Young Man Johnson

This article is part of a book in progress, In Sickness and in Health: A Psychological Approach to the United States. The basic premise of that book is that anxiety neurosis, as described by Karen Horney (1950), pervades American culture and history. The conflict between healthy and neurotic impulses can be seen from the highest social classes to the lowest in the United States, and from the beginnings of the nation to the present. The presidency, as a focal point of national image and power, embodies this conflict as much as any institution, both in some of the elections—as a reflection of the traits of the electorate—and in some of the men who have individually held the office. John Fitzgerald Kennedy is perhaps most interesting to study as an example of the popularity of a president and what that may reveal about the American voter, though The Kennedy Neurosis has been diagnosed in the Kennedys themselves (Clinch, 1973). Lyndon Baines Johnson is most interesting to study as an example of a deeply neurotic president, and of the frightening potential consequences of such an individual holding the most powerful office on earth.

Though Johnson's psychological state is a touchy subject for most of his biographers, even political biographers cannot avoid the relationship between the public and the private person. In Lyndon B. Johnson: The Exercise of Power (1966), Evans and Nowak try to avoid the issue of his psychology, but even they must take “his personality” into account “for its impingement on public affairs” (p. vii). Ronnie Dugger, who wants to focus on The Politician, nevertheless subtitles his book The Drive for Power, from the Frontier to the Master of the Senate (1982). Dugger argues that in a president of so powerful a nation, “his merest bent of personality” is “so consequential, he himself is history” (p. 13). In Big Daddy from the Pedernales (1986), Paul Conkin explicitly avoids “any psychological explanations” (p. x), but even though he distrusts theory,