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The biography of Woodrow Wilson by Sigmund Freud and William C. Bullitt attempts to explain in psychological terms what the authors consider Wilson's failure at the 1919 peace conference. In this paper, I will consider the authors' motivations in writing the book, evaluate their interpretations of Wilson's behavior and diagnosis of his mental condition, and discuss the book in the context of psychiatric and psychoanalytic thought of the 1920s and 1930s.
William Christian Bullitt was born to a wealthy Philadelphia family in 1891, graduated from Yale and attended Harvard Law School for part of a year. Although he had no formal training as a diplomat, he became an influential adviser to two American presidents and played important roles in the events leading up to the Treaty of Versailles and the Second World War. He served as Ambassador to Russia from 1933 to 1936, and Ambassador to France from 1936 to 1940. Bullitt did not write a biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt as he did of Woodrow Wilson, but there are similarities in his relationship with each man. His career was one of passionate enthusiasms for men and causes, followed by bitter disillusionment.
George F. Kennan who served under Bullitt in Russia called him brilliant, egocentric, well-educated, charming, self-confident and sophisticated. Kennan characterized him, also, as impatient and impulsive with a contempt for the normal bureaucracy of foreign