins separated at birth. Brimley admits to being 72. Frank is probably younger…but who knows? I loved “Bush on the Couch”. It corroborated all my most negative assumptions about George W. Bush, which are that he’s a delusional sociopath who hates his father and was dominated by his mother. I also read into Frank’s analysis of Bush that Bush should be drummed out of the presidency and placed in an asylum. However, those words were never used in the book. An interview with Dr. Frank was conducted by Mark Karlin for BuzzFlash. It was posted on the BuzzFlash site late yesterday afternoon. Dr. Frank hasn’t changed his opinion of George W. Bush since “Bush on the Couch’ came out. And of course, Dr. Frank has been monitoring the Prez from afar all this time. He has had no face-time with Bush. But from Dr. Frank’s point of view, Bush’s psychiatric problems have only gotten worse in the past two years. Frank told Karlin: “His (GWB’s) parents abandoned him psychologically and emotionally, both because of their own grief and their own way of dealing with their grief, but also because of how they were as parents in general. Barbara was very preoccupied not just with the loss of her daughter, but with the fact that there was a newborn at home -- Jack, who was only a few months old. So he (GWB) was left alone to solve a terrible catastrophe of loss, evoking anxiety and all kinds of things.” GWB’s sister Robin died in 1953 which was the same year Jeb/Jack was born. Dr. Frank said, “You can fast-forward that to the present day, and he is now feeling very much in the same situation. Even Scarborough talks about how isolated Bush is, and how it's like a bunker mentality. I think he has had a bunker mentality all of his life, and that he has covered it over and compensated for it with a tremendous amount of affability and charm. That may be partly because he had trouble reading, so he couldn’t like retreat and become isolated the way some people perhaps do, by hiding in books, or drugs, or whatever. He hid from various things, you know, with alcohol and things. But, mainly, he used his affability and his charm to be able to brush away anybody who might get to the core pain and terror that existed inside of him. “I think that that’s what’s happening now. I think somebody -- the voters, the public, the Baker Commission, various people --have tried to turn the light on. And he is very terrified of any kind of truth that will intrude into his need to cling to preconceptions, because they make him feel safe, and they allow him to stay in his bunker. He looked disgruntled this morning. I was watching his statement about President Ford, who died last night. I was really struck by how ill-at-ease he seemed, and like he didn’t want to be doing it. There are historical reasons for his being ill-at-ease, of course, and that was that Gerald Ford and his own father, H.W., didn’t like each other very much, and there was a lot of conflict between Ford and Bush Senior during the Reagan days.” And what does Dr. Frank think should be done about our problem of having a sociopath leading the country? Dr. Frank said, “I think the only way to deal with somebody who is this embattled and this delusional is to invoke the 25th Amendment. It’s so ironic that it was only used once, and that was when Gerald Ford became President and Nixon was forced out because he resigned.” The 25th Amendment makes provisions for the Vice President and principal officers of the executive department to make a written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office and that the Vice President shall immediately assume those duties and powers as Acting President. Dr. Frank feels that Cheney as president would be a better alternative than Crazy George, Although Frank does say that the best solution would be to impeach Cheney first and make sure the person appointed to replace Cheney would be acceptable to both sides of the aisle in Congress. Frank noted that this was the ploy used in 1973 when Agnew was removed and Gerald Ford was appointed as VP. What Dr. Frank and BuzzFlash make clear is that there are measures that can be taken by our Congress right now to solve the problem of the United States having a crazy person as President. Of course those measures would take balls to be brought into play. However, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and our Democratic Congress have the power to do what needs to be done. The question is: Would our getting rid of George W. Bush and bringing our troops home from Iraq be worth the problems that would arise in the world as an aftermath to such dramatic measures? Desperate times call for drastic measures. We as a nation should certainly be thinking about it.