In Search of Bill Clinton: A Psychological Biography

by John D. Gartner

Book Overview

What makes Bill Clinton tick? William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States is undoubtedly the greatest American enigma of our age - a dark horse that captured the White House, fell from grace and was resurrected as an elder statesman whose popularity rises and falls based on the day's sound bytes.? John Gartner's In Search of Bill Clinton unravels the mystery at the heart of Clinton's complex nature and why so many people fall...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 031236976X
• ISBN13: 9780312369767
• Release Date: September 2008
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Length: 466 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.6" x 6.5" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Very interesting analysis, good writing.

I deeply enjoyed this audiobook. I look forward to getting into the car and getting to the next chapter. I rewind it two, three times because i get distracted while driving, and the point the author is making is good, so i need to get the background. I've recommended it to one of my literate friends, and i'll recommend it to others. Tons of work went into this, and i'm grateful to be able to absorb so much effort with so little effort. - This book makes me think. And one of the things I'm thinking about is the literary genre that this book utilizes. The genre is psychoanalytic profiles (these are the author's words). The author has stated he is wary of falling into the trap of reducing Clinton to a quick boil-down, to an oversimplified outcome of one or two events from childhood. And the author succeeds in this goal. He paints a vivid portrait, an engaging profile, and he gives insights into Clinton's background that frame his portrait well. Here's what strikes me though. Is a post-event explanation of the causes of why someone behaved the way they did real science? This book explores Clinton in excruciating detail. But do multiple single-example "proofs" about one person make the endeavor credible? The author wants the reader to assume that he can find the key to Clinton's behavior from important childhood events. But the author only uses one person to support the assumption that childhood events can predict adult behaviors. If this were a ground-breaking book, the method of describing how childhood events predict adult behaviors would be done for multiple historical people. The author would apply the same reasoning to 3,4,5 presidents. He would show how to choose the childhood events that accurately predict adult behaviors, and how to reject the childhood events that cannot accurately predict adult behaviors. But he doesn't do this. He only gives examples that support his conclusion, and he doesn't show why the other childhood events shouldn't be used. If a childhood is made up of millions of events, then the author uses less than 1/1000th of the data to support his conclusion. The author's method of psychoanalytic science hasn't been proven as viable. So, his book, which uses an unproven method of analysis for only one instance, is suspect. My conclusion: I liked the detail, i liked the research, i liked the writing. I understood what the author was saying, and I took time to relisten to key parts because it was interesting. I gave the book 5 of 5 stars. It's worth your time. However, I don't buy into the author's approach of psychoanalysis to understand Bill Clinton. He derives conclusions from single examples that are spurious at best. Aristotle fell into the same trap. Aristotle assumed that vermin were created in dung. Aristotle's logic was convincing, but that didn't make it true. Fascinating gossip, dressed up as science. Recommended.

A Flawed Genius Uncovered

This is an utterly stunning analysis of perhaps our brightest and yet most flawed President -- performed by now one our most impressive Psychoanalysts. In this book, Professor John D. Gartner, lays a psychoanalytic trap that is so clever, so compelling that it ensnares Bill Clinton and his "significant others" into a paradigm that is as clear and convincing as it is at the very frontier of psycho-historical analysis itself. With great skill, clarity, sensitivity, and a rich and convincing set of data based on interviews of those who knew the Clinton family best - from Hope, Arkansas all the way to Africa -- Professor Gartner demonstrates how our 42nd President drops off the scale in two directions at once: That is to say, on both the high end of the intelligence scale, and the low end of the scale of moral and social and sexual impulsiveness. The excavated structural theme which the author carefully integrates into a compelling narrative, which he then builds into an even more compelling psychological paradigm, involves three elements: (1) Gartner's professional judgment that both Bill and his mother Virginia were "hypomanics;" (2) the fact that Bill was separated from his mother for two critically formative years (from the ages of 2-4), and that he grew up in a dysfunctional family trapped between two powerful and sexually promiscuous but warring women, both of whose behavior served as Bill's unconscious models; and both of whom demanded (and gave) implicitly, total love and loyalty. With hypomania providing the structural or genetic psychological predisposition towards impulsiveness, and with both his mother and his grandmother providing the unconscious raw materials for "acting it out," the young Bill Clinton internalized, and integrated into his personality, a flawed paradigm of life that included impulsiveness, sexual and otherwise, and an inability to check and regulate, or otherwise over come, the defects of his genetic wiring. The sad paradox is that hypomanics tend to exaggerate the very manic traits that made President Clinton a wildly successful President, a compassionate but insecure extroverted politician, and a morally flawed "Arkansas Redneck." Being a fan of Clinton himself (as I am), Professor Gartner did not take the "low road" and try to either finesse, deny or immunize himself against being "sucked in" by a charming "uber bright" subject who the author admitted was one of his own heroes. In fact, rather bravely, the author submitted himself to a revealing "counter-transference" analysis of his own which he discusses in the book. Tragically, he was unable to interview the ex-President himself and a lack of such an interview (as the author well knows) leaves a gapping hole in the analysis. However except for this one omission, this analysis, this writing, and the skillful interviewing, are all first-rate. On a personal note, as a member of Bill Clinton's foreign policy transition team and an expert in Arms Control, I was

the bill clinton i know and knew

I met bill clinton one evening in the early fall of 1974 at hermon's ribhouse in fayetteville, arkansas when hillary introduced my wife and me to him. After this, we became fast friends and after the campaign for the house ended in nov of that year, we spent many evenings in each others company, conversation and friendship. It was not long before all of us who knew bill and hillary back then were charmed, not only by his personality and atractiveness, but by his incredible intelligense, curiosity and sensitivity. And as the author describes, he seemed to radiate an aura of really caring about you and your feelings and your concerns. This was shortly after roe v wade, and while it would be another 10 years before i would become "the local abortionist" in Fayetteville, he picked my brain about where i stood on the subject and why. Years later, after he became governor, and my staff, my patients, my famly and I came under under massive attack by antiabortion militants and my office was firebombed, I was very disappointed in Bill for not taking a firm stand in support of me and the patients who sought my care. It was not until he was running for president that he came out publically on the "Pro-Choice" side, though everyone in arkansas knew where he stood. But as Gartner describes hm, he never wanted to offend even those who hated him until he absolutely had to do so. And when he did have to, he took the most mildmannered approach he could. Safe, legal and rare. Which I thought he should have made safe, legal and rarely needed. But I still think Bill Clinton is one of the most empathetic, intelligent, caring, charming persons i am likely to meet in my lifetime. And except for the GRWC, could have been one of our greatest presidnets.

At last, understanding

I have long sought to understand the actions of Bill Clinton, a man I admired greatly when he was President for his intelligence and caring drive for solutions that would work for real people. But, like so many people, I simply found his actions with women, especially Monica Lewinsky, unfathomable. Until now. If you want to understand why Bill Clinton is the way he is, read this book. Enough said.

Hail to John Gartner for a Psychologically Sophisticated Analysis

"In Search of Bill Clinton" was the most elucidating, intriguing and insightful analysis I have ever heard about our former President. I was hooked from the first page and could barely put it down. While I never thought of Clinton in the terms presented by Gartner, after reading his book I will forever think of Clinton in terms of the framework Gartner provided. This is a whole new way of understanding Bill Clinton that takes us well beyond the over simplified, pop psychology analyses suggesting that Clinton simply suffers from a sex addiction or the morally self-righteous judgments that merely accuse him of suffering from "bad" character. Instead Gartner suggests that Clinton has a hypomanic temperament which is an innate personality orientation characterized by extremely high levels of energy, optimism, creativity, charisma and exuberance (please note that a hypomanic temperament should not to be confused with a hypomanic episode which is a limit limited and mildly disturbed mental state). He goes on to explain that this temperament is combined with 3 (of 5) core dimensions of personality that Clinton happens to possess in extreme abundance; intellectual curiosity, empathy and extrovertness (by the way, the statistical probability of anyone s having these 3 dimensions in such abundance is one in quadrillion). In addition to this, Clinton is an intellectual genius with an IQ that is off the charts. His brilliance (which is further facilitated by having a photographic memory), his hypomanic temperament, and his remarkably high levels of intellectual curiosity, empathy and extrovertness are innate and remarkable parts of the man who overcame formidable odds to become our 42nd president. But the fun doesn't stop there. Gartner went on to contextualize these innate dimensions of Clinton's personality by unfolding his family history and the specific family dynamics that that underpin both the best and the worst of the Bill Clinton we have observed. While Gartner's ideas are fascinating, what I really appreciated was the systematic way that he unfolded his ideas and provided rich and extensive data to support his suppositions. This data was obtained from multiple sources including extensive interviews that he conducted with over 80 people (it's an impressive list and even more impressive that he was able to get people to open up to him in such candid and revealing ways). I felt the greatest respect for Gartner's rigorous research methods, keen powers of observation, critical thinking skills, and analytical insights. I also appreciated Gartner's style of writing which was clear, articulate and authentic. I felt his personhood throughout. He was never just a "distant observer" somewhere off behind a curtain reporting his material. Instead I was refreshingly aware of his presence throughout and it lent an air of credibility and genuineness to the book. Of course, Gartner is a psychologist, and I can see how these credentials greatly facilitated his